For Bruce Springsteen, rock and roll has been about more than getting up onstage and singing. As far as he’s concerned, the music is part of some spiritual connection with a higher power, and every time that he locks in with the E Street Band on one of his songs, every person in the crowd knows that they’ve been a part of something special that has come to life before their eyes. ‘The Boss’ might reside as the great emcee every night he plays, but he knew that no other frontman could compare to what Bono has done for rock and roll.
That is, those who are willing to stomach him. Because as much as U2 have built themselves up as an institution in rock and roll these days, there are just as many who are going to roll their eyes every time he shows up, either talking about trying to create peace on earth through music or managing to make an even more extravagant version of his band’s legacy.
But long before he adopted the visor sunglasses and started preaching about saving everyone through the power of rock, Bono already had a bit of a chip on his shoulder. Looking through albums like October and War, there’s some genuine anger behind his vocal performances, talking about the massive problems he sees in his native Ireland and beyond and wondering when humanity will learn from their mistakes.
As the group landed on The Joshua Tree and later Achtung Baby, there was nothing but raw emotion on display. Outside of hitting some of the highest notes that any 1980s vocalist really should, Bono seemed to be an almighty preacher of rock and roll, claiming that if you just had a song in your heart and were willing to share it, you had the power to change the world.
Is it sappy? Sure, but that didn’t mean that sappiness didn’t work on occasion. Even when he was playing up the caricature of ‘The Fly’ during the Achtung Baby era, tunes like ‘Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses’ and ‘One’ let people know about the raw human underneath all of the window dressing as if he was pleading to relate to someone on a deeper level than just a face in the crowd.
While Springsteen could tell intricate parables about the lost souls of New Jersey, he knew that he found someone speaking that same language when listening to U2, recalling at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “Bono’s voice doesn’t sound like it’s shouting over top of the band but from deep within it. He delivers all of this with great drama and the occasional smirk that says, ‘Kiss me, I’m Irish’. He’s one of the great frontmen of the past 20 years.”
Despite being the other side of the coin, Springsteen has occasionally delved into the same kind of spiritual pool that Bono has with U2. While the anger of ‘Adam Raised a Cain’ is still one of the most powerful performances he ever gave, that doesn’t work unless it’s rounded out with the hope inside ‘Badlands’ or the dream of something better in ‘Thunder Road’.
But the most important thing behind Springsteen’s and U2’s music is that they provide hope where it feels like there is none left. It might be corny to believe that rock and roll would have the power to shape the world around us, but when listening to either Bono or ‘The Boss,’ it feels like it could happen if they had the right idea.
