Why U2 really are better than The Rolling Stones AND The Beatles
Daily Mail, March 04, 2009
Paul Connolly
You may have noticed that U2 are about to release a new album. They seem to have taken over the BBC to announce the fact (they’ve even been on Radio Five Live, a station more used to 'Boro than Bono).
They're unquestionably the biggest band in the world and yet they first tasted success in the Eighties, a decade derided these days for being responsible for ra-ra skirts and Johnny Hates Jazz. Indeed the continued success of U2 underlines a highly significant yet overlooked aspect of that most maligned of decades: that the Eighties were much better for music than the vastly overrated Sixties.
You might already be spluttering about The Beatles this and The Rolling Stones that and wondering what Boy George ever did for music. But I can prove empirically that bands from the Sixties were creative for a shorter period of time than their Eighties counterparts.
For instance, let's take a look at the Rolling Stones' recorded output. They released their first album, The Rolling Stones, in 1964. When did they make their last half decent album? 1978's Some Girls?
At a push, 1980's Emotional Rescue. That gives them a creativity span (CS) rating of 16 years at the most.
How about The Beatles? Even including the mostly dreadful solo outpourings of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr, that leaves their last acceptable effort as Wings' 1978 album, London Town, which came a decade and a half after The Beatles' 1963 debut, Please Please Me, a CS rating of 15.
OK, so we've dealt with the creative lightweights of the Sixties; let's move on to the Eighties and U2.
Their first album was 1980's Boya. Their last album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, sold in excess of 10 million, and saw them on tour playing to more people than ever before.
U2 are still critically adored and commercially vast. The release of No Line on the Horizon gives them a CS rating of 29, not far short of double of that of The Beatles.
Now take Depeche Mode (CS rating 28), whose imminent new album Sounds of the Universe is being acclaimed as a career high.
There are others too who easily creatively outpunch the Sixties icons, including The Cure (CS rating 25), New Order (CS rating 21) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (CS rating 18).
So why have Eighties bands so clearly outlasted their more lauded Sixties counterparts?
Simple. They were all born out of the embers of punk and new wave and they've retained that restless, adventurous, questing spirit.
Punk may have become a debased cultural currency now (and it was responsible for some terrible bands at the time) but its enduring ideals have been responsible for some of the finest music of the last 30 years.
Bands from the most ridiculed of decades are still pushing on, unafraid of change and trying something new, making some of the best music of their creative lives. The Rolling who?
