Bono on U2's punk roots, activism and something he rarely talks about: his faith

lovely to meet you Bono lovely to meet you Tom I loved reading your book I'm very good that's a lot of book it is I got a lot out of it um both about you and sort of about life and while the book is called surrender I it also could be called like ambition because I find that a really interesting theme going through the book but at the beginning you lead with something I wasn't expecting which is anger and you talk about coming out of the womb with your fists raised in the air is it anger that leads you to Art the surrenders a word that doesn't come easy to me um or anyone maybe but particularly to me because you're right I was kind of born Manifesto and metaphorically speaking um sometimes physically uh and I you know I yes I've written a book with a title I have yet to fully grasp or fathom but yeah it's the antidote to anger but there's some anger I don't want to give up you know I'm I want to make peace with myself my maker but I'm not going to make peace with the world just yet were you angry when you started YouTube um yeah but I'm I'm you know I took I went to anger management at um I went to I had some some therapy I was I'm curious about that like what drives you in the early because it's unbridled ambition off the top I mean I haven't come across many bands where your manager tells you hey you're not really ready to go to London yet and you go to London with your now your wife Ali and who was then your girlfriend and you you go there anyway you age 12. you take individual meetings with music magazines where does this come from I was actually age 18 but I was more like 12 in the head and my girlfriend now I thought he was 17. and yeah we just I couldn't be waiting around so we went to to London and I brought some cassettes to try and get us a record deal because our manager poem against didn't think we were ready he of course was right but but but but so was so were we because it you know there was something in those early songs and and we did eventually you know it was a trip to London where we slept in the station of Paddington which is because we we hadn't booked ourselves a place to stay because God was our travel agent and apparently God didn't get the memo so we just were yeah living on on our faith and actually quite seriously because we had a deep Faith um but also faith in music faith in ourselves and rather foolishly I had some faith in me incredible amounts of faith in yourself too but most bands wouldn't would find their manager saying hey you're not ready and wouldn't have the gumption to go across the water and say no I am what I'm curious about is where you think that came from in you yeah there's a scene in the book where I I describe it as as our office in the rain and it was outside the punk Club at the time which was called mcgonigles and I was screaming at him because he hadn't delivered a van and I was trying to explain to him that the van was the critical piece of of of engineering for any punk band you need a van because with Van comes you know Independence and you can play shows and at that time we were playing shows and we'd spend all the money on the van on the accommodation if you weren't staying in the van and I mean we owe so much to Paul McGinnis um but he he wasn't lacking in self-confidence and he was like you know you you you you know we have to wait um it's it's a word you don't know and what you need to get to know Bono and we're screaming at each other in the um outside this Punk Club and I suppose he saw in me he saw in Edge and Adam and Larry just four people who needed um our band to be a success even more than him four people who needed yeah needed the band Device I think so and when you I mean I like the word ambition that you just used but it sounds quite material the way we use the word now but if we redescribed it as as potential human potential I thought it was that's that's what it's all about and and it doesn't matter what you do in your life you could be uh you know whatever you do you bet you know be the best dishwasher be the best school teacher be the I mean by the way school teacher dwarfs yeah what a rock and roll band brings I mean our life was transformed by a couple of teachers in Mount Temple comprehensive school and you know there's lots of jobs I can think of that are more important than the singer and rock and roll band um but re finding what the job what is the thing that you can do where you feel most yourself and that was for us and for me in particular as I'm here I'm in front of you um I can put my hand up and just go yeah it was mute music kind of saved my life I was that desperate yeah if you're really sensible or you know rounded person you wouldn't you know apply for the job save your life from what from unhappiness and um yeah just just actually unhappy in a sense right but music turned my life from desperation into Joy I was a desperate teenager I'd like to think I would have grown out of it you lost your mother you had you know you had gone through a lot you know so I lost my mother when I was 14 she died at well she she She fainted we thought at the graveside of her own father and as his casket was being uh laid you know lifted into the ground lowered into the ground she She fainted and I um I got to see her once after that but she was already departed I think yeah and um yeah so then there was three men living in the house screaming at each other and because we didn't know I uh how to deal with our grief we didn't know what to do my father was particularly challenged in this area so the way he dealt with his grief was just by never mentioning