It’s exceedingly difficult to find a modern-day songwriter who doesn’t admire or envy the legacy of Nobel Prize-winner Bob Dylan. In the 1960s, Dylan captured the zeitgeist of a countercultural generation with poignant, politically-driven folk material, later broadening his scope to give rock music a sharp poetic edge for future generations.
A couple of decades later, the U2 frontman Bono was inspired, in no small part by Dylan, to become one of the world’s most successful musicians of the 1980s with a unique approach to anthemic pop rock during the synth-pop era. Consolidating his legacy over the past four decades, Bono also devotes much of his time, money and energy to philanthropy and political activism.
Like Dylan, Bono found a way to use music for the power of political persuasion. While U2’s material is, for the most part, dissimilar to Dylan’s associated folk-rock style, the influence of Dylan on Bono is easy to notice. Further to this, Bono has seldom let a year pass by without professing his admiration for the American troubadour.
The pair first interacted in 1984 when Bono was given a chance to interview Dylan for the Irish music publication Hot Press before he took the stage at Slane Castle. Later that evening, Dylan invited the U2 singer to join him on stage for a rendition of ‘Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat’. Sadly, the moment was marred when Bono forgot his lines under the pressure of the moment.
In 2020, Bono shared an open letter to Dylan, where he enigmatically professed his love for the songwriter and recalled their meeting in 1984. “It could be Blowin’ In The Wind… like I was in Slane Castle, making it up as I went along,” the Irish singer started. “You let me sing beside you. You reminisced about Liam Clancy and Tommy Makem in the West Village, encouraging me, ‘You’ve not just got to make your own song up, you got to make yourself up too.’”
The message continued: “In the scriptures, the apostle John has his view on ‘Blowin’ In The Wind’… John 3:8: ‘The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.’”
Although Bono was understandably embarrassed by his error on “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat,” he looks back on the encounter with fondness. Dylan was ostensibly unperturbed by Bono’s performance, too: the pair became well-acquainted through the mid-1980s and even wrote a song together on the West Coast.
In the winter of 1987, one of Bono’s dreams came true when he joined Dylan for a songwriting session in Los Angeles. At the time, U2 had been working on their hybrid live/studio album, Rattle and Hum, and Bono feared a new song he was developing, ‘Prisoner of Love’, was lyrically derivative of Dylan’s prior work.
Since Dylan lived in Malibu at the time, Bono swung by to ask whether the drafted lyrics were plagiarised in any way. After establishing that the lyrics were bonafide Bono originals, Dylan offered to help Bono finish the song. Once completed, the title was changed to ‘Love Rescue Me’.
In the first volume of his acclaimed memoir, Chronicles, Dylan reflected on his time working with the U2 frontman. “Spending time with Bono was like eating dinner on a train—feels like you’re moving, going somewhere,” he wrote. “Bono’s got the soul of an ancient poet, and you have to be careful around him. He can roar ’till the earth shakes. He’s also a closet philosopher…talks about the rightness, the richness, glory, beauty, wonder and magnificence of America.”
Listen to Bono and Bob Dylan’s collaborative song, ‘Love Rescue Me’, below.
