(Credits: Far Out / Joe Ahorro)
Sun 28 September 2025 14:30, UK
The Edge was always aware that no one in U2 was an absolutely extraordinary musician.
They were great at what they did, but what made their music seem larger than life was the passion that they put into it and the massive stadiums of people screaming along to everything that they did. Their anthems have become part of the cultural songbook at this point, but the guitarist did have a shortlist of artists that could claim to have spotless songs in their discographies as well.
But the taste of every member of U2 was always slightly different. There was a definite punk rock attitude to everything they did, but when looking at their individual record collections, The Edge was the one committing the cardinal sin of actually having prog albums in his room amongst his Clash records. While prog seemed like the enemy for a little while, The Edge was still looking to innovate the way his heroes like Steve Howe did when he started making his own music.
He wanted to still have that less-is-more approach to his tunes, but there was a whole new world waiting for him once he fell in love with digital delay. Although his sound has been mimicked by thousands of people trying to get more emotion out of their guitar sounds, there’s always going to be a moment where they’re going to end up sounding like The Edge even without trying to.
Granted, that signature sound only comes from a musician that has studied the best in rock history. No artist is absolutely perfect, but in rock and roll, it’s about trying to get the right energy for a song whenever anyone goes into the studio, and The Edge was always on the hunt for the songs that had that human feel to them whenever he picked up a new record.
You could feel the raw honesty whenever Joe Strummer played his guitar or when Joey Ramone sang, but even going back to classic rock, bands like The Beatles were already paving the way for what new kinds of music could sound like. No other artists had opened themselves up like that, and when rattling off the best tunes to come from the rock and roll canon, The Edge included Beatles classics without question.
When asked about songs that had absolutely perfect moments, The Edge felt that The Beatles and Bruce Springsteen were the two main candidates for him, saying, “Those moments aren’t really consistent. ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ might be a peak, or ‘Born to Run’. There are other tracks which have great power to communicate and stimulate”. Which is strange, considering a lot of U2’s best work fit somewhere in between those two musicians.
While they are nowhere near as big as The Beatles will ever be, the Irish legends always prided themselves on taking chances and even giving the occasional nod to the Fab Four when they were making tracks like ‘Helter Skelter’ off of Rattle and Hum. But Springsteen’s influence is where the depth comes in Bono’s writing, usually taking the skeleton of a song and trying to paint a picture of everyday life and what the world can come to if we choose to lose our sense of empathy.
Not every one of U2’s albums does the greatest job of bridging that gap, but that’s still where the punk rock mentality comes in. They were looking to make tunes that sounded honest, and even if they don’t always hit the massive peaks that The Beatles or Springsteen did, it’s better to have a band still try than fall into a holding pattern.
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