U2’s Bono on the Power of Music

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Speaker 5 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

Speaker 6 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Ramnick.

Speaker 6 Early in his career, Bona once told an interviewer about his plans for a band called U2.

Speaker 6 He said, if we stay in small clubs, we'll develop small minds, and then we'll start making small music. Now, that turned out not to be at all a problem.

Speaker 6 In the course of a decade, U2 went from playing gigs in small places in Dublin, Ireland to being one of the biggest bands in the world.

Speaker 6 And Bono, the fearless and sometimes shameless leader of U2, became among the most definitive rock stars of the modern era, conquering arenas and stadiums around the globe, singing out, and often holding forth.

Speaker 6 Bono is out with a new documentary now on Apple Plus called Bono, Stories of Surrender. And I spoke with him at the New Yorker Festival in 2022 before his memoir was released.

Speaker 6 When you talk to people who have been in bands when they're 16, no matter what their destiny was, they have no expectations other than

Speaker 6 to

Speaker 6 play in a bar, to maybe be the best blues band in London, like the Stones, or whatever. What was the ambition that was fired up in you pretty quickly once this band sort of took shape?

Speaker 2 Megalomania started in me at a very early age, David.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 the other part of it is

Speaker 2 desperation

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 the sense that

Speaker 2 you know, from my point of view, this was liberation for me. And I had known as a child that I had melodies in my head, and

Speaker 2 you know, here and there I'd be good at school, but I was losing concentration and more interested in girls, and then

Speaker 2 music, and then, oh, music and girls.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 a release from

Speaker 2 a release from a kind of

Speaker 2 the pain that a lot of people feel when they don't know what it is

Speaker 2 that they might have to offer

Speaker 2 when I sang

Speaker 2 in U2

Speaker 2 something

Speaker 2 got a hold of me and it made sense of me

Speaker 6 do you think that some of that feeling some of that passion came from the loss that you had suffered two years before. Your mother died

Speaker 6 at her own father's funeral, or certainly fell ill and then died soon thereafter.

Speaker 6 Eerily, strangely, this is a loss at the same age that Paul McCartney, I think Johnny Lydon, Bob Geldof, John Lennon's mother died very early.

Speaker 6 What was in you from that loss and then a household of three guys, your brother and your father,

Speaker 6 it seemed there was a great emptiness after that.

Speaker 2 It's funny that thing about rock and roll singers and

Speaker 2 the mother.

Speaker 2 I heard somebody say in hip-hop, it's more the father. It's interesting.
I don't know if that's true or not, but they're both about abandonment.

Speaker 2 And you know, the heart of the blues

Speaker 2 for me,

Speaker 2 it turned into a gift. This wound

Speaker 2 in me just turned into this opening

Speaker 2 where I

Speaker 2 had to fill the hole with music.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's a very unscientific

Speaker 2 theory I have. Someone you love's passing, there's sometimes a gift.

Speaker 2 And the opening up of music came from my mother.

Speaker 2 And when my father passed, I finally became

Speaker 2 I came into a different kind of voice. My father used to say, you're a baritone.
Who thinks he's a tenor?

Speaker 2 And I sort of, after my father died, I felt I kind of became the tenor.

Speaker 6 What do you think of that analysis of your voice? A baritone who thinks he's a tenor?

Speaker 2 Very accurate.

Speaker 2 My father was quite accurate. He had me down.

Speaker 6 And loved opera himself.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 he did. He was a tenor and

Speaker 2 pretty good tenor. And

Speaker 2 yeah, it's interesting. You think about working class Dublin, city centre Dublin, Catholic,

Speaker 2 loved, his mother used to listen to the cricket scores on the radio, like in England. And he listened to opera, they read.

Speaker 2 It's interesting. And I like the fact that when people don't fit into

Speaker 2 their box, my father didn't fit into the box and then just round the corner my mother lived. She was a Protestant and they fell in love with each other.

Speaker 2 Not remarkable in these days but in a time when Ireland was nearly a civil war

Speaker 2 it became a big thing.

Speaker 6 Tell me about though your memories of that sectarian violence and the way it fed into

Speaker 6 your art that was beginning, your music?

Speaker 2 Developed

Speaker 2 a distrust of religion, very suspicious of religion. I still am.

Speaker 2 And even going back to when I was growing up, you know,

Speaker 2 it was very male, that energy. And my father was also suspicious of

Speaker 2 kind of nationalism.

Speaker 2 My father used to say things like,

Speaker 2 you know, he'd quote O'Casey. He'd say, that line from O'Casey, you know, what is Ireland but

Speaker 2 only the land that keeps my feet from getting wet?

Speaker 2 And when I was writing the book, I found out

Speaker 2 O'Casey never wrote that. No, but he made that up.

Speaker 2 He really did.

Speaker 2 It's a great line, though, isn't it? It is a great line.

Speaker 6 Your title is Surrender. It's a motif that runs throughout the book.
Why did you name the book Surrender?

Speaker 2 It's a word

Speaker 2 I am

Speaker 2 still grappling with.

Speaker 2 I'm kind of gathering

Speaker 2 around it.

Speaker 2 It doesn't come natural to me. How do you mean?

Speaker 2 I find it, you know, I was kind of born with my fists up, metaphorically speaking, sometimes literally.

Speaker 6 You describe yourself as an angry guy right off the

Speaker 2 a little bit. I'm just, it's not even that, just a bit suspicious, bit, you know, a bit defensive, maybe, and just have my fists up.
And so, the word surrender

Speaker 2 doesn't come natural to me. Or a lot of Irish people growing up in the 70s, I still find it hard, you know, to surrender to my bandmates.

Speaker 2 As an older person, as you it gets even harder to surrender to my wife,

Speaker 2 you know, to surrender to my maker.

Speaker 2 I'm I'm I'm quite a defiant character,

Speaker 2 but I'm working on that, David. And that's why I wrote the book.

Speaker 6 And that's why we're here.

Speaker 2 I'm here, yes.

Speaker 2 My mother dropped me on my head when I was a baby.

Speaker 6 An incredible fraternity and friendship and creative ferment develops in the band, and yet you describe more than once how the band almost breaks up.

Speaker 2 There's an early only on the good albums.

Speaker 6 And there's one moment that I wish you'd talk about that where Edge has a kind of spiritual crisis, and he's going to leave, and then if he's going to leave, you're going to leave, and the whole thing seems ready to just dissipate in a moment's time.

Speaker 2 What happened?

Speaker 6 It's in the book, I swear to God.

Speaker 2 Is tonight a Friday night?

Speaker 2 It's more of a Sunday morning story, but

Speaker 2 I will answer that question. Thank you.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 we're in a non-denominational school.

Speaker 2 They're not pushing religion down our throats. And yet...
Three of us end up with this very deep faith. We're touched by some of the people we meet at a deep level.

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 we start reading the sacred texts, we start exploring this. We meet these, I suppose you'd call them first-century radical Christians,

Speaker 2 kind of punks.

Speaker 2 And you know, they didn't need many material things, they were very

Speaker 2 strict in that sense, but they were

Speaker 2 kind of interesting. And

Speaker 2 at first, we thought that

Speaker 2 they accepted us for being who we were

Speaker 2 um but after a while we were that they started to get in at us maybe this music thing is you should just put that down and

Speaker 2 if you know the world is broken really

Speaker 2 and it's it's it's it's really broken and and if you want to be part of the fixing of it maybe

Speaker 2 music is something you should

Speaker 2 just put away and sing these praise songs. So I'm like, every every song we sing is a praise song.
What is the story on this?

Speaker 2 And I can't do the happy clubby.

Speaker 2 I think God might object to being patronized.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 6 now, you figure God already knows.

Speaker 2 I think God knows, but I'll tell you what

Speaker 2 I'm into worship

Speaker 2 and I do believe in worship and the worship even if it starts with brilliant

Speaker 2 if you get to

Speaker 2 The brilliance

Speaker 2 the brilliance

Speaker 2 well that's something

Speaker 2 so anyway, we

Speaker 2 We're kind of going, we're believing these people

Speaker 2 Maybe We're wrong and Edge is feeling it really badly. He's in a kind of agony actually

Speaker 2 and He rings me up and he says I I don't think I can resolve this

Speaker 2 and so

Speaker 2 I Said well

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm having some problems with this too. I want to be useful I want to be useful in my life.
I want to have my life to add up to something and I want our life to add up to something.

Speaker 2 I want to be useful to the world. The world is, you know,

Speaker 2 fucked.

Speaker 2 They didn't like you saying fucked. But that's how we spoke.

Speaker 2 But I said, okay, we'll agree.

Speaker 2 I'll leave. And then Larry was like the same.

Speaker 2 And then Adam, again, all he ever wanted. And he's like, oh, God.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 Adam had introduced us to

Speaker 2 a quite posh manager called Paul McGinnis.

Speaker 2 And we just had

Speaker 2 success with our first album called Boy

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 we'd go and tell him that it was all over.

Speaker 2 So he was sitting there and we walked in and Paul

Speaker 2 So you've been speaking to God.

Speaker 2 And we're like,

Speaker 2 yeah?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 God

Speaker 2 has told you

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 you don't want to be in the band again. You want to break up the band?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 in a manner of speaking. Yes.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 So you've been speaking to God and he doesn't want you to be in a band and

Speaker 2 how's God on legal contracts? Because I've signed a legal contract here

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 we were just, you know, just completely off. Oh, maybe we didn't hear that right.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 anyway, so we went back on the road. And we played the October tour and it was pretty special, but Edge still wasn't wasn't resolved.

Speaker 2 And he was trying to figure out how we could make our music,

Speaker 2 not utility, but useful in the more profound sense.

Speaker 2 And Ali and I got married, and I went away to Jamaica. Chris Blackwell gave us Golden Eye, this place that he...

Speaker 2 And we were like, whoa!

Speaker 2 We didn't have much cash to speak on, so this was incredible. And this was the land of Bob Marley.

Speaker 2 And Bob Marley played a role in our life, though I would never meet him. And here's what it was:

Speaker 2 Edge, whilst we're away, starts to work on a song

Speaker 2 that will really explain, will solve the problem.

Speaker 2 And the song was called Sunday, Bloody Sunday.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 he starts it off, but if you hear it,

Speaker 2 you'll hear it, the Jamaican influence. So,

Speaker 2 I can't believe the news today.

Speaker 2 I can't close my eyes. Whoa, oh, no way, how long?

Speaker 2 And you realize that the reason why Chris Blackwell didn't throw us off Island Records,

Speaker 2 because we'd made a mad religious album wasn't mad at all,

Speaker 2 But people were calling it mad.

Speaker 2 He was used to dealing with Bob Marley. And Bob Marley wanted to sing to God.
Bob Marley wanted to sing to girls.

Speaker 2 Bob Marley wanted to sing to the world around him and protest it. So there it was a three-chord strand that became you two,

Speaker 2 and that started Veg Sunday bless Sunday.

Speaker 6 Bono, speaking live at the New Yorker Festival. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour and we'll continue in a moment.

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Speaker 6 This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I'm speaking with Bono, the lead singer of YouTube.
He's out with a new documentary on Apple Plus called Bono, Stories of Surrender.

Speaker 6 One of the things I wanted to ask about was one of YouTube's earliest hits, Sunday Bloody Sunday.

Speaker 6 The lyrics refer to a 1972 massacre in Northern Ireland when protesters were killed killed by British soldiers.

Speaker 6 But Bono insists on the song's non-sectarian message. He says it was a condemnation of violence on all sides of the conflict.

Speaker 6 It's such an interesting song

Speaker 6 in so many ways, and such a wonderful song, and it was also something that was a little complicated for you politically, for the public.

Speaker 6 You would say you described it once as, for unionists, it was a betrayal, for nationalists, it was an ad campaign.

Speaker 6 What was the political line that you were trying to tread with Sunday, Bloody, Sunday?

Speaker 2 I mean, yeah, it was an odd song because we were trying to contrast this

Speaker 2 bloody event in Irish history with Christ on the cross and the kind of stupidity of

Speaker 2 religious violence. And,

Speaker 2 you know, but we were like 22 and

Speaker 2 feeling this in our country.

Speaker 2 And at first people got excited. Some of the more, the Republicans were like

Speaker 2 putting up up the war album and the posters around good man

Speaker 2 and then

Speaker 2 and the unionists were like ooh

Speaker 2 and then they swapped and it was like no they're not for the war and

Speaker 2 and was like oh and we didn't know which side we were on and then I started to dismantle the Irish flag on stage I would tear off the

Speaker 2 gold and and then tear off the green and just hold up the white and these were sort of dramatic acts I learned from, I suppose, studying John Lennon, whatever. But

Speaker 2 these were powerful acts. And then,

Speaker 2 through reading about the civil rights in

Speaker 2 these United States and reading about Dr. King,

Speaker 2 then I started to understand more about non-violence. And we went into New Year's Day, we went into a whole

Speaker 2 this vein, just a very rich vein in songwriting.

Speaker 2 But it did in Dublin, there was, and not in Dublin, but around the country, suddenly

Speaker 2 it wasn't as

Speaker 2 it just wasn't as cool to be into U2. We weren't so much the national team in certain areas.

Speaker 6 But you would preface the song and performance by saying, this is not a rebel song. Was that alienating to some?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 6 How How did you feel it? How did that alienation or rejection or opposition make itself known?

Speaker 2 I remember

Speaker 2 being in a car coming out of one of our

Speaker 2 concerts in Croke Park and our car was surrounded.

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I just dismantled the flag and there were some angry people around the car and they were trying to smash the window where Ali was sitting with me.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I remember thinking that was,

Speaker 2 wow.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 you feel the pain of these people. Now I understand the real pain people were in.
And I wish not to make light of it.

Speaker 2 I think you can die for your ideals, but you shouldn't kill for them, if at all.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 but I understand that these people felt they were at a war and that I had betrayed them and our band was betraying them.

Speaker 6 You recently appeared, as you do so often in these situations, in Kiev, in Ukraine. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 6 And I saw you,

Speaker 6 I believe you were in a metro station, a subway station, and met with politicians. What do you find yourself achieving when you do that?

Speaker 6 Tell me about your experience in Ukraine.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it goes back to Sunday, Bloody Sunday. It goes back to

Speaker 2 charity is a thing

Speaker 2 that we all

Speaker 2 are part of.

Speaker 2 But justice is something that really is a reason for me to get out of bed. And the injustice of what's happening in

Speaker 2 Ukraine

Speaker 2 was so

Speaker 2 hard to take

Speaker 2 that we just wanted people

Speaker 2 to know that we were with them and I'd met President Zelensky before he was president, met him in Ukraine. He's a great storyteller.

Speaker 2 I mean you know this

Speaker 2 and he's an actor. He's one of us.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 Yermak,

Speaker 2 his right hand, is a movie film producer. They're storytellers.
They need to get their story out, which is why they're doing all this media, because they know

Speaker 2 if they disappear

Speaker 2 from your phones, if they disappear from your screens,

Speaker 2 then they mightn't get

Speaker 2 the money from the United States.

Speaker 2 So when President Zelensky asked us us to go,

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 had to go.

Speaker 2 And Edge wanted to go, and it was lots of musicians. Remember, Bob Gelder wanted to go.
We all wanted to go, but in the end, it was the two of us busking in a sort of

Speaker 2 subway.

Speaker 2 But you know what's interesting? When I saw it back, they lit it really well.

Speaker 2 I'm like, they're in a war.

Speaker 2 And they're like, no, we know what to do here to make this look. Bono, you need to look good.
You're going to raise. Like, what?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 these are incredible people.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they love freedom. And they love it so much they're ready to lay down their life for freedom.
And we who live in freedom should really, really

Speaker 2 remember not to fall asleep in ours.

Speaker 5 Bono,

Speaker 6 I should say I came here several hours ago and people have been lined up outside and they were very eager to ask you questions and one that I kept hearing was did you find writing a memoir therapeutic in any way?

Speaker 6 What was the motivation to do so?

Speaker 2 The gift it gave me was

Speaker 2 time on my own

Speaker 2 and it turns out I need more time on my own

Speaker 2 and it changed me actually I don't know if it's changed me for well I don't go out as much

Speaker 2 and also I'm such a shy typist

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 when I talk I talk too quickly and I sort of throw the paint at the canvas but when I'm typing I have to slow down my thoughts and

Speaker 2 make more they make more sense of me and I make more sense of them.

Speaker 6 This is a wonderful question.

Speaker 2 You and

Speaker 6 Ali recently celebrated 40 years of marriage.

Speaker 6 He's here tonight.

Speaker 6 This is great. This is terrific.
An Irish newlywed in the audience asks, what's the secret?

Speaker 2 A newlywed in the audience.

Speaker 2 It is quite...

Speaker 2 It's quite mad getting married. Yeah, I know.

Speaker 2 There's a grand madness about it. And

Speaker 2 there's something about that and

Speaker 2 knowing that you're going against the odds. But I would say,

Speaker 2 if you're asking me seriously,

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 friendship

Speaker 2 is,

Speaker 2 friendship can outpace

Speaker 2 romantic love.

Speaker 2 sometimes

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 you know friendship is what myself and Ali have.

Speaker 2 When you have romantic love and friendship,

Speaker 2 that's really something special.

Speaker 2 But I don't want to give you the impression that everything was

Speaker 2 all easy for us. And

Speaker 2 but any time either of us got lost, the other would get

Speaker 2 would be there to

Speaker 2 get the other one home and

Speaker 2 and I'm so grateful and it was brilliant when we got to 40 and we went

Speaker 2 let's not fuck this up now

Speaker 2 I mean you know a related question

Speaker 6 the other relationship That's 40 years old. We just had the documentary the get back documentary and we watched the Beatles in rehearsals

Speaker 6 and anybody who was in a band said, it's amazing, they're so creative, they're getting along so well.

Speaker 6 And then anybody else who's not in a band thought, they hate each other, they're not getting along at all. When you watched that documentary, how did you relate it to your 40 years in a band?

Speaker 6 This band has outlasted the Beatles by a factor of four.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I couldn't believe it.

Speaker 2 Get back, if you haven't seen it. First of all, who knew the Beatles invented reality TV?

Speaker 2 That was mad. Like they had little, you know, there was little camera, little microphones in the flower pots and they're over there.

Speaker 2 John's talking like this and they're giving out Voicing Now and they

Speaker 2 wired.

Speaker 2 So they invented reality TV. Second thing was like watching Jesus like on the, you know,

Speaker 2 the Beatitudes or something. And it was, you know, you can imagine, it's like drafting the Beatitudes.
And the

Speaker 2 weak will inherit the earth and the no, the meek will inherit the earth. No, no, the sick, you know, you could see them actually doing it.

Speaker 2 I couldn't believe it. And

Speaker 2 but yeah, you could feel the tension. It's very hard for males, and it gets harder to move around each other the older you get.
But males are funny, especially I think women are better at this, but

Speaker 2 you know, I could see it in the Beatles.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 I should tell you just a tiny little story that Paul told me, which is brilliant. Like, I hang out with Paul all the time.
I don't. But let me tell you, when I do, I pay attention.

Speaker 2 Because it's like hanging out with Johan Sebastian Bach. I would carry his guitar case and no question about it.

Speaker 2 But he was talking about his relationship. And he says, you know, it could be really overbearing.

Speaker 2 I realized.

Speaker 2 And he says, you know, it was going at John one day. It was going at him, you know.

Speaker 2 And he just looked up. And actually, he was wearing glasses just like you.
No kidding. And

Speaker 2 he just did this. He went, hey, Paul, it's just me.
It's John.

Speaker 2 It's only me. It's John.
And he said, trying to calm me down, he was.

Speaker 2 But bands go at each other.

Speaker 2 And we've, you know, but it's, but again, it's friendship. It has to be friendship.
And

Speaker 2 that's the thing that has kept you two together.

Speaker 6 You did something very unusual for a band in that you split everything up financially equally.

Speaker 2 What a fool.

Speaker 2 What? A fool.

Speaker 2 Didn't think it would out of anything.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 2 it's the best thing ever. And those songs are made what they are because of Edge, Adam, and Larry.
And

Speaker 2 our manager used to say to us,

Speaker 2 you know,

Speaker 2 it's not musical differences that break up most bands. It's the moolah.

Speaker 2 And he said, get that right.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 other crackers like, don't be the band that looks too stupid to enjoy being at number one.

Speaker 2 Smile, for God's sake.

Speaker 6 That's Bonhoe speaking at the New Yorker Festival in 2022. This year's festival, which takes place in October, will celebrate the magazine's 100th anniversary.

Speaker 6 I hope you'll join us for a weekend of live conversation, musical performances, screenings, and much more. You can read more about it at festival.newyorker.com.

Speaker 6 That's the New Yorker radio hour for today. Thanks so much for listening.
See you next time.

Speaker 5 The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Meryl Garbis of Tune Yards, with additional music by Louis Mitchell.

Speaker 5 This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer, with guidance from Emily Botine and assistance from Michael May, David Gable, Alex Barish, Victor Guan, and Alejandro Deckett.

Speaker 5 The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Torina Endowment Fund.

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