Bono Is Still Trying to Figure Out U2 and Himself

There are different Bonos to different people, including the man himself. He is, as you may know, the lead singer of U2, one of the most successful and longest-running rock bands of all time. He’s also a prominent activist, having helped lead campaigns that resulted in some of the world’s richest countries’ forgiving its loans to some of the world’s poorest and in procuring tens of billions of dollars in AIDS relief for African nations. Despite, or in various ways because of, such undertakings, he’s also a somewhat polarizing figure, seen in certain corners as a sanctimonious do-gooder, an embodiment of the musical and political establishment. Whatever your view of the man, there is surely plenty of material to support your arguments in his hefty and sprawling new memoir, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story,” which will be published on Nov. 1. “There is no single strand to the creative life,” says Bono, who is 62 and, to put it mildly, a spirited conversationalist. “It’s not like you’re creative when you’re being a musician and when you’re an activist, you’re being an activist. That’s why I wrote the book: These different characters are all part of me.”

This is maybe an odd place to start, but I interviewed Eddie Vedder this year and he said that you two once had a conversation about — I’ve pushed his car! He has lugged our gear! He’s a blood brother!

So he was saying that you described making music to him as like owning a race horse and when U2’s horse is in the race they want it to win, whereas his band, Pearl Jam, wants their horse to run the race and then run free. I was thinking about that in the context of the new book and the last two U2 albums, each of which were about taking stock rather than making claims on the present or looking forward. Does that suggest, on your part, a declining interest in winning the race? Good question, but faulty intelligence. I didn’t use the phrase “horse race” with my mate, Ed. I did use the word “competition.” I was referring to the Cannes Film Festival. They have a phrase: “in competition.” They also show films at Cannes that are not in competition. I wanted to see U2’s songwriting grow in competition. Art can’t be empirical, mostly, but sometimes you can say that’s a better song than that one. That’s what that conversation with Ed was about. The second half of your question was: Are you still in competition? Yes, in terms of songwriting. But is what Eddie and you were hinting at the promotion around the music?

It’s more about where your music fits into the culture. Is the pop-culture world still a place where U2 can realistically compete for attention? I know now that with youth culture I am kind of tolerated hanging out at the back of the birthday party but the magic show’s going on down here for the kids. I wished to connect with the pop charts over the last two albums and failed. But the songwriting got really good. “Songs of Experience” is great songwriting even if you don’t like the sound of it. Or “Every Breaking Wave” or “The Troubles” on “Songs of Innocence.” I would have loved to have a pop song on the radio. Probably we’ve run a road on that. So right now I want to write the most unforgiving, obnoxious, defiant, [expletive]-off-to-the-pop-charts rock ’n’ roll song that we’ve ever made. I spoke to Edge about it this week. He’s going, “Is it that call again?” “What call?” “The one about we’re going to write the big [expletive]-off rock song?” And I say, “Yeah, it’s our job!” We can make songs famous now, but I don’t think U2 can make them hits.

Does that change anything for how you operate? It’s just much harder to sneak into the unconscious minds of your audience. The song has to be so good that it gets passed around and people hold on to it for dear life. But yeah, we have to find other ways. That’s one reason we did “Spider-Man.”

Not exactly your highest moment. You’ve never heard us doing those songs. [Expletive] you. “The Boy Falls From the Sky” is an amazing song; so is “Turn Off the Dark.” The thing got into trouble. But why did we end up working on Broadway? The American songbook! If I could impart one thing to you in this exchange it’s that I’m a student, and so is my friend Edge. We’re students of songwriting. We don’t mind if we’re humiliated to find a great song. These song-driven people we worked with on our last albums know a lot about songs. You say, “But you’re U2 — you don’t need that.” What’s interesting is that we want that.

