Wasted Life - Pop a Bono

The news that Bono’s Facebook shares have made him $800 million richer reminded me of a tragic incident from two decades ago. On January 16, 1996, Jamaican police tried but failed to shoot down a plane carrying Jimmy Buffett, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, and Bono, whose mingled blood might have satisfied the hungry shades of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. Alas, the shooters realized their “mistake” after firing 100 rounds at the plane, and Bono, Buffett, and Blackwell are alive and rich.

Those Jamaicans might have been poor shots, but they were good music critics. U2’s first single, “Three,” was inoffensive pop in the style of the Boomtown Rats, but for the second, “I Will Follow,” they ripped off Public Image Ltd. It was a good career move. As it turned out, if you replaced the self-disgust of Johnny Rotten’s pseudonym with the self-esteem of Bono Vox's, traded PiL’s anticlerical spleen for U2’s born-again Christianity, and switched stopping to think with starting to cry, oh why, the result sounded awesome in the rec room. Swap shame and pride, doubt and faith, and you just wrote yourself a swimming pool, or whatever the Irish equivalent of a swimming pool is, probably a flush toilet.

Two years ago, Rotten told the Daily Star that U2 is “a band that never should have existed, there’s no life experience in any of their songs.” Fans don’t go to the band for life experience, but for a feeling of unreflective righteousness, which is why your local church probably offers a U2charist. Have you heard the good news?

Bono lives to praise. Every time you watch a documentary or special, there he is, eulogizing the subject. He has eagerly associated himself with the Book of Psalms, Jesus, Bob Marley, Suicide, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain, the Pixies, R.E.M., Joy Division, the Clash, Leonard Cohen, Quincy Jones, Billy Graham, B.B. King, Elvis Presley, Charles Bukowski, Paul McCartney, Morrissey, Mick Jagger, Kylie Minogue, the Pretenders, Roy Orbison, Frank Sinatra, David Bowie, Tony Bennett—in short, with anyone or anything that stands to gain nothing from his endorsement. A fresh-faced young quartet called the Velvet Underground opened for U2 in 1993, and the favor really helped the kids out: They never played together again. The Pixies, who lent their coolness to an opening spot on the Zoo TV tour in 1992, also broke up immediately after the tour.

Even when he wants to be critical, Bono spews praise. He tried to insult Coldplay’s Chris Martin in a 2009 BBC interview, calling him “a wanker,” but then compulsively added that Martin is “a great melodist and up there with Ray Davies, Noel Gallagher and Paul McCartney.” Take that, you wanker!

To be fair, Bono is a man of principle. He is against poverty and AIDS, which he has proved by making the poorest people in Africa sing his fucking song in front of U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill. His band embraced ironic detachment and postmodern cut-up on 1991’s Achtung Baby, as they proved by thumbing their buttholes while their label sued Negativland’s parodic single out of existence. Recently, this latter-day saint posed for a photo with Glenn Beck, whose rave review of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” warmed Bono’s heart, sincerely, not for him but for all the people who have worked so hard (i.e., died?) on the show.

When Bono was presenting some award or other to Patti Smith in 1997, he described the singer as “sister, lover, and mother.” The Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres wisely replied, “I’m not your mother, Bono. Do your own dirty work. Fuck you.” It would be nice to know how Elvis would have put it. 

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