the name of it my mother's name was Iris we never spoke of her again and that is so screwed up but when you're a teenager you don't know that now I have a brother Norman who's seven years older than I am and he doesn't have many memories of a virus either which is way more even though he's older than screwed up yeah he's seven years older so and he and I remember him being close um to my mother right but so that's you know we didn't she didn't just die we kind of disappeared her but um as I sometimes say she she would not be denied uh in the music anyway so she came through me and yeah and I just realized that this is whatever the grief the grief gave me stuff and took stuff away but it also gave me stuff and the gift of desperation is maybe one way of looking at it there is there are many sides to the awful things that we have to go through and while acknowledging that they are awful you can in the same hand acknowledge that they are are good and they give you something there's a thing with grief where the if you know it's an icy chill and and the bad news is it never goes away yeah but it changes color and temperature from that icy chill into a a warm ache that you would miss wear it not there yeah and that's the way I feel about these things and so I'm I'm not angry at any uh now in my life about my life or but I'm I'm angry at others lives that are squander the people we step over on the way into our office and that kind of thing I just that I'm still and I don't want to I don't want to grow out of that I want to get I want to talk a little bit more about where that where that might have come from but I want to talk you said earlier you said you know I was talking about side of a punk club and it was apparent to me in reading your book how much Punk was a part of the early U2 and in some ways from what I I've been reading about you in terms of you having largely the same crew you've had for a long time the same people around you you've had for a really long time that punk spirit is still within you too and you that being said a lot of your a lot of your Heroes didn't reach that mainstream success that you two reached was there a conscious decision was there a conversation made because I've talked to punk artists who have said that they weren't willing to X or they weren't willing to why was there a conscious decision you made to say shag that we're going to try and be a mainstream success any artist will try to take their art as far as they can go you know the Velvet Underground would go as far as they want to go but they you know it's not like we're not doing American Idol man yeah you know they're not being asked because they they you know they're artists they come from a completely different world so I just find it funny when you see um some people uh who are like yeah we wouldn't go in for that but it's mutual and um and it's okay you know and I I want you know I I am turned on by what used to be called you know rock and roll singles the 45 you know they they changed my life you know even going back into just rock and roll the Rolling Stones I Can't Get No Satisfaction that's one of the great songs I've ever heard in my life you know and all right so I want music to be I on the radio and and I see no humiliation in turning up you know selling your songs so so that's not what Punk is to me and you you put your finger on it there it's on because you said you just I I pick maybe I'm wrong but this it's how it's how you treat your road crew your community the people that are with you that that's how we tell Punk values the rest of it is just you mouthing off and and I utterly believe in my heart that you two has stayed true to those values we shared our songs we've tried to go out into the world and you know and try to be useful that's our Punk prayer if you like we want to be useful as opposed to insufferable which some people find us um but it's I've no problem laying out my Wares coming here with my book or you know saying here's you know we're saying I want to be in the biggest band in the world I want you to be the biggest band in the world yeah well I want this to be is I wanted I wanted to I want to realize our potential yeah I want to go as far as this and go The Beatles will like that the stones were like that the Sex Pistols were like that you know they were taking it as far as they could go but you know not the pop charts but you know they were luminous they were Vivid it wasn't that miserableism um which is okay if you're miserable you know I don't I don't want people who are listening to this who are chronically shy and want to make very private music for themself and their friends to feel oh our music's not as good it it it may be genius um but that's not what we were that's not where we were that wasn't your most authentic sales I had that conversation with a friend the other day yeah and I might add there's a sound Oasis when I heard Oasis I was I was like oh wow I know that sound yeah I know that sound they're bursting out of their the address where they've been put and they're breaking out oh they're they're jumping out of their own skins I heard their ambition I want to be a rock and roll star I was like tonight you know I'm just oh I know what that is and um and I I that's just that's that's that's where you two is but it doesn't mean we don't want to do experimental music it doesn't mean we don't um it doesn't mean you have to sell out whatever although that's one of the most ridiculous terms ask anyone in hip-hop about selling out you read about this in the book about the entrepreneur yeah he has selling out dude yeah he got so such a white Indie thing to say so you there's