Just the fact that there is a poll on here at all attests to the fact that they have earned a place on our horizon where people would have an opinion about them at all… which is saying something.
But as someone who idolised them from ‘Under a Blood Red Sky’ (and so all that went before) until Zooropa, I feel sufficiently connected to them to say ‘give it up, boys’.
It’s never becoming when someone is trying to pass himself off as cool at the age of 55 in the same way he did when he was 20, and I think Bono could have better channeled his energies into establishing himself as an elder-statesman in a Geldof-ian sort of way, as opposed to hammering away with the same old lyrics to pretty featureless music.
After the heady early days of Under a Blood Red Sky, Live Aid, the Joshua Tree album followed by Rattle and Hum (even with all its weaknesses), and the remarkable emergence of Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV concept, I’ve just felt ambivalent since.
At least when Pink Floyd got back together as they did at Live 8, they didn’t pretend at being anything other than aged rock stars who had once performed some good music, and were up on stage doing it one last time. I expect Bono will still be marketing himself as some sort of pop culture guru when he’s using a zimmer frame.
Yes? No?