Hearing you say that U2 can still make a song famous but probably can’t still have a hit indicates a certain level of self-awareness. I’m curious about whether you’re similarly self-aware about how your activism is seen by some. Maybe this is too much of straw-man argument, but it’s easy to imagine a young activist looking through the book and seeing praise for George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — not exactly beloved figures these days — and thinking you’re out of touch. Or reading a sentence like “Why is there hunger in a world of surplus?” and wondering whether you ever asked that question to all the billionaires you write about glowingly. So do you give credence to shifting ideas about activism and change in the same way that you give credence to shifting ideas about the pop world? It is a fair question. Systemic change is required, but I get one eyebrow up when people want systemic change but don’t want to bother to turn up for the town-hall meeting. I’ve met a few of them. You know, I smuggled some tapes out of the Genoa G8 meeting, where the anti-globalization protesters were getting the shite kicked out of them. They were smashed up and came to me and asked me to smuggle out some tapes. I did, and when I got the tapes back to the people, I sat down and said: “Look, what are you doing here? What are we going to do?” And they were like: “We’re anarchists, dude. We’re not into that shit.” I said: “Is it just that this stuff’s too boring for you? Can we find a model?” You still have to vote and get organized. I ended up as an activist in a very different place from where I started. I thought that if we just redistributed resources, then we could solve every problem. I now know that’s not true. There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism. I spend a lot of time in countries all over Africa, and they’re like, Eh, we wouldn’t mind a little more globalization actually. I would point out that there has been a lot of progress over the years. If you read Thomas Piketty, whom you also interviewed, his whole thing is that in 200 years incredible progress has been made.

Isn’t citing Thomas Piketty a little dicey for you, given what he says about fairer taxation? Yes, he has a system of progressive taxation and I get it, but the question that I’m compelled to answer is: How are things going for the bottom billion? Be careful to placard the poorest of the poor on politics when they are fighting for their lives. It’s very easy to become patronizing. Capitalism is a wild beast. We need to tame it. But globalization has brought more people out of poverty than any other -ism. If somebody comes to me with a better idea, I’ll sign up. I didn’t grow up to like the idea that we’ve made heroes out of businesspeople, but if you’re bringing jobs to a community and treating people well, then you are a hero. That’s where I’ve ended up. God spare us from lyricists who quote themselves, but if I wrote only one lyric that was any good, it might have been: Choose your enemies carefully because they will define you. Turning the establishment into the enemy — it’s a little easy, isn’t it?

Sorry — you said you smuggled tapes out of the G8 summit? Yes. So this is also where I met Vladimir Putin. That’s where the picture of me and Putin is from. It’s not just that I met him; he made me laugh. He gave me the Russian hug, and then went [Bono speaks in mock Russian] and the translator said, “The president wish to know if you could help him with Russian debt.” I laughed, and he took the photo. And a protester was killed. Streets were on fire. The Italian police went into a high school that had been taken over by anti-globalization protesters and smashed the place and the people to bits. There was film of it, and I had to smuggle it out.

What happened to the film? No idea. I met these two girls and gave them the film, and I asked them, What’s your program? They were anarchists. I’m for different T-shirts these days. I still don’t like Che Guevara T-shirts. [Expletive] Che Guevara. To be in the company of people going, “No way, man,” I cannot hear it.

It feels as though you have more in your book about the specifics of negotiating with Condoleezza Rice on PEPFAR than you do about making, I don’t know, “One.” Should readers take that as an accurate reflection of what you believe is more important for them to know about your life? OK, there is significant background on the sessions in Hansa Studios in Berlin and I give some background on the relationships in the band being a little frozen. But the story of that song has been discussed, whereas the story of PEPFAR has not. Until this pandemic, PEPFAR was the largest intervention in the history of medicine to fight a single disease. George W. Bush pledged $18 billion to fight H.I.V./AIDS, and his go-to person on this, Dr. Rice, played a significant role. I would point out that Obama continued that legacy. He spent $52 billion. Outside of my family and the band, being a catalyst for that is absolutely the most important thing in my life. I thought it was important for me to show that, and also how it works to be an activist. I often instead use the word “actualist,” because activists sometimes like to stay on the outside and criticize, whereas the “actualist” wants to get [expletive] done. I found that if I was ready to drop some biases, coming from the left to work with the right, we could get stuff done. I know it will lose some music fans, but it was important for me to have that in there.

