Bono thanks LIers Lou Reed and Public Enemy for songs that 'saved my life'

To commemorate his 60th birthday, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Bono has written open letters to a wide array of fellow music stars, including two from Long Island, thanking them for 60 songs he professes "saved my life."

"I wanted to thank the artists and everyone who helped make them," the activist and U2 frontman wrote on his birthday, May 10, posting the first of several batches of missives. "I am writing a fan letter to accompany each song to try and explain my fascination."

To celebrate "Satellite of Love" by the Brooklyn-born Lou Reed — who moved to Freeport at age 11 with his family and died at his home in Amagansett in 2013 at 71 — Bono wrote to Reed's wife, the musician and performance artist Laurie Anderson.

"I was just thinking again about Lou as an alchemist turning base metal into gold," Bono said in part. "[He] certainly knew how to turn noise into signal and signal into noise. I asked him about great lyricists and he said 'I'm a formalist but sometimes I look to crime writers like Raymond Chandler' … 'give me an example,' I questioned. 'That blonde is about as beautiful as a split lip … how's that for a lyric?' I choked and he smiled that mischievous smile."

Bono added, "How happy you made him … love got airborne and it still is."

To the group Public Enemy — formed after Roosevelt-raised rapper Chuck D and Roosevelt-born and Freeport-raised hype man Flavor Flav met while attending Adelphi University in Garden City — Bono expressed his admiration for "Fight the Power."

"When this came out it was as if Ferrari had designed a steamroller made of sound fuelled by rage," he wrote. "As if slavery was finally ending in America and the truth about it being faced in furious rhyme. As if 35 years of cultural history was being trashed, statues being pulled down, effigies burned, scales falling from people's eyes and new roads appearing to take us to the future, seemingly being built overnight."

But, "Slavery wasn't ending though … and some things actually got worse … but just for a second we glimpsed something. What The Sex Pistols are to punk, Public Enemy are to hip hop. … Proud to have known you." In a postscript he tells an anecdote of a time "there was a ban on Public Enemy playing in Los Angeles."

The 60 songs are not in a specified order, and the numbered list at the U2 website is not in the same order as the letters themselves, posted as typewritten PDFs.

The wide-ranging list runs the gamut from classic rock (The Beatles' "I Want to Hold your Hand"; The Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday") to rap (Kanye West's "Black Skinhead"), from country (Johnny Cash's cover of Nine Inch Nails' "Hurt") to punk (Sex Pistols' "Anarchy in the U.K."; Ramones' "Swallow My Pride"), and from Italian operatic pop (Andrea Bocelli's "Con Te Partirò") to African dance pop (Angélique Kidjo, "Agolo").

One artist appears twice (David Bowie's "Life on Mars?" and "Heroes"), as does Bono himself (Luciano Pavarotti, Bono & Zucchero, "Miserere"; Frank Sinatra & Bono, "Under My Skin").