Bono on his favourite Van Morrison song: “We love you, maestro”
Bono has been nothing if not a student of rock and roll since the day he started. He may have had more than a few heroes of music history, but when talking about the biggest bands in the world, it has suddenly swerved around in the past few years to the point where he’s more likely to talk himself up as being among one of the greatest of all time. It’s not like the U2 records don’t speak for themselves, but in terms of the greatest singers, Bono always had a high regard for Van Morrison.
Note the description as a singer, not a frontman. Although Morrison did have a frontman when operating the band Them, his best work usually came from his solo career, which involved him scat-singing in the same tradition of the jazz vocalists who came before him.
Throughout almost every album that he made, many people will be spending as much time listening for the lyrics as they are actually enjoying the tune, usually piecing together what the hell he is trying to say on his early albums. For all of the mispronunciations, it didn’t matter so long as Morrison sang what was in his heart.
Listening to an album like Astral Weeks, it’s almost as if Morrison is trying to find some unspoken language of love that no one has touched on yet. Though albums like his debut and Moondance are considered timeless classics of the 1970s, Bono marvelled that one of his singing idols could still make magic into the 1980s.
In the various letters that he wrote to his biggest musical heroes, Bono considered Morrison a true musical architect in a song like ‘A Sense of Wonder’, telling Rolling Stone, “Dear Van, just a note to remind you of how much we love you, maestro…You sing us through your inquiries… we’ve travelled with you all the way. We’re all searching for a home that’s not just an island”.
Compared to where Morrison started, this song feels like he has finally found a way to put the entire history of a single relationship in one song. Sprawling out over six minutes, each verse seems to be Morrison picking apart different moments in his relationship with his other half and seeing whether the flame they had at the beginning is still present or if it was even there.
Does that kind of broken romance sound familiar…because it should. While it’s far from a one-to-one comparison, so to speak, this kind of jaded love song made Bono answer back on the song ‘One’ from Achtung Baby. Even though the spark in that relationship may have been snuffed out more than a few times before, Bono knew that the most important part was to keep pushing at it to make sure they could lift each other up every day.
Whereas most rock songs tend to have more than a few romantic angles to them, both Morrison and Bono know how to write the kind of songs that acknowledge both sides of romance. No one likes to admit it, but affairs of the heart can be tough, and as long as you follow your heart and try to look after one another, you can move mountains.