This is another question about how music has changed and where U2 fits in. So there’s a song of yours — and I could pick plenty of examples, but this one means a lot to me — called “Kite.” In the middle of it, you hit this big high note, and in that note I hear a whole way of feeling about the world and music’s place in it that, I think, has largely disappeared in contemporary music. What might account for that? And are you hearing younger musicians express any new ways of feeling that intrigue you? I realize the question is a little abstract, but I think you understand me. I do understand. And I want to say I read some interviews that you’ve done over the years, and it turns out your curiosity is not just in celebrity. You’re coming at your subjects from different sides because there’s something going on. The “something” is the question you’re trying to figure out. It’s interesting to try to figure out what that something is with U2, because we never talk about it. It’s easier to talk about politics and my life as an activist. But I also wrote the book to try to figure out what was going on with U2. I wanted to understand myself better, but I also wanted to understand the band better and the band’s place in culture. We wanted our music to change the world, as mad as that sounds, and I wanted to have fun. But the actual feelings in it? It would be interesting if we could figure out what that is.

You want me to tell you what’s good about U2? No, but what are the things that are not really written about or widely understood? Some of my friends tell me that for some parts of a show, they’ll look away from the band — I’m sure they’re bored looking at my fat arse — and look into the audience, and they see that communication that our music offers. These fairly able musicians who together become way more than they could ever achieve on their own — that alchemy, there’s something I would love to understand about it that I don’t.

I am impressed that you’re trying to lure me into explaining why U2 is good. No, I didn’t want that. Sorry! You’ve found me out to be as shallow as I am!

In the book, you say you have a “need to be loved at scale.” I think you’re giving me a firsthand glimpse. But I’ll give you your hit. It’s the obvious stuff: the strength of the melodies, the distinct sound of the band, the communication with the audience that your friends see. The only other thing — this is maybe hokey, but there’s an Irish term, yarragh, and it sort of means when a singer can go beyond himself. You have that sometimes. And that’s all I’m going to say, because the real answer to your question is the music itself. And also because you’ve turned me into an ass-kisser. [Laughs.] Well, that is helpful though. Let me bring you back on course. What you wanted to ask was what I am picking up from the newer crop of musicians.

Yeah, you said U2 wanted to change the world. I doubt that many young pop or rock stars believe that changing the world through music is attainable or even necessarily desirable. What do you think? What happened with the Clash and with punk rock was that we had the sense that the world was malleable. That you could kick it into shape and seduce it. That feeling may not exist anymore. But listen to Kendrick Lamar. He sees change as a spiritual force rather than a political one, and he thinks politics will follow the spirit. Or there’s a musical revolution in intimacy that started with Billie Eilish. For the generation that has listened to music only in earbuds, intimacy is the new punk rock. These songs from this young woman arrive and they’re almost perfectly formed and it’s as if they come from another place. Then you think, well, that’s not attached to a desire to change the world. Oh, yes, it is. That family is just smart enough to not want to be placarding about it. There is idealism coming through, but it’s easy to mock in these times. So people go, I don’t want to get into that because I’m going to get a right kicking. I suppose the Irishness in me is that I’m up for the kick. I get argumentative, and I quite enjoy it. It’s part of being fully alive to the possibilities of the day. What I loved about rock ’n’ roll when I came into it was that feeling of possibility. Yes, we’re going to drink shots of whiskey on the way home from the club. And yes, we’re going to talk about politics. And yes, we’re going to flirt with girls. That’s called being alive. The idea that you have to own up to just one of those things seems a real limitation.

You said you’ve been on the phone with Edge about new music. You guys typically go a few years between albums. Doesn’t recording so infrequently make finding inspiration, those moments of magic, harder than if you were creating more often? Or make it easier to fall back on old habits? Yes is the answer, and it has to change. On Jehovah’s mind was, I gave you a guitar and you don’t practice those scales and you’re off wandering in the desert? You’re running around, and now you’re wanting miracles? Give me a break! But now the feeling of the Edge’s and my songwriting together is at a very high level. My phone here is packed with new songs. We were tempted to put them out — out of competition. But we felt that the material was so strong that it deserved time to make sure people heard about them as well as heard them. When we’re in the room together with Larry and Adam, it’s great. I’m excited. I’ll play you one. This is a great one. Honestly, there’s about 20 of them finished. This is my favorite at the moment. Oh, it’s so exciting!

