Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

by Bono

All musical instruments are useful for love and exhortation. Only one is essential for war. The drums. The drums are thin skin stretched tightly over hollow volumes, mostly of wood, which gives them their earthiness, their sexiness. Slapping without the tickling. The hand or the stick bounces across the skin of the drums, throwing the listener forward into a dance, into a physical response. For war, and in particular marching to war, wood was replaced by metal. The snare, as it’s known for good reason, supplies body armor to the already athletic muscular choices available. There is a particular violence built into the snare drum, and the rat-a-tat of a military tattoo was exactly what we were looking for with the opening of “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” I don’t ever want to be at war with Larry Mullen, but I don’t ever want to go to war without him. From a very junior age, Larry Mullen has explained his craft and art like this: “I hit things for a living.” And he does. He can hit people, too, not physically, but psychically. Most people who enter a room with Larry Mullen find him striking, in the sense that he is a stylish, good-looking member of the species but also in the sense that he can be suspicious of why you are in his gaze. Of your intentions, your being in the room, and, perhaps on a bad day, your reason for being anywhere at all. Drummers are born, not made.