One of my moments of… Pride, as a teenager, is when we played the high school concert with my U2 tribute band.
We played 3 tunes : Bullet the Blue Sky, Silver & Gold and Pride.
There was this guitarist from another band. The guy was technically super good. He had a cool custom guitar too. Could play anything, it seemed. After our set (which was very average, even by our standards), he came to me to ask me how to play Pride’s riff.
That’s the genius of The Edge. His approach to the guitar was just different than the mainstream. It was so at odds with what those guys were playing that they couldn’t get the simplest things.
I think this is why U2 passed as frauds for many musicians : when the guys got to understand what U2 were actually doing they were actually disappointed / jealous. How could they make such a big sound out of such simple riffs ?
Because, in the culture, good is supposed to be difficult.
Sometimes the simplest things are the hardest to come up with. Especially when you’re swimming against the tide.