Splicetoday

Pop Culture
Feb 25, 2017, 07:02AM

You’d Have to Ask Our Audience

A 1968 Rolling Stone interview with the late sitar legend Ravi Shankar vs. a 1989 Mother Jones interview with pop star Bono.

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Bono: Prince almost became the flagship for these people because he could dress up in high heels, do the extended guitar solo, and yet, he appeared to be doing it with a wink.

Shankar: He happens to be my brother-in-law and son of my guru, a great sarod player.

Bono: A lot of people think he doesn't seem politically motivated.

Shankar: It’s very strange, you know. But sometimes the main strings also snap.

Bono: So it was like we were being torn in two.

***

Shankar: All of a sudden I saw it was more like a pagan ritual like you find in those peculiar books or those peculiar films, you know, orgies and religious things together. They get high and stoned after taking drugs and then they put my records on and they try to see visions.

Bono: In their real life, they were living in leaky, rainy conditions, they were living in a sewer.

Shankar: It chilled me inside to see.

Bono: We need to dream new dreams.

Shankar: But nothing to beat the United States.

***

Bono: Then I came to America in 1981, the land of milk and the .357 Magnum.

Shankar: It went on changing, changing, and I really haven't seen the finished film now. 

Bono: You’d have to ask our audience.

Shankar: No. I have no objection, you know, to anyone, to anything.

Bono: That is why I will always look not to the flesh of the situation, but the spirit. 

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