Bono on the one genre that divided U2: ‘I think it was a bad thing’…

Rock and roll was never meant to stagnate for the rest of its days.

The core point of the genre was supposed to rebel against the mainstream, and the minute it got to be appreciated by parents and children, people were looking to find the next artist who would set the world on fire and make something no one else could have dreamed of.

Many rock historians may cite punk as the moment when everything was reset, but Bono knew progressive rock was far from what he wanted U2 to be.

At the same time, are we going to ignore the amount of prog influences that were laced throughout their career? Sure, U2 were never exactly King Crimson when it came to making riffs or anything but looking at the textures they’ve created, it’s hard to think of The Edge making his signature tapestry of sound if David Gilmour hadn’t paved the way for him years before with Pink Floyd.

It’s one thing to have an effects pedal, but it was all in the delivery for Bono.

The entire punk revolution reached Ireland’s shores with the rise of Sex Pistols, and other Irish acts like The Undertones started to incorporate even more of a nasty edge into the music.

So when the future frontman had the idea of putting a group together, The Edge talking about his love for bands like Yes was not going to go over well.

In his book Surrender, Bono remembered the guitarist’s love for all things progressive rock, which was always a sore subject.

“To this day, we debate for hours why I think progressive rock was a bad thing,” he said. “Edge always comes around to my viewpoint and then completely ignores what we’ve just agreed on.

Progressive rock remains one of the few things that divide us.”

But Bono might not have been looking at prog-rock in terms of what it actually sounded like.

It was more about the aesthetic they were bringing across, and since the biggest names in punk were bringing back the essence of rock and roll, hearing bands like Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer go on massively long solos for no good reason seemed like a huge step backwards to anyone with a safety pin through their nose.

That’s not to say there wasn’t some room for overlap.

Animals is the most punk statement any prog band of Pink Floyd’s calibre have ever made, and despite being one of the godfathers of the punk movement and one of Bono’s personal favourite acts, The Who did have a flirtation with prog when they started making rock operas like Tommy and Quadrophenia.

That was never going to be the way U2 thought about music.

Throughout every project, a lot of their brilliance comes from individual moments in songs, whether it was the gentle chime of Edge’s guitar in ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ or Bono crying out in pain during the final verses of ‘One’.

So, really, U2 stand for the kind of act with a prog rock attention to detail but with a punk rocker’s heart.

There was bound to be a few people complaining about tracks like ‘New Year’s Day’ getting overblown, but never once did anyone question whether it was disingenuous.