Originally published in Guitar World magazine · December 2021
the Edge’s influence (excerpt)
By The Cutting Edge
Article1 min read
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How the Edge influenced modern guitar
Over the past four decades, the Edge has influenced generations of music lovers to go that extra step and pick up a guitar. For many of those music lovers, October and Achtung Baby played important roles in their introduction to U2. Below, a host of guitar greats discuss the influence of the Edge, through an October and Achtung Baby lens.
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John Petrucci (Dream Theater)
I remember hearing ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ on the radio for the first time. I’d never heard a guitar player orchestrate before – and it was so cool. He has such a big, unique and unmistakably identifiable voice on the guitar. It’s the way he orchestrated his guitar parts; it wasn’t the typical way a guitar player would play in rock. Sometimes he’d play power chords and stuff like that, but he’d also do more rhythmic things, using harmonics and muted notes for rhythms.
The way the guitar was used on ‘One’ was so unique; the progression and the lyrics were the focus, with the guitar part just sustaining the high notes – and then the way the delay came in later in the song to build it up was incredible. It’s one of the most incredibly built songs, kind of like a ‘Bolero’ type of thing. By the end of the song, it’s so huge, but it’s so repetitive in a really hypnotic way.
And ‘Love Is Blindness’ is another great one for sure!