(Credits: Far Out / Heidi May / Apple TV+)
Sat 28 March 2026 20:30, UK
There are very few things in the world that could manage to unite Henry Rollins and Bono.
As much as the U2 frontman would want nothing more than to make the world a better place every single time he sings, Rollins was always the one able to see through every single facade that he had when he started talking about helping those in need and making some of the most lifeless rock and roll ever created. But even with all of that vitriol, sometimes the right frontman can come along and get everyone on the same page.
But it’s not like Rollins was ever going to be on board with anything that Bono was doing whenever he first saw him perform. He has spoken at length about how the band has one of the weakest rhythm sections in rock and roll history, and even if they had a few half-decent tunes in their arsenal, it’s all but neutered in his mind by the lounge singer that they have out front that was trying to make every song seem like one of the most important utterances in human existence.
It’s not that hard to see why people would have a problem with that, but Bono was only talking that way because of the people that he heard before him. He had grown up listening to some of the most impassioned singers of his time, and while there were more than a few songs by Bob Dylan and John Lennon that struck a nerve in him whenever he sang, he never forgot that U2 had their roots when they came out of the ashes of the punk scene in 1977. They were students of bands like The Clash and Ramones, but punk didn’t start because of a bunch of fashion.
The genre officially began when bands like The Velvet Underground began pushing the boundaries for how dirty rock and roll could get, but Iggy Pop was a completely different animal. He was practically a wild beast whenever he picked up a microphone, and whenever he started belting out tunes like ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ or ‘Search and Destroy’, it seemed like he was constantly at war with his band, his own audience, and even himself when he beat himself up until he was bloody.
That wasn’t really Bono’s method, but he had to acknowledge that Pop was one of the best frontmen that he had ever seen, writing in an open letter to the frontman, “That voice that carries those words carried so many of us. The intellect as sharp as flint fists… but if you were stupid enough to miss the intellectual Iggy Pop, the instinctual was there for you… part animal/part animus, it was an adrenaline rush to see you leap from the stage into us, smashing the fourth wall with your head.”
And while Rollins wasn’t going to agree with Bono on much, he got more than an education when he tried to leave Pop in the dust when he toured with him, saying, “He goes into ‘Lust for Life’ and Iggy starts going nuts. There are these floodlights and Iggy says, ‘Come sing with us’. The entire crowd lunges forward like lemmings. The stage is overrun by kids. Iggy is covered in sweat and blood. He’s bleeding out of his mouth like a John Wayne. It’s amazing. It was one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
But even if U2 and Black Flag were going in completely separate directions, that didn’t mean that you couldn’t hear pieces of The Stooges in what each of them did. Rollins was much more liable to show his audience that he meant business whenever he played, but if Bono took anything from pop, it was about breaking down that barrier between the band and the audience when he brought someone up onstage with him during their legendary performance of ‘Bad’ at Live Aid.
So say what you will about how Rollins and Bono are as far away from each other as possible, but they both at least knew the power of someone that was unleashing ungodly amounts of rock and roll grandeur onstage. U2 may have had the bigger stages, but Pop was the one proving that the stages didn’t matter as long as you could cause as much mayhem as possible when showtime hit.
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