there's this the within there's an ineffable there's a sound to wanting wanting to be wanting to be the biggest and then you kind of do it which is not very Punk here is the Joshua Tree ah there goes all your punk credits Joshua Tree got massive man I mean it was funny to hear you get to work with Brian you know in a pretty punk band you know Roxy Roxy Music Brian you know comes in he's been making ambient music I love to seeing that there's a bit of a fight that your label boss goes he makes background music what do you want to work with him for for God's sake you know there's a story you know that Chris Blackwell says you know the head of Island Records he he discovers Bob Marley the head of anorex actually wasn't him who said this but it's it is it is attributed to him you know you're a rock band and um you know Brian you know just handed Us in an album of bird sounds and the names of birds ostrich swallow and like in in the sort of eyes and like like John Cage or something so he's a avant-garde artist and he brought us by the way the Great Canoe that is Daniel lanwa he was new he you know says to you oh yeah you can work with me but you got to work with this guy too he didn't know anything of him he was this kid from Hamilton it's pretty amazing you know yeah and I I mean I've said this because I can say it again you know I've never been in a room with a finer musician yeah than Daniel lanwa and it's and he The Reason Music takes him so seriously um is he is in all of it you know a lot of people love music but music doesn't love them back as much as it loves Daniel a lot of people love music but music doesn't love them back yeah the same way as they love music that's lovely thank you you're a lovely term oh thank you Ben I think you're lovely too I'm just adopting one of you this right here this is a good one style number four hand did I do this sometimes I wasn't doing it was there well no I just did it there just to keep things go back to what you were saying before real man you said that you want to talk about Punk try putting out the Joshua Tree what did you mean by that well it's not very cool is it becoming uh you know that popular and and you we were talking about the song with or without you and of course it sounds like a pop song now and it's on jukeboxes and I'm sure it sounds like a bit mainstream to certain years but that is one weird ass Sonic Adventure of a song it's a very unusual Construction and in fact we were throwing it in the trash because it was it was almost too pop we we were basing it on there was a band called suicide out of New York electronic band they had a song called [Music] sort of Elvis psycho Elvis and this kind of atmosphere and we were trying to make this kind of psycho pup but we we missed the cycle bit we just ended up with pop and we'd thrown with or without you into the trash and it is interesting because that man there would be shiny cue ball head Mr Gavin Friday yep in this video I've been traveling with us as a creative advisor on this show um he took it out of the trash and he um organized that and arranged that and um and still hasn't been paid and neither will he ever there goes my next question he asked me to ask you um well then help me understand this then because I I do understand it from the book but I'd like to hear more about it you get this because the book in some ways to a certain point with regards to U2 seems to be you happen upon a thing that really really works really really works audiences are flocking to it it's selling kajillions of Records it's winning Grammys it's giving you what you were looking for uh that wasn't a play on words we're giving you what you were looking for and then you reinvent you change the chopping down of the Joshua you say I wanted we wanted to chop down the Joshua Tree yeah it sounds it sounds sounds nicely petulant um but it was it was a sort of art game which was is you to a sound or is it a spirit especially Edge it reinvented guitar essentially he I mean I I can say this he's too modest too but he's the most influential guitar player in 30 years there's no one who will disagree with that and and so they they the sound of the band had arrived and it had done very well over a couple years and I thought well I don't like the idea that it's a sound and it's like a formula or something so what if it's the spirit if it's a spirit you too then you can take away all of those motifs and you'll still be you too and they're like what do you mean take it away so we took that's where we went to Berlin and took away all the things that we were all the structures all the scaffolding that had held up our music and it turns out we couldn't what do you mean you couldn't it was it was a bit of a panic this is acting baby yeah acting baby it actually didn't work out at first and again can I introduce maybe I'm understanding now the fifth member of the band desperation returns to us because we're in Berlin and we are desperate to not you know you know not to waste Brian Eno's time Daniel's time floods time the the idea of recording enhancer Studios the same place where Bowie had recorded at the same place where Boeing cave Iggy Pop so many of our heroes can um so so and and out of that there's death out of this desperation come these these songs one yeah and it turns that we you know one was really the song the band needed to hear because the band is breaking up under the strain of this so we write the song one because we really needed to hear that so you know you write the songs you need to hear you go on in the book to be pretty um hard on yourself for the pop years the years of the uh if you don't mind me saying so poor Bono