Bono's Joyless Division
For a long time I use to argue with my brother that while Bono hasn’t written decent music in ages and has the world’s worst Jesus complex, he as one person has done a lot of good in this world. I guess I started thinking differently about this when his project (RED) spread across the world. Completely against my ethical beliefs, he ushered in a campaign that’s soul purpose was to encourage people to buy shit that they don’t need in the name of fighting AIDS. By my logic, if this is the only way for both individuals and corporations to take some action of social responsibility, then we are truly screwed. Solving world issues shouldn’t be as simple as making purchases on your credit card, unaware of the very campaign that one just contributed to.
U2 have played the super bowl. They’ve marketed their own version of an ipod. There may even be a Bono action figure; U2 is now first and foremost an industry. They have generated gobs of money. In fact, Bono is literally the richest man in Ireland. This all strikes me as hugely contradictory coming from the guy that I once saw walk out on a stage in a silver suite with a matching cowboy hat preach like a Southern Baptist in great parody. Throughout the Zoo Station show, he swaggered with game-show host appeal condemning the “big brother-like” video images of our nation’s president, George Bush Sr. I can recall him pretending to prank call the President, ordering a pizza to the White House. Many early fans of U2 considered this zeal to represent the beginning of the end. Earnings would demonstrate that it was the beginning of one of the most profitable rock acts of all times. Despite their ostentatious image, I thought the band avoided creative repetition and boredom as they continued to make very different sounding albums, all the way through their album appropriately named Pop.
Then what ensued was just poop; the band chose to market diet advertising-friendly shadows of their earlier work. This move turned a fortune into an empire. What I had failed to realize as a young teen was that even when he seemed to be mocking everything wrong in the world, it was all a show that was obviously about the cult of his personality. Last year, I read several reports about how U2 had hidden many millions of dollars of earnings in Dutch banks, thereby averting their due taxes. I can’t hate him for caring about world issues related to poverty, violence, and health. But I am absolutely sickened by his destruction of the Joy Division classic Love Will Tear Us Apart. The band performed the song while sharing the stage with the Arcade Fire. Not knowing the lyrics is one thing but he is painfully off key to boot.