Bono: The Rolling Stone Interview

On the first weekend of October, I visited Bono in Cancún, Mexico, where U2 were on a weeklong break before the second North American leg of the band’s Vertigo Tour. Bono and U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. were both there with their families — in fact, it was Elvis Mullen’s tenth birthday that weekend, and a barbecue was planned at the house Bono had rented on the beach, where he, his wife of twenty-three years, Ali, and their four children were staying.

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 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 non believer 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.