You’re going to play me your new music on your phone? This is going to be awkward. But, sure, give it a shot. Yeah! It’s called “The Bard’s Last Breath.” We have almost finished this album called “Songs of Ascent,” which we’re not putting out. We’re going to put out a rock ’n’ roll album. So we’re not putting this out, but I’m telling you it’s awesome. [Bono plays the music from his phone, singing along with his own recorded vocals.] “It’s a matter of degrees, but the bard was never pleased to wake up in the morning/And he said, ‘Rise, rise, the sun will rise and will set/It will rise, rise, and it hurries to forget.’/He said, ‘Rise! Rise! All are leaving just not yet.’/He said, ‘Rise! Rise! With his very last breath.’” There’s pure joy. I’ll play one more. It’s amazing. It’s called “Smile.”

Is it telling about your personality that I asked you a semi-skeptical question about inspiration and your response somehow involves unabashedly playing me your new music while you sing along? No, not abashed! This is called “Smile.” It’s a very cool, Beatle-y thing. [Bono again plays the music from his phone, singing along with his own recorded vocals.] “You make me smile,/It’s been a while,/You put a smile/Back on my face, back on my face.” [A guitar part enters.] Edge! It’s a ridiculous pop sort of “Rubber Soul,” isn’t it?

They sound like U2 songs. Do they sound like U2 songs? But the songwriting is there, you see.

So you had a whole U2 album that you scrapped? Didn’t scrap it, just held it. It’s called “Songs of Ascent.”

And you decided an angrier album made more sense? A noisy, uncompromising, unreasonable guitar album. In among that unreasonableness, it is likely that I will put the part of me, the anger that hasn’t been managed, to good use. While I am, with this book, trying to make peace with myself and my maker, I have no intentions of making peace with the world. That’s not on the agenda. I like to think I have the freedom to be whatever I want. My anger at inequality became focused on a community far away from home. You know, you have to pick your fights.

Let me get back to the book. There are a few howlers I want to ask about. We call them “huh moments” in songs. We don’t want a huh moment because huh moments take you out of the song.

All right, so the first “huh moment” is where you’re talking about George W. Bush, and you say you believe he would have fought in the Iraq war himself if he had to. That’s a little hard to swallow, given that the war was started under dubious pretenses. And that he hadn’t gone to Vietnam. I believe he was convinced that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, and I perhaps made an overstatement on his behalf. But it is Shakespearean to observe, as I have at first hand, his paintings of wounded warriors. I’ve seen their vulnerability screaming at him off the canvas. I think he was sincere about his intentions, albeit, in my view, ill conceived. What I object to is the easy caricature of thinking that it was done for the oil, the enrichment of his friends down at the golf club. I don’t think George Bush gives a [expletive] about his friends down at the golf club.

Here’s another one: You’re writing about Rupert Murdoch, and you raise the question about what you think of his morality and then never answer it. Why not? I was referring to that specific moment. It helps if you’re asking people to come to the aid of hundreds of thousands of people they don’t know, maybe even millions, not to call them names. You set aside your own prejudices. You don’t have to agree on everything if the one thing you agree on is important enough.

It sort of seems like unnecessary glad-handing of the rich and powerful, which I find hard to take. Me, too, darling. Me too.

I’ll admit my biases here. When I see billionaires, I’m inclined to see them as systemic problems. And I think when you see them, you’re inclined to see them as solutions. So when I read the adulation in “Surrender” for Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs and so on, with no nods to the notion that the power and influence of these people might be the symptom of a profoundly broken system, it does make me wonder if you, the punk-rock fan from Cedarwood Road, can see that side of things anymore or if you’ve just become a Davos man. Oh, that hurt.

