Bono 2.0—By Kelly
Bono 2.0
Kelly Eddington
For all time I am with you, you are with me, you are with me, you are with me
Stop
Eject
Insert new tape
Play
I wanna run, I want to hide
I was eighteen during the spring of 1987, and as I worked on boatloads of homework every night (senioritis was a luxury I couldn’t afford), the above was my soundtrack. Prince’s new masterpiece Sign O’ The Times would end with the sublime “Adore,” I’d replace the tape with U2’s new masterpiece The Joshua Tree, and the sublime “Where The Streets Have No Name” would begin. Those two albums battled for supremacy again and again while I figured out what was going on with calculus and came up with something my English teacher would file away and use to inspire future students. Oh yeah. I was that girl. You’d better believe I was the valedictorian.
Me and Prince? We had a thing goin’ on since I was in eighth grade. If you were a sentient being during the 1980s, I don’t need to explain the breakneck pace of this man’s artistic output. But if you weren’t, imagine being a fan of someone who delivered a groundbreaking new album, some of them double, every spring or summer during your high school, college, and grad school years. Plus four movies. Plus he’s fabulous. You’d better believe he was the valedictorian.
Look: U2 were great in the early-mid 80s, but could they compete with Prince? No. And these were Teen Kelly’s reasons why: They couldn’t dance. They mostly had bad hair. They had no real style. They weren’t funky. They couldn’t play a dozen instruments. They weren’t especially funny. Their videos were overplayed and long to boot.
Nevertheless, I’d been low-key into U2 since “Gloria,” and my exposure to them came solely via MTV. I didn’t change the channel when their always-improving videos came on. Tucked into his little hoof-like boots, Bono’s Red Rocks jeans seemed velvety and super-touchable. I didn’t blame those fans who played grab-ass while he earnestly tried to plant his white flag in their midst, and I saluted the heroic cameraperson shooting from below the stage for their unwavering focus on said ass. And later on? During the alternate video for “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”? When Bono put a lit match in his mouth and exhaled smoke while grooving? That was pretty cute. And I’d drop everything to watch “The Unforgettable Fire.” Bono was mysterious as he directed his gaze to the upper-left corner of my TV screen. His hair was ridiculous. His face retained just a hint of baby fat, but he was clearly on his way to becoming a dark Irish poet. He seemed like a superior being. Did he transcend sexualization? Maybe? But maybe not.
Then U2 went away for a while, and I put a bookmark in that question. In the meantime Prince, a wunderkind who fully welcomed sexualization, gave me a couple of great albums and another movie. All was right with the world until Sign O’ The Times and The Joshua Tree were released within a few weeks of each other.
I’m not sure why Prince didn’t create a proper video for Sign O’ The Times’ title track. Maybe he wanted his listeners to come up with their own imagery for this album, or maybe he wanted us to wait for the accompanying concert film. For whatever reason, the new Prince song was M.I.A. on MTV, but he was such a badass that it didn’t even matter.
Enter class salutatorian U2.
And they had a video. Oh boy, did they have a video.
Anyone who’s reading this has watched “With Or Without You” hundreds of times. But it was unleashed long before we could pick it apart on the internet, and I feel the need to do that now, thirty-five years later. Let’s get into it.
First, a note about the song itself. I recognized the importance of “With Or Without You” as soon as I heard it, and it has shepherded me through my entire adult life. Bono would inhabit and escape it 840 times on stage, accompanied by a rhythm section that approximates the sounds of life in the womb and a guitarist who is clearly operating on a different, better level than the rest of us. Suffice it to say that when I was a high school art teacher (the kind who had a cruddy stereo that played when the kids were making things), two magical songs had the power to cause a blissful hush to fall over the room. One was “I’ll Be There” by The Jackson 5 and the other was “With Or Without You.”
