Even after decades of accolades, sold out tours and multi-platinum albums — Bono is still self-conscious about U2's early days. Vulture.com reported the legendary frontman appeared on The Hollywood Reporter‘s Awards Chatter Podcast and revealed that in the beginning, neither he nor The Edge were particularly keen on the band's name.
In 1978, following brief stints as both Feedback and the Hype, the band's buddy and fellow musician, Steve Averill, came up with the now beloved and iconic name. Bono remembered, “He came to us with a few suggestions, one of which was U2. And of the suggestions, it wasn't that it jumped out at us as the name we were really looking for, but it was the one that we hated the least. And what we loved about it was that it was not obvious from the name what this band would sound like or be about.”
He went on to laugh as he recalled, “I was late into some kind of dyslexia, I didn’t realize that the Beatles was a bad pun either. If we’d thought the implication of the letter and the number, in our head, it was like, the spy plane, it was a U-boat, it was futuristic. But then, as it turned out to imply this kind of acquiescence, no, I don’t like that name. I still don’t really like the name.”
Bono also admitted the sound of his voice during the group's early days still makes him cringe: “The band sound incredible, though I just found the voice very strained and kind of not macho, and my Irish macho was kind of strained by that. . . I’ve been in a car when one of our songs has come on the radio, and I’ve been the color of — as we say in Dublin — scarlet. I’m just embarrassed. And yeah, I do think U2 pushes out the boat on embarrassment quite a lot. And maybe that’s the place to be as an artist is, right at the edge of your level of pain, for embarrassment, your level of embarrassment. And the lyrics as well. I feel that on Boy and other albums, it was sketched out, very unique and original material. But I don’t think I filled in the details.”
Whether it's revisiting a 30-year-old album on tour of looking back to his childhood, Bono recently explained that the past always remains firmly a part of the present: “Y'know, part of you never leaves the street you grew up in. And it's a beautiful street with beautiful people. I'm still best friends with a lot of people on Ceadarwood Road — but, y'know, I still have that attitude that you walk out the door with — I have it now — and there actually nobody waitin' for me (laughs) to smack my head in.”
