MEMOIR
SURRENDER
by Bono (Hutchinson Heinemann, £25, 564pp)
Even Edge, U2’s brilliantly ingenious however normally unflappably cool guitarist (actual identify David Howell Evans), finds Bono maddening at occasions. A lot so, certainly, that on tour within the States, he as soon as gave his lead singer a superb thump. What had St Bono achieved to deserve this?
‘I really lifted up Larry’s drum equipment and threw it into the gang,’ confesses the singer, and in chilly fury, Edge ‘caught me one on the aspect of the pinnacle’. It’s with such anecdotes and reminiscences that Bono’s autobiography has landed — all 564 pages of it. Maybe he was fearful that the world hadn’t but heard sufficient from him and wanted extra. But it surely’s not simply Bono right here. We additionally get Bono with George W. Bush. Bono receiving a jar of honey from his buddy Steve Jobs, ‘from our personal backyard’. Bono with the Pope, Bono with Princess Diana, Bono with Volodymyr Zelensky.
There’s Bono taking a cellphone name from George Soros. Bono on stage with Salman Rushdie. Bono addressing a gathering contained in the Pentagon, with U.S. defence secretary Robert Gates, and a ‘phalanx of generals’. What? Why? He by no means fairly explains.
Bono’s memoir, Give up, outlines the rock star and philanthropist’s historical past. Pictured in 2006 with Barack Obama
Then, in fact, there’s ‘a late dinner at 10 Downing Road’ with Tony Blair. It might probably solely be a matter of time earlier than Bono is having supper with Rishi.
Bono is now a rock star with huge political clout and he very a lot likes it that method. He has campaigned in opposition to poverty and illness within the growing world, and persuaded Western leaders at hand over billions.
In a single scene right here, Bono, web value an estimated $700 million, has a non-public assembly with Barack Obama, web value about $70 million, and persuades him to offer extra help to Africa. Obama promptly does so.
It is not his cash in fact, it is the American taxpayers’. It is two very wealthy males agreeing to redistribute the wealth of some typically pretty poor folks within the U.S. to even poorer folks in Africa. The web value of the typical American with no Excessive College diploma is a surprisingly low $20,780.
At one level Bono describes how he labored on a venture in Ethiopia ‘serving to to elucidate fundamental concepts round well being and vitamin’.
To indicate that the Ethiopians, with out Bono’s intervention, would lack such ‘fundamental concepts’ is gob-smackingly insulting. Homo sapiens lived fairly fortunately in East Africa for 100 thousand years or extra earlier than the U2 frontman arrived to avoid wasting them. How on earth did they get by?
All of the do-gooding appeared even worse when it was revealed that U2 had moved their enterprise affairs from Eire to the Netherlands to keep away from tax (for which they’re broadly detested in Eire, by the way).
Bono (pictured in 2018, with Pope Francis) additionally shares tales behind the well-known faces he is met
There may be additionally the ‘poetic’ prose fashion that the reader has to wade via at occasions: ‘The liminal is the place to be. The bleeding edge. The demilitarized zones of the psyche, the grey ones of the guts. No-man’s-land is yes-man’s-land. Albums are travelogues. Geographically, philosophically, sexually.’ Clear?
But for all this, the sooner elements of the guide are an enticing learn, vividly evoking rising up in Dublin, household, mates and the tragedy of his mom’s demise. It was a painfully dramatic demise as properly: she suffered a stroke on the singer’s 14th birthday in 1974 at his grandfather’s funeral. ‘She collapsed along side the grave as her personal father was being lowered into the bottom.’
Certainly this was one of many wounds that drove his ambition when he and his schoolmates shaped U2. We comply with the early struggles and small successes. And a few of these early songs nonetheless sound nice, particularly from the Joshua Tree album of 1987.
He had IRA demise threats however by no means backed down
We also needs to do not forget that once they sang the rousing Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bono stated vehemently it was ‘not a pro-IRA tune’, for which he acquired demise threats, however by no means backed down.
And he continues to scorn them within the guide: ‘Unelected combatants deciding if a pub in Belfast or Manchester was a ‘official goal’. Or if a parade of World Conflict II veterans could possibly be blown to bits with no warning.’
He’s attention-grabbing on his religious Christian religion too, shared by all members of the band besides the likeably hedonistic posh-boy and bass-player, Adam Clayton.
The singer (pictured on the Graham Norton present earlier this yr) additionally mentions getting a jar honey from his buddy Steve Jobs
Their Christianity is of the Bible-based evangelical sort, uncommon in Catholic Eire. And though he evidently likes a drink, he hasn’t taken medication, he says, since ‘sniffing some Woman Esquire shoe polish once I was 15’.
Different issues will be supplied in defence of this self-described ‘Irish loudmouth.’ The band are nonetheless collectively in spite of everything these years, their egos by no means large enough to drive them aside, as so typically occurs in rock music.
And Bono remains to be married to his college sweetheart Alison. ‘We had been standing on the bus cease on the Howth Highway, ready for the 31a,’ when he first requested her for a date. Such long-term loves and loyalties inform you a large number.
Maybe one of the best factor you may say about this huge autobiography is that it is not all annoying. There are even one or two humorous moments.
My favorite is when he is in a Dublin pub with Edge, ‘describing the transformative information of ‘regional integration’ and among the finer particulars of the inventory alternate in Ghana. ‘Nicely, we have to get you again to the studio as quick as potential,’ says Edge, lifting a pint of Guinness to his lips. ‘The poetry is simply pouring out of you.’ ‘
Now that is one cool lead guitarist.