Sandwiched between upbeat MTV hits like “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” and “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” U2’s new single was subdued, and it began with that gorgeous “music box playing in another room” keyboard motif and an otherworldly guitar. During the beginning verses, Bono’s hushed voice was about as Barry White-deep as he gets as he breathed into our collective ears.
In the video, U2 performed the song for no one under shimmering lights that seemed to bounce off unseen water. When it wasn’t black and white, the imagery was just barely in color and featured a muted orange and blue palette—the opposite of the prevailing gaudy aesthetic. Adam, Larry, and Edge were in attendance, but no one interacted with anyone else. “With Or Without You” belonged to Bono.
He might as well have been a beautifully lit sculpture as he stood there brooding, sans microphone, and holding a guitar he had no intention of playing. His gleaming hair seemed to be one length. Pulled back, it was a non-issue that let us concentrate on his unsmiling and now angular face, which turned to us with an intense expression. “Gloria” Bono was in there somewhere, but he was hard to find.
His leather vest was partially unbuttoned (because apparently while I was studying parabolas and hyperbolas, Bono had become one of those men who can just walk around wearing partially unbuttoned leather vests with nothing underneath). This emphasized his shoulders and bare arms, which we’d seen before, but now they had more impact as they caught the light and moved slowly, making shapes. No one would ever describe Bono’s arms as “ripped,” but you know what? They’re better un-ripped. They’re male arms, of course, but they’re encased in a layer of softness that makes them appear vulnerable and, you know, super-touchable.
But his face was the focus here, and as I’ve studied it over the years, I’ve come to realize that Bono’s features are the exact opposite of Prince’s in terms of shape, size, and color. Yet I find both faces intriguing. Encountering this new Bono for the first time was a revelation. During U2’s two-year absence, he had become beautiful.
What had changed between “The Unforgettable Fire” and “With Or Without You”?
This man had seen war zones and famine. This man had toured the world with his increasingly popular band, and he had felt pressured to deliver one hit after another in order to keep it going. This man drank and smoked and did god knows what else. Privacy would soon become a thing of the past for this man, and people would misunderstand him for the rest of his life. This man would want for nothing. This man belonged to the world. Also he’d been married for a few years, too, right? Was he? Lucky girl, if so.
What does that do to a face?
I think you can see it in his eyes. They had become guarded and less naive. And while there’s something kind of sad about that, there’s also something appealing about a manchild who has just become a man. A man who has seen a thing or two.*
But back to the rivalry between Prince and U2 that existed solely in my mind. In 1986, Prince released a spare, sexy video for “Kiss.” He danced half-naked with a black-veiled woman in utterly unambiguous ways that I protected my parents from seeing. Similarly, “With Or Without You” featured a mystery woman (whose identity is no longer a mystery). Shot independently of the band, she was mostly faceless, and her nude body was obscured by white drapery that brought to mind Greek goddesses more than anything else. Bono did not engage with this woman. But near the end of the video he held his guitar, whose shape echoed the curves of a woman’s body, by its neck and swung it around with a fleeting expression of frustration on his face.
This video made me understand the difference between explicit and erotic, and it was something I could watch while my parents were in the room without feeling responsible for exposing them to the usual genius-filth I listened to. But at the same time, this video’s explosive, head-thrown-back crescendo delivered by the shiny, version 2.0 singer had the power to make me blush.
To this day, when I try to pin down my favorite single from the 80s, “With Or Without You” and “Purple Rain” are deadlocked, and the scales tip in temporary favor of whatever song I’m listening to at the moment. But the release of the former marked the beginning of U2’s ascendancy from second-fave to whatever you would call a band capable of inspiring a twenty-year art project.
Yeah, U2.
* The New Bono wasn’t born the day “With Or Without You” was filmed, but at the time he might as well have been. Back then we didn’t have access to the vast amount of information and images that are available now. I think I’ve located the true tipping point, and it was U2’s participation in the brief Conspiracy Of Hope tour in June 1986.
The mullet’s growing out, the face is evolving, and the eyes…have seen a thing or two.