the years of trying oh no he's after he's after making a disco album and nobody was dancing to it but you know it's true yeah and that's I'm I I love the pop album by concept but we didn't fully execute and you know I I I'm a just a big fan of dance music and disco music you know I I hate progressive rock because I remember in the 70s they were the it was the serious music all the great reviews was all Progressive rug like shite groups like yes that edge liked and um and I was like but that you know I love this dance music this think of this you know Casey and the Sunshine Band um I mean the Bee Gees yeah John Lennon loved the Bee Gees Why songs yeah and this was happening at the same time as grunge by the way what you're talking about you're embracing a pop music happens at the same time as guitar bands were the biggest thing in the world exactly and that's not a coincidence we're like even as early as Zoo TV as grunge was breaking and everyone was being authentic man we're like cutting ourselves where you know we're wearing jumpers with holes in them and and stuff like that and we're like dressing up in plastic pants and cowboy hat and we've got a mirror ball lemon later with the pop tour but there's a contrarian aspect to our band for sure but where we got it wrong well I'm proud of the contrarian aspect but where we got it wrong was I just think for dance music you have to have the songs and you got staring at the sun you got yeah discotheque it's kind of nearly great it's that close in the book you describe it as someone told you it's a series of demos it was a good series of demos yeah yeah um and I really I shouldn't like it um as much as I do but there's an attempt at kind of electronic Blues called mofo and it's like and we should play it sometime as a boost if you think if you listen to that out at that album this is the pop album and you listen to the the mofo and now imagine it as Led Zeppelin don't own don't um looking for to save my save my soul looking in the places where no flowers grow looking for baby Jesus under the trash dum dum can't remember the next sign mother mother sucking rock and roll so it's actually kind of cool it's not a pop song right not a disco song no you think you go on then to make I mean the um the album that got me I was born in the late 80s born in 87. so all that you can't leave behind is my YouTube record it was the record that the best album of songs probably I'd listen to it on the way here I have a particular affection for kite yeah I have a particular infection for stuck in a moment and of course a beautiful day is incredible well I do you you do write something interesting about it you write in the book we decided to go back to the uncool stuff uncool well meaning songwriting I'm wearing that phase again now just you know you've got to do things that keep you interested so on Songs of Innocence and songs of experience it's the same thing we just went after songs we're going after songs so we worked with song based producers because we felt our songwriting we needed to get back to those choruses and hooks that made early you too and and I all that you can't leave behind was that thought the same thought um let's go back to songs and we got into conceptual with um not just pop but uh like passengers and all this 90s was it was you know a very experimental era for us musically and you went back and you said we're gonna what did you say it used to say on stage we're reapplying for the refund I always find that you apply for the job of the I'm sorry about that it's it's a traveling salesperson in me what was the line what was the line um we're playing for the job um as the best band in the world and because I just say because it annoys people and people are talking about you and then you've shot at being the biggest fan of the world of people are talking about you some of my favorite parts of this book are were you I mean I I have limited time for you I want to keep going on in the albums but I I want to in the time we have left I want to talk about another big part of the book that that that I think people will get a lot out of which is the way you talk about your faith in the book and in the Earth this whole thing we've been talking about about you two becoming the biggest band in the world the best band in the world almost doesn't happen at all because YouTube is part of the members of U2 minus Adam I think are you know involved in a um how do I put this more of a radical Christian point of view point of view Shalom Fellowship we'll call it yeah we I mean we're in Mountain Temple comprehensive it is the first non-denominational co-educational School in the country yeah you know a country that's about burst into paramilitary flames it was we're nearly it's Civil War along sectarian lines and we have boys and girls in the same class which is really good and Catholics and Protestants yeah and you know it's it's non-denominational school but we kind of get religion there and I suppose the thing we couldn't resolve was if the world is as broken as it appears to be how do you go about mending it when you've just signed up to the most narcissistic job the planets can offer so these people in one sense they're not ridiculous when they say this is uh you know this is a waste of your time this this this music is is you know self-flattering and and missed you know and fun we're like fun why can't we have fun and change the world no can't I mean laughter is the evidence of freedom and when I see people who can't laugh and have lost their ability to be light because of the weight of the world I'm probably not going to darken the door of that church and so you know yeah at