Whether you like U2 as a band or not, there’s no denying the sheer musical richness that is the Edge’s guitar playing. If Bono’s soaring vocals are the main drivers of their songs, then it’s the Edge’s lyrical playing that serves as the sonic vehicle. It’s not an overstatement to say that his translucent and tasteful guitar playing over Bono’s vocals is what makes up the musical nucleus of their songs.
The live versions of their songs are always testaments to this fact, take any live version of ‘Beautiful Day’ for example, where the guitar parts stand out as the melodic elixir of the song. And just like this, most of U2’s songs simply can’t be imagined without the Edge’s sublime guitar playing, be it ‘The Fly’, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’, ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’, ‘Walk On’, ‘Where the Streets have no name’—the symbiotic connection between Bono’s soaring vocals and the Edge’s exotically tasteful guitar lines make up the musical nectar for all of these masterpieces. Even stadium stompers like ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Until the end of the World’ have this undercurrent of ‘guitar-vocal-parallel’ signature running through their DNA.
But what makes the Edge an amazingly great guitar player-plus storyteller is how much his playing amounts to the overall musicality of the songs. This hauntingly beautiful live version of ‘Love is Blindness’ is a testament to this--the tasteful guitar lines he plays here are at the same time musically rich, emotionally heartbreaking and an expression of pure sonic catharsis. Plus, the icy-crystal tone of the guitar just makes it all feel like a fever dream that you don't want to wake up from.
I’d even go as far as to say that the Edge is one of the most musically-centered guitar players in all of Rock history, based on the fact that pretty much everything he plays only serve to add to the overall musicality of the songs. ‘Ceders of Lebanon’ and ‘The Trouble’ are both great examples of this, cause although his playing is quite minimal in those songs, still each and every note he plays rings with tasteful musical delights that can make the listener hit the replay button over and over again.
On a more personal note, it was ‘City of Blinding Lights’ that made me a fan of this band over a decade ago. This song and all it’s countless live versions embody the theme of the Edge’s playing like almost no other songs in U2’s entire catalogue—that his guitar playing is not just a musical ornament for the song, but works as the very backbone and the musical canvas where the vocals and other instruments serve as the sketches and colors in the foreground.
Same goes for ‘The Unforgettable Fire’ or ‘Zooropa’, and both reveal the Edge’s actual role in all of U2’s songs—much more than being just a great guitar player, he’s an architect of sound, laying out the sonic atmosphere of the songs and lifting them up with his precisely chosen notes and visionary playing, so much so that his playing has become as integral to the songs as the vocals themselves, cause they mean that much.
Music is infinitely more than just sounds and silence, and it’s effectiveness lies solely in whether it can move us from the inside or not. And this is where The Edge’s playing always shines, with as much precision as the notes that he chooses to play.
This article closes off with this timeless live version of ‘City of Blinding Lights’, which shows that even though U2 has rightfully become one of the biggest rock-n-roll bands in the world, they also couldn't have been what they are without The Edge.
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