Bono and Steve Jobs

Many artists paid tribute to fallen Apple founder Steve Jobs last week, but leave it to Bono to have colorful insights.

“He's the Elvis of the kind of hardware-software dialectic,” Bono said, a sound bite that was liberally quoted in the media.

He went on to say that Jobs “was a creature of quite progressive thinking, and his reverence for shape and sound and contour and creativity did not come from the boardroom.”

Rolling Stone magazine pressed the singer to see if the Elvis analogy really held up.

“I really respect people who are involved in business who have an artist's eye and ear,” he said.

“Steve was a very, very tough and tenacious guardian of the Apple brand, but the thing that endeared him to artists was his insistence that things had to be beautiful. He wasn't going to make ugly things that made profits.

“Elvis changed music. Steve changed music. He changed film, he changed the personal computer. It's a wonderful encouragement to people who want to think differently, that's where artists connect with him. The picture of Einstein with his tongue sticking out, that's actually the very heart of the brand, and that's the punk rock piece, the attitude, and the anarchic mind that dreamt up the 21st century.”

Bono revealed in his interview with Rolling Stone that his last conversation with Jobs was about the singer’s health, not his own.

“When I hurt my spine and I was in trouble, this package arrived of books and CDs and music and honey from their garden -- tons of stuff arrived at the house,” he reveals.

“And so, yes, he was a captain of industry, a warrior for his companies. But I found him to be a very thoughtful friend, and a wonderfully detailed and interested parent of his kids, and lover of his wife. There were those two sides to him.”