U2/ Achtung Taxman

The phrase "I may not agree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death to defend your right to say it" is frequently attributed to Voltaire. Actually, the phrase was coined by Voltaire’s biographer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall, who used it in her book, The Friends of Voltaire, written under the pseudonym S.G. Tallentyre, to sum up her subject’s attitude to free speech.

Not many people know that. Perhaps Bono does – I cannot say.  But I would certainly have expected him to recognize Voltaire’s ethic as the first article in the unwritten Constitution of rock ‘n’ roll. After Glastonbury 2011, alas, we are left wondering whether this Constitution survives, and more pressingly whether U2 can now dismantle the barriers that Glastonbury appears to have thrown up between themselves and their previously blissful fan-base bubble.

Once upon a time, Bono was fond of saying: "Right in the middle of a contradiction is the place to be".  I’m not so sure he would say it today, at least not out loud and certainly not in front of Larry Mullen, who has in recent times voiced displeasure at the way U2’s image has been compromised by its frontman’s political campaigns.

There’s no end of contradiction to be noted here. On the one hand, Bono’s charity work and high-profile tic-tacking with political heavy-hitters like Bush and Blair has undoubtedly extended the reach of the U2 brand from the arts supplements to the front pages.  It’s a significant but unquantifiable factor in U2’s recent consolidation of their reputation, despite the sluggish sales of their most recent album, No Line On The Horizon.

But there’s a downside. Bono’s ex cathedral pontificating has also sparked something of a return of the pre-Achtung Baby sense of U2 as a rather sanctimonious, preachy phenomenon, out of synch with the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll.  The already considerable disharmonies to be noted between Bono’s pronouncements about world poverty and the extravagance of the band’s collective and individual wealth have recently been exacerbated by suggestions of hypocrisy arising from U2’s decision to shift some of their operations from Ireland to the Netherlands. This move, following the introduction of a €250,000 annual cap on artist-exempt royalties in 2006, was at the root of the incident at Glastonbury the last weekend of June.

When U2 started to play, about 50 Art Uncut protesters arranged themselves in a circle close to the stage and inflated a giant balloon with the slogan ‘U pay your tax 2’. Immediately, security guards moved to disperse the protest and deflate and confiscate the balloon. The band played on.  The episode has provoked renewed commentary on U2’s tax affairs and Bono’s self-imposed role as the public conscience of rock ‘n’ roll.  But, from the perspective of U2’s attempts to maintain steady eye-contact with its audience, the real issue is a rather different one.