Legacy of U2's sonic sleight of hand

U2 have enjoyed a commercial rejuvenation and attitudes towards them have softened in snootier corners of the music scene, writes Eoin Butler

For a man in his position, it's rather surprising that Bono has never raised his own airforce and navy, and delegated the job of singing with U2 to someone else. Uniquely for a rock star, Bono has allowed the principles of realpolitik to underpin most of his political pronouncements. He doesn't kid himself that all you need is love. We may quibble about the true extent of his political influence or whether he puts it to the best possible use. But there's no denying that he possesses a political clout few other entertainers could even dream of.

Fronting a successful rock band like U2, then, might have become for Bono what playing football has become for David Beckham: a sideshow, almost incidental to the main event. But that hasn't happened. Forget everything else for a second and look at U2 as purely a music industry phenomenon. The facts are still quite astounding. Before last November the band had already sold in excess of 125 million albums. The Joshua Tree (1987) is still the biggest seller at 16 million copies. But their sales have remained remarkably buoyant over the years. So much so that their last album All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000) is at this stage their second most successful to date with sales of 12 million.

Now consider this. By the time the Vertigo tour kicked off in San Diego this week, sales of U2's latest album How To Dismantle A Nuclear Bomb had already topped 9 million. In all probability, by the time that tour ends the new album will have overtaken The Joshua Tree to become their biggest seller to date. In industry terms there is no precedent for sustained success on this scale. Neither Elvis Presley nor John Lennon lived into their mid-forties. Paul McCartney was collaborating with Rupert the Bear on The Frog Chorus at U2's age. Michael Jackson is… Well, you don't have to explain where Michael Jackson is right now. Even the Rolling Stones, though still a huge draw on the live circuit, haven't had a hit single in 25 years.

"I'm baffled by how they do it" their manager Paul McGuinness admitted at a press conference this week. "They are very ambitious. They don't just want to be the best band with the most relevant record. They also want to be the best live act."

And as the band have been enjoying this commercial rejuvenation, attitudes towards them have softened in snootier corners of the music scene too. U2 escaped the post-punk indie ghetto from which they emerged by routinely flaunting every one of its conventions. They were passionate and sincere. They waved flags, talked about Jesus and openly relished filling stadiums. Consequently, they have been desperately uncool for most of their career. When Suede turned down a support slot on the Zooropa Tour in 1993 their singer Brett Anderson explained the band's reasoning. Accepting the offer, he reckoned, "would only have served to make them [U2] a little more fashionable and us a little less fashionable."

Contrast that with the reaction of the equally hip Kings of Leon when they were asked to support U2 on the North American leg of the Vertigo tour this year. "I still can't believe we're going to be opening for U2!" drummer Nathan Followill told NME. "They're the biggest band in the world. Since the news first came out we've had calls from about 300 of our friends and family asking us for tickets. It's incredible." The truth is that, after twenty-seven years, none of U2's contemporaries could possibly still believe that it could or should have been them instead. So any ill-will felt against them on that score has long since dissipated. And to subsequent generations of musicians they're usually better known as the band whose singer once pulled them aside and gave them his famous talk.

"The Bono Talk" is a legendary rite-of-passage word in the ear which has been dispensed to countless young bands from Nirvana and Radiohead to The Thrills. When the actual content of the talk eventually filtered out, it turned out to consist mostly of pointers that the average person would have probably thought obvious: Work hard, don't believe your own hype, don't blow your money and talent on booze and drugs etc. Which is not to say that it doesn't have its moments. "Beware of television" Bono is reported to advise. "Television demystifies what you do. People can turn the volume up or down, they can turn down the contrast. They have you, whereas in concert you have them and it's hard to give up that kind of control."

It may come as a surprise to discover, given all of the above, that there are still a small band of die-hards who, while respecting U2, can never quite bring themselves to love their music. In his speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (see page 22) Bruce Springsteen pays tribute to the "sonic architecture" they have bequeathed to those who have come along in their wake. What he's talking about here – just so as we're clear about this – is that vrooooom effect that usually marks the transition from verse to chorus in any U2 song. It's a sort of sonic sleight of hand used to make what would otherwise be a sort of bungalow-sized song stretch to fill the size of a stadium – and it's been appropriated since by the likes of Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol with mostly horrific results. Take away that vroooom and most of Bono's bombast would be left hanging in the wind.

Having said that of course, if you've got a spare ticket to Croker probably nobody in Ireland would say no.