one point it proved too much for us and and and we the bambra sort of broke up is another the YouTube breaks up all the time it turns out you usually after the better albums and because the better albums we have to push each other and the relationships pay the price of that but you know every musician every songwriter requires Faith to go from one note to the other if you're making it up if you're improvising it didn't you you know it didn't exist this song this melody line the the the trajectory of it the so you find a lot of musicians um have faith here's what I'm curious about is is so there's a compromise there that okay well I'm not going no I mean age does leave the band and the edge leaves the band because he doesn't figure out that he can have lived this uh a charitable unselfish life while also being in a in a rock band and then the Jigs and the reels it all comes together in in the band is able to keep going is the activism your own or as you call it actualism which is this more pragma you looked it up it's a real word like pragmatic I thought I'd made it up until I found it in a dictionary actualism is that I'm an actualist man is that um is that a product of that compromise that you had to made I'm going to be in I'm going to do a very selfish Endeavor and be in a band but I'm going to work with everything to eliminate Global poverty to drop dead is that part of that that great compromise you had to make there do you know what I mean yes yeah I mean just a short answer I think it's probably obvious but I don't think people who follow our band even just over the shoulder notice that of course that's why we're such insufferable um um in our activism is because it is baked into who we are you two did our first anti-apartheid show before we signed a record label in our teens um we played it's it's just our idea of what art is you know um what is art artist discovery of Beauty in unexpected places Arts chases ugliness away and part of that is serve to serve each other and and in the band I think when we're functioning we serve each other and then to serve the community as a band so this was all at the heart of our religious convictions when we're in our late teens early twenties it is still there and now Adam shares them we haven't changed in that sense but you are exactly right to suggest but even when we get it wrong I can assure you that it is it comes from that place of service and it's how do you this Preposterous thing called celebrity and look at celebrity from a religious point of view for a second I say Andy Warhol did which is why he created icons I went to mass every Sunday well it turns out yeah he was actually religious because pop you know they we associate with the death of God um pop the word as in pop art but yeah and he made religious icons out of famous people because he said oh they're becoming this they're like religious icons the absurdity of Fame what is it it takes people like myself who are over regarded over rewarded um overnourished you know over everything and we're put in a place in the culture above nurses mothers teachers firemen whatever you want to it's absurd celebrity literally reverses God's order so if you happen to become one and you're a person of Faith you have to try and balance that out and you have to try and turn this Fame which is currency and you turn it into a currency that is is useful that you can spend your fans give you this but then you want to um you know you want you want to spend it wisely sounds sounds a little Earnest but well I've heard you a couple of times say now it sounds a little Earnest that's a bit insufferable you know it's a bit Yeah I have to be careful on the on the guard stuff are you are you you're in the you're talking why is it because you're like people give you a hard time for it or oh no I don't mind I'd miss it um uh I miss or just about the activism stuff you know yeah I think it's just Francis of Assisi is purported to have said go into the world and preach the gospel but only use words if you absolutely have to and yeah I think actions speak louder than words so I I'm only talking about this stuff because I've written about it normally I would not because I yeah I would not but but look you know the Beatles made a religious music to me and I mean yeah all you need is love that's that's a hymn to me and I'll I'll tell you something I didn't write about in the book but when we played live eight which was the 20-year anniversary of Live Aid I actually helped along with public health talk Paul McCartney into opening by playing Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club for the first and we end up playing the show with him and before we go on stage we're having uh we're we're having that Quiet Moments which is very not rock and roll of us but it's what we do we go into ourselves and we we make our prayer to be useful as a band and I remember on that occasion Dennis Sheen got arrested Soul our term manager he locks the doors like nobody's allowed to come in and go hi I'm with the record label or hi I'm the president or whatever it is and there's a knock in the middle of that moment uh and so afterwards I say Dennis who he said uh oh no that was that was answer pull that was Sir Paul McCartney I said you didn't let him in he said well no you don't want to be disturbed in those moments so I burst out the door I ran I see Paul McCartney walking across and I woke up and say Paul Paul I'm so sorry I'm so sorry we have this thing you know where we get together and and I just you know they he says I would love to be a part of that I'd be you know I would love that you know why didn't you vape me over and I said well