The first time I’d ever heard the Waterboys was a few months ago. When the playlist rolled around to “This Is The Sea,” the title track of their 1985 album, I could only think of one thing: why hasn’t U2 covered this? They’d be perfectly suited. Bono’s voice is in the same range as Mike Scott’s, and he could put the same yearning into his delivery. The Edge and Adam Clayton would know how to make a rolling, grand sound of their own devising.
Turns out that Mike Scott would probably punch me for saying that. He was not interested in having work U2 would cover. He’s always been interested in being better than U2. This Is The Sea was their claim to that title. While U2 was still futzing around with Eno/Lanois textures on The Unforgettable Fire, producing pieces that were largely simple sing-along anthems (“Pride (In The Name of Love),” “Bad”) or impressionistic canvases (“Elvis Presley and America,” “Promenade”), Scott and his bandmates claimed a sound that was big, bold, textured, and haunting.
“Was there competition between us? Bloody hell, yes,” Scott told Uncut in 2013. “They were the big band in town – we wanted to depose them. I thought we wrote better songs and we could play better and we could make magic on the head of a pin – they needed six artic[ulated] trucks to do it.”
But perhaps this interview in Three Monkeys Online is Scott’s most forceful take on the subject: “I was always much more in a Bob Dylan or Neil Young mould. You’d never have been able to squeeze them into the sort of route that those ’80s bands went, and you couldn’t squeeze me into it either, and anybody who thought that they could isn’t really taking a clear look at it. It was one of the most stupid things that I’ve ever heard, that the Waterboys could have been the next U2 – absolute rubbish! [almost spitting].”
I’m sorry, Mike. You could have fooled me.
Blue Thumb Music Collective 