- Music
- 21 Jul 17
The U2 frontman admits that it's a case of 'where the song has no end' when it comes to his attitude to one of the band's most seminal classic tracks on The Joshua Tree.
Despite it being one of the fans favourite U2 songs of all time, Bono admits that he feels that that 'Where The Streets Have No Names' is still "unfinished" in his eyes.... when it comes to its lyrics.
Ahead of their much anticipated gig at Croke park this weekend, Bono said: "Musically it’s great and the band deserve credit for that, but lyrically it’s just a sketch and I was going to go back and write it out."
He added, “As a songwriter I have to realise that the greatest invitation is an invocation. 'Where The Streets Have No Name’ is not a great lyric. I just wouldn’t have rhymed ‘hide’ with ‘inside.’”
But Bono is clearly being too self critical here. He recalled how Brian Eno reassured him about the song's lyrics. "Brian said, ‘Incomplete thoughts are generous because they allow the listener to finish them’,” Bono revealed.
But looking at it from a glass half full angle, Bono added that he can still have "hairs on the back of the neck stand up" moments when singing some of the lyrics.
“Half of it is an invocation, where you say to a crowd of people, ‘Do you want to go to that place? That place of imagination, that place of soul? Do you want to go there, cos right now we can go there?’ To this day when I say those words you get hairs on the back of your neck stand up because you’re going to that place," Bono says.
Bono made the confessed during an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1 Radio, which has just been uploaded on YouTube. You can watch it in full here: