Kelefa Sanneh: Early in his career, Bono told an interviewer about his plans for his band, U2, "If we stay in small clubs, we'll develop small minds, and then we'll start making small music," he said. That turned out not to be a problem. In the course of a decade, U2 went from playing local gigs in Dublin, Ireland, to being one of the biggest bands in the world. Bono, the fearless and sometimes shameless leader, became the definitive rockstar of the modern era, conquering arenas and stadiums around the globe, singing out and often holding forth too.

[music]

Bono: One man come here to justify,

One man to overthrow,

In the name of love,

What more? In the name of love.

Kelefa Sanneh: Bono just wrote a memoir called Surrender. He joined David Remnick at the New Yorker Festival, earlier this month.

[applause]

David Remnick: 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 to 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 took shape?

Bono: Megalomania started in me at a very early age, David. The other part of it is desperation and the sense that, from my point of view, this was liberation for me. I had known as a child that I had melodies in my head. Here and there, I'd be good at school, but I was losing concentration, and more interested in girls, and then music, and then, oh, music and girls, and a release from the pain that a lot of people feel when they don't know what it is that they might have to offer.

When I sang in U2, something got a hold of me, and it made sense of me.

David Remnick: 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 at her own father's funeral, or suddenly fell ill and then died soon thereafter. 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. What was in you, from that loss? Then a household of three guys, your brother, and your father. It seemed there was a great emptiness after that.

Bono: It's funny, that thing about rock and roll singers and the mother. 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. The heart of the blues, for me, it turned into a gift. This wound in me just turned into this opening, where I had to fill the hole with music. It's a very unscientific theory I have. If someone you love is passing, there's sometimes a gift. The opening up of music came from my mother.

When my father passed, I came into a different voice. My father used to say, "You are a baritone, who thinks he's a tenor." After my father died, I felt I became the tenor.

David Remnick: What do you think of that analysis of your voice? A baritone who thinks he's a tenor?

Bono: Very accurate.

[crowd laughing]

Bono: My father was quite accurate.

David Remnick: [crosstalk] Quite wise.

Bono: He had me down.

David Remnick: Loved opera himself?

Bono: Yes, he did. He was a tenor, a pretty good tenor. It's interesting, you think about working-class Dublin, City Center Dublin, Catholic. His mother used to listen to the cricket scores on the radio in England, and he listened to opera. They read. It's interesting. I like when people don't fit into their box. My father didn't fit into the box, and then just round the corner, my mother lived. She was a Protestant.

They fell in love with each other. Not remarkable in these days, but in a time when Ireland was nearly at civil war, it became a big thing.

David Remnick: Tell me about your memories of that sectarian violence, and the way it fed into your art that was beginning, your music.

Bono: Developed a distrust of religion. Very suspicious of religion. I still am. You see what's going on in Iran, for instance, today. It's very male, isn't it? This religious violence. Even going back to when I was growing up, it was very male, that energy. My father was also suspicious of nationalism. He'd quote O'Casey. He'd say that line from O'Casey, "What is Ireland but the land that keeps my feet from getting wet?"

[crowd laughing]

When I was writing the book, I found out O'Casey never wrote that. No, he made that up.

[crowd laughing]

David Remnick: [laughs]

Bono: He really did. It's a great line, though, isn't it?

David Remnick: It is a great line. Your title is Surrender. It's a motif that runs throughout the book. Why did you name the book Surrender?

Bono: It's a word I am still grappling with, and gathering around it. Doesn't come natural to me.

David Remnick: How do you mean?

Bono: I was born with my fists up, metaphorically speaking. Sometimes, literally.

David Remnick: You describe yourself as an angry guy, right off the--

Bono: A little bit. It's not even that. Just a bit defensive, maybe, and just have my fists up. The word surrender doesn't come natural to me, or a lot of Irish people growing up in the '70s. I still find it hard to surrender to my bandmates. As an older person, as you, it gets even harder, to surrender to my wife, to surrender to my maker. I'm quite a defiant character, but I'm working on that, David, and that's why I wrote the book.

[crowd laughing]

[applause]

David Remnick: That's why we're here.

Bono: I'm here, yes.

[applause]

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

[crowd laughing]

David Remnick: 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. There's an early--

Bono: Only on the good albums.

[crowd laughing]

David Remnick: Yes. [laughs] There's one moment that I wish you talk about, where Edge has a 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. What happened? It's in the book, I swear to God. [laughs]

[crowd laughing]

Bono: Is tonight a Friday night? It's more of a Sunday morning story, but I will answer that question.

David Remnick: Thank you.

Bono: We're in a non-denominational school. 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, and we start reading the sacred text. We start exploring this. We meet these-- I suppose you'd call them first-century, radical Christian punks. They didn't need many material things. They were very strict in that sense, but they were interesting.

At first, we thought that they accepted us for being who we were. After a while, they started to get in on this, "Maybe this music thing, you should just put that down. The world is broken, really. It's really broken, and if you want to be part of the fixing of it, maybe music is something you should just put away, and sing these praise songs." I'm like, "Every song we sing is a praise song, what is the story on this?" I can't do the happy-clappy-- I think God might object to being patronized.

[crowd laughing]

[applause]

[sings] Brilliant, isn't He brilliant? No.

David Remnick: You figure God already knows.

Bono: I think God knows, but I'll tell you what. I'm into worship, and I do believe in worship. The worship, even if it starts with, "Brilliant--" if you get to the brilliance, the brilliance-- Oh, that's something. Anyway, we're going-- We're believing these people. Maybe we're wrong, and Edge is feeling it really badly, he's in agony, actually. He rings me up and he says, "I don't think I can resolve this." I said, "Well, yes, I'm having some problems with this too.

I want to be useful. I want to be useful in my life, I want my life to add up to something, I want our life to add up. I want to be useful to the world. The world is fucked." They didn't like you saying fucked, but that's how we spoke. I said, "Okay, we'll agree, I'll leave." Then Larry was like the same, and then Adam, again, all he ever wanted, and he's like, "Oh God."

[crowd laughing]

Adam had introduced us to a quite posh manager, called Paul McGuinness.

[applause]

We'd just had success with our first album, called Boy, and we have to go and tell him that it was all over. He was sitting there and we walked in, and Paul-- "So you've been speaking to God?" We're like, "Yes." "God has told you that you don't want to be in the band again, you want to break up the band?" "Well, in a manner of speaking, yes." "Okay. You've been speaking to God, and he doesn't want you to be in a band, and-- How's God on legal contracts? Because I've signed a legal contract here."

[crowd laughing]

[applause]

We were just completely-- "Oh, maybe we didn't hear that right." Anyway, we went back on the road and we played the October Tour and it was pretty special, but Edge still wasn't resolved. He was trying to figure out how could we make our music useful, in a more profound sense. Ali and I got married and I went away to Jamaica, Chris Blackwell gave us Goldeneye, and we were like, "Wow." We didn't have much cash to speak on, so this was incredible, and this was the land of Bob Marley.

[applause]

Bob Marley played a role in our life, though I would never meet him, and here's what it was-- Edge, whilst we're away, starts to work on a song that will solve the problem. The song was called Sunday Bloody Sunday.

[applause]

He started off, but if you hear it, you'll hear the Jamaican influence.

I can't believe the news today,

I can't close my eyes,

How long--

You realize that the reason why Chris Blackwell didn't throw us off Island Records, because we'd made a mad religious album-- Wasn't mad at all, but people were calling it mad. He was used to dealing with Bob Marley and Bob Marley wanted to sing to God, Bob Marley wanted to sing to girls, Bob Marley wanted to sing to the world around him and protest it. There was a three-chord strand that became U2, and that started with Edge and Sunday Bloody Sunday.

[music]

Kelefa Sanneh: Bono spoke with David Remnick at the New Yorker Festival, and their conversation continues in just a minute. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Kelefa Sanneh. We'll be right back.

[music]

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Kelefa Sanneh, sitting in today for David Remnick. We're returning now to David's interview with Bono, the lead singer of U2. Bono just wrote a memoir, Surrender, about his life and his time in U2. One of the things David and Bono talked about is the band's early hit Sunday Bloody Sunday. The lyrics refer to a 1972 massacre in Northern Ireland when protesters were killed by British soldiers.

Bono: Broken bottles under children's feet,

Bodies strewn across the dead-end street.

Kelefa Sanneh: Bono insists on the song's non-sectarian message, he says it was a condemnation of violence on all sides of the conflict. Here's David Remnick, talking with Bono.

Bono: Sunday, Bloody Sunday

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

[applause]

David Remnick: It's such an interesting song, and in so many ways, such a wonderful song. It was also something that was a little complicated for you, politically, for the public. You described it once as-- For unionists, it was a betrayal. For nationalists, it was an ad campaign. What was the political line that you were trying to tread with Sunday Bloody Sunday?

Bono: It was an odd song because we were trying to contrast this bloody event in Irish history with Christ on the cross, and the stupidity of religious violence, but we're like 22, and feeling this in our country. At first, people got excited, the Republicans were putting up the War album in the posters around, "Good band," and the Unionists were like, "Oh," and then they swapped, it was like, "No, they're not for the war."

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 gold and then tear off the green, and just hold up the whites. These were dramatic acts I learned from, I suppose, studying John Lennon, whatever, but these were powerful acts. Then, through reading about the Civil Rights in these United States and reading about Dr. King, then I started to understand more about non-violence.

We went into New Year's Day, we went into a whole-- This vein, just a very rich vein, in songwriting. In Dublin, there was-- Not in Dublin, but around the country, suddenly, it just wasn't as cool to be into U2. We weren't so much the national team, in certain areas.

David Remnick: You would preface the song and performance by saying, "This is not a rebel song." Was that alienating to some?

Bono: Yes.

David Remnick: How did you feel it? How did that alienation, rejection, or opposition make itself known?

Bono: I remember being in a car, coming out of one of our concerts in Croke Park and our car was surrounded, and I just dismantled the flag. There were some angry people around the car and they were trying to smash the window, where Ali was sitting with me. I remember thinking that was-- "Wow." 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, but I think you can die for your ideals, but shouldn't kill for them, if at all.

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

David Remnick: You recently appeared, as you do so often in these situations, in Kiev, in Ukraine. I saw you-- 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? Tell me about your experience in Ukraine.

Bono: It goes back to Sunday Bloody Sunday. Charity is a thing that we all are part of, but justice is something that really is a reason for me to get out of bed. The injustice of what's happening in Ukraine was so hard to take. We just wanted people to know that we were with them. I'd met President Zelensky before he was president, I met him in Ukraine. He's a great storyteller, you know this, and he's an actor. He's one of us. Yermak, his right hand, is a movie film producer.

There's storytellers, they need to get their story out, which is why they're doing all these media, because they know if they disappear from your phones, if they disappear from your screens, then they mightn't get the money from the United States. When President Zelensky asked us to go, I had to go, and Edge wanted to go. It was lots of musicians. I remember Bob Geldof wanted to go. We all wanted to go, but in the end, it was the two of us busking in a subway, but you know what's interesting?

They [unintelligible 00:23:06] really well. I'm like, "They're in a war." They're like, "No. You know what to do here, make this look-- Bono, you need to look good. You're going today," It's like, "What?" These are incredible people and they love freedom, they love it so much. They're ready to lay down their life for freedom. We who live in freedom should really, really remember not to fall asleep in ours.

[applause]

David Remnick: Bono, I should say, I came here several hours ago, and people had been lined up outside. They were very eager to ask you questions. One that I kept hearing was-- Did you find writing a memoir therapeutic, in any way? What was the motivation to do so?

Bono: The gift it gave me was time on my own. It turns out, I need more time on my own, and it changed me, actually. I don't know if it's changed me for well, I don't go out as much. Also, I'm such a shy typist. When I talk, I talk too quickly and I throw the paint at the canvas. When I'm typing, I have to slow down my thoughts, and they make more sense of me and I make more sense of them.

David Remnick: This is a wonderful question. You and Ali recently celebrated 40 years of marriage.

[applause]

She's here tonight. This is great, this is terrific. An Irish newlywed in the audience asks-- What's the secret?

Bono: A newlywed in the audience? It's quite mad, getting married.

David Remnick: Yes, I know.

Bono: There's a grand madness about it, and there's something about that, knowing that you're going against the odds. I would say, if you're asking me seriously, that friendship can outpace romantic love sometimes, and friendship is what myself and Ali have. When you have romantic love and friendship, that's really something special. I don't want to give you the impression that everything was all easy for us, but any time either of us got lost, the other would be there to get the other one home.

I'm so grateful and it was brilliant, when we got to 40 and we went, "Let's not fuck this up now."

[crowd laughing]

[applause]

David Remnick: A related question. The other relationship that's 40 years old-- We just had the documentary, the Get Back documentary, we watched The Beatles in rehearsal. Anybody who was in a band said, "It's amazing, they're so creative, they're getting along so well." 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? This band has outlasted The Beatles by a factor four.

Bono: I couldn't believe it. Get Back, if you haven't seen it. First of all, who knew The Beatles invented reality TV? That was mad. They had little cameras, little microphones in the flower pots and they're over there-- John's talking like this, and they're walking out, and they're wired. They invented reality TV. The second thing was like watching Jesus on the [unintelligible 00:27:34], or something. It's like--

David Remnick: Drafting the [unintelligible 00:27:40] 

Bono: The weak will inherit the earth, and the meek will inherit the earth. No, no. The sick-- You could see them actually doing it. I couldn't believe it, but 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. I think women are better at this but I could see it in The Beatles and I should tell you just a tiny little story Paul told me, which is brilliant. I hang out with Paul all the time.

I don't, but let me tell you, when I do, I pay attention because it's like hanging out with Johann Sebastian Bach. I would carry his guitar case, no question about it. He was talking about his relationship and he says, "It can be really overbearing," and he says, "I was going at John one day, was going at him, and he just looked up, and actually, he was wearing glasses just like you," No, kidding. "He went, 'Hey Paul, it's just me. It's John, it's only me, it's John.' Trying to calm me down, he was."

Bands go at each other, but again, it's friendship. It has to be friendship. That's the thing that has kept U2 together.

David Remnick: You did something very unusual for a band. You split everything up, financially, equally.

Bono: What a fool.

[crowd laughing]

What a fool. Didn't think it out. No, it's the best thing ever, and those songs are made what they are because of Edge, Adam, and Larry. Our manager used to say to us, "It's not musical differences that break up most bands, it's the moula," and he said, "Get that right." Another cracker is like, "Don't be the band who looks too stupid to enjoy being at number one. Smile, for God's sake."

[crowd laughing]

[applause]

Kelefa Sanneh: Bono's new memoir is called Surrender. He talked with my boss, David Remnick, at the New Yorker Festival this month.

[music]

 

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.