“You got Spirit
We’ve got soul
We got some big ideas
We’re out of control”
- From Out Of Control by U2
This revisionist lyric of Bono’s particularly stood out for me at Glastonbury. Written on his 19th birthday, Out Of Control is a full on post punk bombardment and on the Boy album might have been seen as a young man in total confusion, quite literally out of control. Boy was a concept album of growing up and U2 were not comfortable yet about speaking too explicitly about their Christian faith; that came with the follow up October. There is a sense now, over three decades later, where Bono is not only revising the faith of that confused nineteen year old but also explaining the life he has lived since. “Big ideas” has been a phrase used by U2 to describe their art for at least twenty years and here we find their belief in God, their imaginations and their pushing the envelope way beyond the norm all squeezed into one short verse. The nineteen year old boy who wrote Out of Control could never have imagined a fifty one year old still with the same youthful energy for rock music and revolution. That youthful exuberance and thirty years of life experience can be even more potent!
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