again I made might be embarrassing you know and and that we don't do it kind of it's not a big showy thing it's just a way listen I would love that I would properly have loved that he says let's do it now no like but we're outside and there's everyone looking which is the last thing we'd ever want to do in our life but we did with a beetle I don't remember the the details of the prayer that Paul McCartney made but in a second I understood All You Need Is Love and I realized that the Beatles were a moral Force as well as just a kick-ass rock and roll band and genius musicians so why am I telling you that I don't think I've told anyone that it's um put that in the book I'm glad you told me okay it must be uh must maybe it's interesting to you very much people are you a person of Faith uh yeah but similar to you I came up in uh what's up you're sort of half Catholic half-profit Protestant church I was raised Catholic Newfoundland is the home of the one of the first major sex abuse scandals in in an orphanage in Newfoundland called Mount Cashel and um through that I lost complete faith in the religious organization in the in the church and it was only recently maybe in the past five or ten years that someone said to me Tom those men have nothing to do with my faith and I realized that I could have a relationship with goodness with truth and most importantly with presence and kindness using the um rituals and ceremonies ceremony of my youth but using that to express my own personal faith and and oh that's I by the way president's great word I like that I I have found myself recently attracted to those rituals ceremonies those that the dance the kind of I'm attracted to the symbolism of it and again I'm quite ambidextrous in terms of my faith because I've brought us into Catholic I'll go into St Patrick's Cathedral of New York I'll go somewhere else from down south or whatever but those Darkness gathers around the light and the church you know the Catholic Church has been through the horrific um awfulness and I asked the current pope Francis about it and I felt I had to as an Irish person because like you know we have really spectacular examples of pedophile priests who who just I could see his his physical self almost collapse into the seat and I was just just a few of us in this room he didn't speak for a while I could just see the weight of it and he just he said I I cannot I cannot explain I cannot there's no excuse and and he just said you know please pray for me pray for us as we try to get away from this awfulness we try to put it right but people have lost their faith all over Ireland and when the pope arrived there wasn't a big crowd from understand why you know exactly really understandably but this is where your punk prayers um come into play I'm all for shouting at God I'm just not a happy clappy Christian it's like I I love I love the Psalms because they're giving out where are you guys when you call yourself God where are you and you're not around me now I'm surrounded and I think that's the way we have to approach our faith not sort of supplicant you know people sort of in or people in Ireland used to cross this I mean step off the pavement if a priest was walking around this is madness and but I I hope and indeed I do pray that not just the Catholic church but all these you know um established churches um are renewed um I would I would love to see that I have so many friends who are rabbis I have so many friends across different Fates I mean the edge we call him Zen Presbyterian he's he um so I'm not you know yes and look we're all trying to figure this stuff out yeah in 1981 um on your song Rejoice he's saying I can't change the world but I can change the world in me and 23 this is in the book 23 years later on the song Lucifer's hands off of Songs of Innocence you sing I can change the world but I can't change the world in me in writing a memoir does it help you come to terms with what you can and cannot change yeah when you start to realize that the biggest enemy your biggest opponents that you come up against in your life is yourself that's a moment and you have to follow through on that I'm writing the book I had to be honest about that and but music as I'm learning is the ultimate worship and surrendering to my mates to my bandmates to my wife is difficult for me and it's a daily struggle um surrendering to my maker also but one thing I got by the end of the book is I realized song that's it I am if I'm called to do anything right now it's to write you know write this right write a song that's that's so so special that it sings me because when you get a song like one it carries you around these songs people say songs are like your children wrong they like your parents they tell you what to do what clothes to wear the video you know but I want to write a song with my friends I want to write this sort of song that has that that asks nothing it's just it is its own it's its own argument and I'm so the pursuit of that song and serving that song that's where I ended up at the end at the end of the book I was surprising thing it's and and uh and yes I it's still a title I don't understand but I know if I when I do that song will come I'd love you to get a chance to talk to you I feel the same thank you Tom thanks for making the time thank you nice to meet you very good my guest was uh Bono whose new book is called surrender

Channel: Q with Tom Power

Views: 172,121

Keywords: q on cbc, tom power, tom power q, q radio, cbc radio q, cbc radio, cbc radio show, Bono, Bono U2, Bono Surrender

Id: rfyqzTMPAqY

Length: 43min 25sec (2605 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 10 2022