What Elvis was to rock’n'roll, David was to the blues. Bono, U2’s singer and a campaigner to end Third World debt, argues that the psalms truly rock the soul.

Explaining belief has always been difficult. How do you explain a love and logic at the heart of the universe when the world is so out of kilter with this? Has free will got us crucified? And what about the dodgy characters who inhabit the tome known as the Bible, who hear the voice of God? Explaining faith is impossible: vision over visibility; instinct over intellect. A songwriter plays a chord with the faith that he will hear the next one in his head.

One of the writers of the psalms was a musician, a harp-player whose talents were required at ‘the palace’ as the only medicine that would still the demons of the moody and insecure King Saul of Israel. It is a thought that still inspires: Marilyn sang for Kennedy, the Spice Girls for Prince Charles.

At the age of 12, I was a fan of David. He felt familiar, like a pop star could feel familiar. The words of the psalms were as poetic as they were religious, and he was a star. Before David could fulfil the prophecy and become the king of Israel, he had to take quite a beating. He was forced into exile and ended up in a cave in some no-name border town facing the collapse of his ego and abandonment by God. But this is where the soap opera got interesting. This is where David was said to have composed his first psalm – a blues. That’s what a lot of the psalms feel like to me, the blues. Man shouting at God – ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me?’ (Psalm 22).

I hear echoes of this holy row when un-holy bluesman Robert Johnson howls, ‘There’s a hellhound on my trail’ or Van Morrison sings, ‘Sometimes, I feel like a motherless child.’ Texas Alexander mimics the psalms in ‘Justice Blues’: ‘I cried Lord my father, Lord kingdom come. Send me back my woman, then thy will be done.’ Humorous, sometimes blasphemous, the blues was backslidin’ music but, by its very opposition, it flattered the subject of its perfect cousin, gospel. Read the rest of this entry »