Bono says that at age 14, David Bowie's music "woke me up" -- and his passing has left that part of the U2 singer "a void."
In a lengthy eulogy for a Rolling Stone edition dedicated to the late musician, Bono shares memories of discovering Bowie's music as a teenager, and later hanging out with him as a friend.
Bowie died Jan. 10 of liver cancer, just two days after turning 69.
"Bowie's musical landscape affected you in a way that is completely different from all the other music around it," Bono wrote. "You have to close your eyes, imagine you don't speak English and just feel the songs and say, 'What part of me is being played by those notes?' or 'Who else plays them?"
"And in his case," Bono continued, "The answer is nobody. That part of me is only played by David Bowie. So that part of me is now a void -- I have to find other ways to wake it up. But it woke me up when I was 14."
Bono recalled Bowie visited U2 during the mixing of the band's smash Achtung Baby album in the early 1990s, and Bowie bringing his young daughter to see Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark on Broadway, the musical for which Bono and the Edge wrote the music and lyrics ("He sent me the reasons he didn't like it," Bono said. "And everything he said was really helpful, because it was in the early days of the show.").
Rolling Stone is releasing a full David Bowie tribute issue that includes tributes from, among others, Mick Jagger, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Kirk Hammett of Metallica and Bowie’s bassist Gail Ann Dorsey.
Jagger and Bowie recorded a video for “Dancing in the Street” for Live Aid in 1985, but had been friends for years before that. Jagger wrote that he didn’t remember how they met, but acknowledged their similar fashion preferences and the way that they fed off of each other’s styles and stage moves.
Reznor credits Bowie as his motivator for getting sober; the two toured together in the '90s. Metallica's Hammett recalled hanging out on Bowie's tour bus.
Watch the video for "Lazarus" from Bowie's last album, Blackstar.
