The Rolling Stone Interview: Bono

With a storm gathering outside, Bono and I retreated to the bedroom, where we sat down to begin our conversation. We started at noon and talked into the evening, then started again the next morning. In all, we talked for more than ten hours. Anyone who has been to a U2 concert knows Bono's dramatic ability to tell a story and his sheer love of words. One on one, he is just as impressive, full of wit and charm. And he does love to talk. Two weeks later, the day before U2's fifth sold-out show at Madison Square Garden, in New York, Bono stopped up at the Rolling Stone office to spend an hour or two clarifying a few more points. "You're going to need an anti-Bono-nic when this is all over," he joked.

The story of Bono and his band is a story of commitment to one another -- after twenty-nine years, they remain a remarkably stable unit -- and to the greater causes of social justice on which Bono has staked his reputation. Bono gives us a vision of how tomorrow can be better than today. He appeals to something greater than ourselves. He tells the story of his life and struggles in terms everyone can understand. He speaks about faith in a way that even a nonbeliever can embrace. "The New York Times Magazine" called him "a one-man state who fills his treasury with the global currency of fame . . . the most politically effective figure in the recent history of popular culture."

Our talks range from the early history of the band, to his admiration of hip-hop, to his troubled relationship with his father. Bono is the rare major artist who speaks of his life and work with candor and transparency. He can be as harsh on the subject of his own albums as any rock critic. The interview here represents perhaps twenty percent of our conversation. But for Bono, that conversation never ends -- he means to involve his audience in it for as long as he can, and we are all the better for it. --J.S.W.

First off: Where do you get those sunglasses?

Bulgari. A lot of people think that, when they see a "B" on the side, that it's just my own megalomania. Only half the time it is. I'm the Imelda Marcos of sunglasses.

Why do you wear them all the time?

Very sensitive eyes to light. If somebody takes my photograph, I will see the flash for the rest of the day. My right eye swells up. I've a blockage there, so that my eyes go red a lot. So it's part vanity, it's part privacy and part sensitivity.

I. GROWING UP

What was your childhood in Dublin like?

I grew up in what you would call a lower-middle-class neighborhood. You don't have the equivalent in America. Upper working class? But a nice street and good people. And, yet, if I'm honest, a sense that violence was around the corner.

Home was a pretty regular three-bedroom house. The third bedroom, about the size of a cupboard, they called the "box room" -- which was my room. Mother departed the household early: died at the graveside of her own father. So I lost my grandfather and my mother in a few days, and then it became a house of men. And three, it turns out, quite macho men -- and all that goes with that. The aggression thing is something I'm still working at. That level of aggression, both outside and inside, is not normal or appropriate.

You're this bright, struggling teenager, and you're in this place that looks like it has very few possibilities for you. The general attitude toward you from your father -- and just the Irish attitude -- was "Who the fuck do you think you are? Get real." Is that correct?

Bob Hewson -- my father -- comes from the inner city of Dublin. A real Dublin man but loves the opera. Must be a little grandiose himself, OK? He is an autodidact, conversant in Shakespeare. His passion is music -- he's a great tenor. The great sadness of his life was that he didn't learn the piano. Oddly enough, kids not really encouraged to have big ideas, musically or otherwise. To dream was to be disappointed. Which, of course, explains my megalomania.

I was a bright kid, all right, early on. Then, in my teenage years, I went through a sort of awkward phase of thinking I was stupid. My schoolwork goes to shit; I can't concentrate. I started to believe the world outside. Music was my revenge on that.

I got the sense that it was kind of a dead-end situation.

Its blandness -- its very grayness -- is the thing you have to overcome. We had a street gang that was very vivid -- very surreal. We were fans of Monty Python. We'd put on performances in the city center of Dublin. I'd get on the bus with a stepladder and an electric drill. Mad shit. Humor became our weapon. Just stand there, quiet -- with the drill in my hand. Stupid teenage shit.

Just to provoke people? Performance art?

Performance art. We invented this world, which we called Lipton Village. We were teenagers when we came up with this, a way of fighting back against the prevailing bootboy mentality.

Were there a lot of fights?

Oh, yeah. The order of the day was often being beaten to within an inch of your life by roaming gangs from one of the other neighborhoods. When they asked where you were from, you had to guess right -- or suffer. The harder they hit us, the more strange and surreal the response.

You were like the freaky kids?

Yeah. Gavin Friday -- who's doing the music for the 50 Cent movie now -- was the most surreal-looking. He had an Eraserhead haircut; he wore dresses and bovver boots. I mean, myself and my other friend Guggi -- we're still very close friends -- were handy enough. We could defend ourselves. But even though some of us became pretty good at violence ourselves, others didn't. They got the shit kicked out of 'em. I thought that was kind of normal. I can remember incredible street battles. I remember one madser with an iron bar, just trying to bring it down on my skull as hard as he possibly could, and holding up a dustbin lid, which saved my life. Teenage kids have no sense of mortality -- yours or theirs.

So that was your teen rebellion?

I don't know if that was rebellion. That was a defense mechanism. We used to laugh at people drinking. We didn't drink. Because people who spilled out of the pubs on a Friday night and threw up on the laneway -- we thought we were better than them.

You were the smart-kid clique?

We were a collection of outsiders. We weren't all the clever clogs. If you had a good record collection, that helped. And if you didn't play soccer. That was part of it. Now, when you look back, there's an arrogance to it; it's like you're looking down, really . . .

At the jocks?

At the jocks, at the skinheads, at the bootboys. Maybe it's the same arrogance my father had, who's listening to opera and likes cricket. Because it separates him.

You wrote an extraordinary song about your father, "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own." When I spoke to Edge this week, he said that you're turning into your dad.

He was an amazing and very funny man. You had to be quick to live around him. But I don't think I'm like him. I have a very different relationship with my kids than he had with me. He didn't really have one with me. He generally thought that no one was as smart as him in the room. You know that Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue" where he gives the kid a girl's name, and the kid is beaten up at every stage in his life by macho guys, but in the end he becomes the toughest man.

You're the boy named Sue?

By not encouraging me to be a musician, even though that's all he ever wanted to be, he's made me one. By telling me never to have big dreams or else, that to dream is to be disappointed, he made me have big dreams. By telling me that the band would only last five minutes or ten minutes -- we're still here.

It seems there's some power in this relationship that's beyond the ordinary father-son story. You were probably one of the most difficult children to have around.

I must've been a bit difficult.

He was trying to raise two children without a mother. And here you are, unforgiving and unrelenting, showing up at all hours, in drag and with all kinds of weird people. I think it's amazing he put up with you and he didn't just throw you the fuck out. Do you ever feel guilty about how you treated him?

No, not until I fucking met you! He loved a row. Christmas Day at our house was just one long argument. We were shouting all the time -- my brother, me and then my uncles and aunts. He had a sense of moral indignation, that attitude of "You don't have to put up with this shit." He was very wise politically. He was from the left, but you know, he praised the guy on the right.