BONO

Is it as great as what you dreamed it might be like when you were young?

When I was a kid and I was at school, I worked at a gas station. And I would just get wound up thinking about practice on Saturdays - or Wednesdays sometimes. Just hearing the sound of a drum kit in a room, the silver of the ride cymbal and the skin of a tom-tom. It meant a great deal to me. Then, as it became my job to be in a band, you take for granted that you've got a few hours with your mates in the studio.

I don't anymore. It is sanctuary and escape from the material world of causalities, profit and loss, cynicism and hard-bitten victories over your own indifference or somebody else's. You get into this fucking room and everything seems possible, and I've never really appreciated it more than now. Really and truly. It's this incredible thing. I treasure it. I treasure it now more than ever. I'm terrified that I might lose my first love in the supermarket, in the maw of so many choices of what you can do with your time.

But I also think I'm better for having my brain pummeled in so many different areas.

Has your activism made you more or less idealistic about government?

Just being in D.C., and meeting all the people I've met - I've now been going there for nearly ten years. They let me in their rooms and they listen to my rhetoric or invective or whatever it turns out to be. And I come away from that city not with nausea but with admiration. These people work like dogs. These lawmakers, they're trying to move between their families back home and Washington. All of them could make much more money in the private sector. Not all, but most of them are there for the right reasons. There's very little glamour. And they're listening to me, who's completely over-rewarded for what I do.

Yes, I have my moments and I lose patience. I'm in a rage sometimes. But my overall feeling when I look at the body politic, which I know now very well, is "God, these people can behave very badly, but they work very hard and they're often motivated by much higher intentions than I thought when I came into the process." I'm amazed by it.

So are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

It's a problem, because sometimes I don't see obstacles, and if I had, I might not have set out on the course. It's a criticism of me that I've underestimated obstacles.

Do you accept that?

Yeah. But I think I'm less like that now. Now I'm about "Describe Everest, then climb it." Know what you're in for. I think you can achieve much more than you'd ever imagined by getting busy and getting organized. And don't get too interested in what's "possible." The impossible is made possible by a combination of faith, gift and strategy. You need faith for sure - as Lou Reed says, "A busload of faith to get by." You need some talents, and if you don't have them, you better find people who do. And then: strategy. That's as true of making U2's next album as it is with the One Campaign to make poverty history.

What's the next important challenge ahead?

The next presidential election will be a real moment for America. Talk about the battle of ideas - I mean, this is it. You will get the country you deserve. You have to ask hard questions of who will be your leader, because we fans of America - annoying fans, maybe, but real fans - have a lot at stake. Even those who are not fans - everybody who values freedom, progressive thinking, innovation, has a stake in America. The country you may own. But not the idea.

Actually, I heard a great one. I was wandering through France, and I ended up in this vineyard. They asked me to sign the visitors' book - it was a very posh wine: Petrus - they said, "Do you want to see the other people who have signed here?" I said, "Sure. Show me the first book." Thomas Jefferson. That makes me laugh so much. Here's this guy dreaming up an idea called America, drinking some fancy wine. My kind of guy.