STEAL THIS RIFF
U2’s sound imitated — badly — by multitude of bands
During the guitar documentary “It Might Get Loud,” Edge plays the opening riff to U2’s “Elevation” and his guitar swirls and blooms with that signature cocktail of delay and distortion, feedback and echo. Then he switches off his effects and the riff becomes a hollow, boring two-chord strum. But the rock doc skips a scene: Edge playing “Elevation” with only half his guitar rig on. I’d like to hear the midpoint between genius and monotony, the sound of a thousand artists trying to imitate Edge’s innovations and falling short. U2, which brings its Joshua Tree tour to Gillette Stadium on Sunday, has faced a recent blowback for, well, selling itself to Apple. That does bother me. But my chief problem with the band is out of its control: U2’s legacy has been diluted by too many bad wannabes. U2 plays simple stuff. No “Stairway to Heaven” or “Bohemian Rhapsody” bombast. It layers tracks and creates a unique audio atmosphere — the instruments always seemed just out-of-focus, the arena hooks mixed with hypnagogic hums and hushed synths. But the songs, the bass lines and drum beats, remained simple. A hack band can’t approach covering Queen, but a lousy “With or Without You” knockoff is easy. Inadvertently, one of rock’s great bands ruined mainstream rock. Oh, sure, relatively pure strains of heavy metal, indie pop and punk remain. But the Edge’s tone, Bono’s earnest whisper-to-boom anthems and their blurry sonics can still be heard in major pop hits (check out Ed Sheeran’s recent smash “Castle on the Hill”).
The indie rock cabal loves bashing Coldplay (also coming to Gillette later this summer) for copping its aesthetic from Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees.” But as Coldplay blew up, it gave up imitating Radiohead and adopted “Beautiful Day” as its paradigm. Start with a murmur and nondescript keyboards, push to the crest with a subpar Edge guitar and a soaring, unspecific chorus (see “Speed of Sound,” “Viva La Vida,” “Paradise”).
Behind Coldplay queued a score more with the rare hit in today’s pop landscape. Snow Patrol adds some drone to its “Beautiful Day” rip-off, “Chasing Cars.” Kings of Leon basically stretched a rewrite of a U2 chorus into “Use Somebody.” When the Killers got lazy, they fell back into the anthemic arrangement with “Read My Mind.” Mumford & Sons’ “Believe” softens the soft parts and cranks the loud parts, but the template endures.
It goes on and on. Oasis took its Beatles fetish and U2’s “One” and turned up the volume for “Live Forever.” After first stealing from Joy Division, Interpol borrowed loads from “Boy” to build its skeletal vibe. Creed frontman Scott Stapp got (rightfully) slammed for wanting to be Eddie Vedder, but listen to “With Arms Wide Open” (sorry, I know this is a reeeeally tough request); that’s Bono he’s channeling, or failing to channel.
Even pop stars have outright stolen from U2. Check out Taylor Swift’s “State of Grace” for textbook Larry Mullen Jr. drums and Edge effects. This same obvious drums and guitar combo opens John Mayer’s “Heartbreak Warfare” and Walk the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance,” which is just “Where the Streets Have No Name” for the Max Martin generation.
U2 invented a sound, style and swagger outside of the mainstream (and then became the mainstream). But it was too easy to mimic and it has cursed us with a swath of artists incapable of finding their own aesthetic.
Now, as rock gasps for life, I wonder if we liked U2 a little too much. Maybe we should have crowned another act king of the ’80s. Maybe INXS or Simple Minds. Oh, wait, they stole from U2, too.