To someone who came of age in the nineties? \u00a0I’d imagine U2 was to them what the Rolling Stones were to me growing up in the late seventies and early eighties; dissipated celebrities noodling with making sense of their megastardom, albeit with less drugs and model-banging, but with a lot more artistic pretension ladled on top.<\/p>\n
To hipsters of all eras? \u00a0Once they left Dublin, they were\u00a0trayf<\/em>.<\/p>\n And U2 has been all of that to me, too (except maybe the hipster bit).<\/p>\n But mostly, U2 is the band that tied together two big strands in my own life. \u00a0And the main catalyst for this, their breakthrough album\u00a0War<\/em>, was released thirty years ago today.<\/p>\n And the strands it tied together for me, and with style, were faith and rock and roll.<\/p>\n For me as a teenager – the gawky, greasy-haired, acne-ridden clumsy non-team-sports-inclined geek – music, especially playing guitar, was one of the few parts of my life that actually seemed to work.<\/p>\n And my faith – not exactly “fundamentalist” Christianity, so let’s call it “orthodox” Presbyterianism – was, and is, a vital part of my life.<\/p>\n The conflict arose when I started college. \u00a0Not a few of my “musician of faith” classmates had the opinion that a Christian should be doing “Christian” music.<\/p>\n And I tried. \u00a0Oh, Lord, I tried. \u00a0I got dragged through the local Christian music and book shop (inevitably named “The Mustard Seed”), I listened and listened hard to what passed for “contemporary Christian” music.<\/p>\n And it left me completely cold.<\/p>\n Bear in mind, I’m a guy who feels overwhelming ecstasy during the Halleluiah chorus of H\u00e4ndel’s Messiah. \u00a0Who loves Bach’s paeons to faith. \u00a0Who marvels at Russian orthodox monastic music. \u00a0Who loves great black gospel, and who has Mahalia Jackson on the IPod that he needs to resurrect long enough to re-download. \u00a0Who finds meaning in Christmas music – at least, the faith-based stuff. \u00a0These days, I make a point of only going to churches that use no hymns less than 100 years old.<\/p>\n The stuff at the “Mustard Seed?” \u00a0To me – then as now – it failed on both counts; as music, it was mostly dull, formulaic, played competently but without passion, larded down with sanitized pop-music cliches, devoid of any spark that would make it catch any imagination that wasn’t being compelled to accept it as “good enough”, pale and wan compared even to mediocre gospel music; as expressions of faith, they preached to the choir.<\/p>\n But most of the world was not “the choir”. \u00a0And that bugged me, too; was there not room for a Christian to converse musically with the non-believer?<\/p>\n And then came\u00a0War<\/em>.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n Beyond matters of faith and philosophy? \u00a0War\u00a0<\/em>was a just plain amazing record.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/static.musictoday.com\/store\/bands\/1954\/product_large\/MUDD326.JPG\")
<\/p>\n