(Credits: Far Out / Apple TV+ / Alamy)
The most important part of being a musician is always being willing to learn from the greatest. No one can claim to get some of the greatest music of all time out of thin air, and that always involves doing one’s homework and going back to the roots of what made the genre so special in the first place. And when it comes to all things rock and roll, Bono never took a second of music for granted whenever he focused on the building blocks of those who helped shape the genre.
Granted, there was also a way to come off as unbelievably pretentious if he didn’t have the right idea. The whole idea of Bono wanting to be next to the greatest artists of all time like Bob Dylan and The Beatles was certainly admirable at the time of The Joshua Tree, but listening to the kind of music that they were creating live, it was hard to take his word for it when he claimed that their music was going to change the world.
Because while they can think that they are making revolutionary music, that only happens when the rest of the world follows them. But when looking at how the rest of the world was reacting to songs like ‘With or Without You’ or ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, it was clear that the band were onto something and had the artistic chops to shape the world with their music.
But as much as The Beatles may have been the gold standard for the Irish legends, all signs pointed to them going back to the dawn of rock and roll with people like Elvis Presley. Then again, not everything that they did to pay lip service to The King was necessarily great, and things could get more than a little bit awkward when looking at the band visiting Graceland in the movie Rattle and Hum.
Hearing Larry Mullen Jr. talk about the effect that Presley had on him as a boy does bring a lot of perspective to everything, but there’s no way to look at the shots of them looking over Presley’s grave and not immediately think of the same shot from This is Spinal Tap when they are heaping backhanded praise on ‘The King’s grave.
Still, Bono knew that there was power in some of Presley’s older records, and he knew that somewhere in The Sun Sessions was some of the finest work that he ever made, saying, “Elvis’ music diviner Cowboy Jack Clement opened the studio so we could cut some tracks within the same four walls where Elvis recorded ‘Mystery Train’. It was a small tunnel of a place, but there was a certain clarity to the sound. You can hear it in those Sun records, and they are the ones for me. The King didn’t know he was the King yet. Elvis doesn’t know where the train will take him, and that’s why we want to be passengers.”
But that’s what makes those artists legendary. Presley didn’t think that what he was going to do would change the world, but by doing what came naturally, he entered the kind of musical Valhalla reserved for his colleagues like Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison, where his voice was as important as any notes he was singing.
And while Bono will probably be working relentlessly for the rest of his days trying to sound anywhere close to Presley, it’s never about how well you practise the lip or his signature vibrato. It’s about capturing his kind of persona, and listening to those early songs on Sun Records, Presley was nothing but a mild-mannered kid learning about the gift he received from the musical gods.
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