“Stories for boys” was one of the band’s earliest songs. A highlight of their live set, it was chosen for U23. “All the songs point to one thing -getting people to think for themselves”- Bono said to Hot Press at the time.
Paul Mac Guinness was always convinced that it was a song about masturbation. Gays too identified with it, reading a homo-erotic slant into the lines: “Sometimes when a hero takes me/Sometimes i don’t let go/Oh oh oh/Stories for boys.” In fact the line about the hero had been varied between choruses in an early version of the song.
Sometimes i can’t let go. And in a cryptic note on the lyric sheet he added: “Pop stars, bionic men, soon to be featured in verse 3 yet unknown.” But you couldn’t blame gays for taking the song at their own, all the same.
“This is was it. For the gays in our audience, this was definitely a love song to a man,” Bono smiles. “I thought of Stories for boys like a simple escapism. And it’s not really. We were very conscious on one level but there was a whole subconscious thing going on too. There really is a sense in which the songs write themselves”.
Click here to download the guitar tab for Stories for boys
There’s a place I go
And I am far away
There’s a TV show
And I can grow
Sometimes the hero takes me
Sometimes I don’t let go
There’s a picture book
With colored photographs
There’s a comic strip
That makes me laugh
Sometimes the lady takes me
Sometimes I don’t let go
Hello hello
Stories for boys…stories for boys
Stories for boys…stories for boys
Stories for boys…
There’s a place I go
And it’s a part of me
There’s a radio
And I will go
Sometimes the hero takes me
Sometimes I can’t let go
Stories for boys…
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