Am I bugging you? I don’t mean to bug ya. [Laughs.] OK, it is likely that I have lost sight of the inequality issue within our own countries as I’m studying inequality on a global level. Perhaps if I wasn’t so involved in defending the project that is loosely described as globalization, and because I understand how that has narrowed the gap of inequality in the wider world — I suppose I’m not as well read about it. Some of the people you’re describing are people who have made resources available to not just One or (Red) and try to make sense of the madness of their money as best they can. But the globalization project is a very complicated one. In Ireland, globalization has helped move our country from despair and dire poverty. Hard for me to get angry about that. An AIDS activist I know called Agnes Nyamayarwo — met her 20 years ago. We had a meeting and were talking about what it was like for health workers to hand out the results of H.I.V. tests and know it was a death sentence. To people who grow up in abject poverty in the developing world, there’s no difference between our bank accounts. It’s like, you two got water, you got heat.

Last one, not from your book but Jared Kushner’s. Apparently he wrote about being with you and Ivanka and Billy Joel and the Murdochs in France. Purely from a social, logistical perspective, how does a situation like that arise? Is there some rich-person Bat Signal that goes up, and anyone who sees it is like, “Assemble!” What do you all have in common other than wealth or celebrity? Or is that enough to get through a lunch or whatever? Maybe I’m just antisocial. I have transgressed all liberal lines, but on that account, can I say I have no memory of either Jared Kushner or Ivanka? I have no memory of them. And the reason I have no memory of them being there is because it was a large gathering after a One board meeting. The stated objective was to find conservatives and bring them into the thing. Now, this was before Rupert Murdoch was officially evil. He had done some very bad behavior, but he hadn’t at that point tried to dismantle democracy. I don’t remember those other people, but it was the right thing to do.

Let’s go back to music. It’s clear that “Pop” was a conceptual dead end for U2 and that the band found itself again on “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” and then consolidated that with “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.” Was finding yourself again also a form of creative retrenchment? Because there is a sense that, since then, you guys have been reluctant to tamper with the classic U2 style. Well, “No Line on the Horizon” comes after those. Sonically it’s quite an experimental album — and songwriting-wise. “Moment of Surrender” is the best song on that and maybe of that decade. But the progressive-rock virus had crept in.

I like progressive rock. We all make mistakes. The progressive-rock virus gets in, and we needed a vaccine. The discipline of our songwriting, the thing that made U2 — top-line melody, clear thoughts — had gone. With the band, I was like, this is not what we do, and we can only do that experimental stuff if we have the songwriting chops. So we went to songwriting school, and we’re back and we’re good! Over those two albums, “Songs of Innocence” and “Experience,” our songwriting returned. Now we need to put the firepower of rock ’n’ roll back. I don’t know who is going to make our [expletive]-off rock ’n’ roll album. You almost want an AC/DC, you want Mutt Lange. The approach. The discipline. The songwriting discipline. That’s what we want.

Near the end of the book, you write about surrender and how it’s a concept you’re coming to understand. How does that understanding show up in your life? It’s not a natural concept for some of us. It still eludes me. Being in a band, you have to surrender to one another. In my marriage, it’s the same. You have to get to this place of surrender, to sublimate your own desires to succeed.

I understand the implications of the word. But how do you, Bono, surrender? It’s early days, David, it’s early days. I wrote the book to attempt an argument that a life is the creative act. The great canvas is all the things you do with that life. Then I got to a place where I thought, all I want is to write the great song and be sung by it, because that’s when you surrender. For me, that is the divine utterance: the pop song. I would not be surprised if U2 makes the best album of its life in the next years. Not because the world needs it, but because the band might. That’s a great reason to go into the studio. It’s not separate from wanting to communicate or connect — because you believed in the great rock ’n’ roll 45s. They changed lives. I still believe they can.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

David Marchese is a staff writer for the magazine and writes the Talk column. He recently interviewed Lynda Barry about the value of childlike thinking, Father Mike Schmitz about religious belief and Jerrod Carmichael on comedy and honesty.