"Surrendering" - In Which I Finish Bono's Book And Love It So Very Much!

Wednesday is about books. And writing. Today, Bono's Memoir. A fabulous book that has me back on board with being some sort of U2 fan.

So I finally finished Bono’s memoir. Which arrived before Christmas. And which I wrote somewhat enthusiastically about (in advance) when the book was announced. I mean, I was full of expectation. Particularly, given I’d sometimes been critical of Bono’s documentary pop-ups, or just plain cynical around his public persona.

I’m also what I’ve always described as a lapsed U2 fan; something I’ve also wrestled with somewhat in an earlier newsletter.

The weirdest thing, a couple of years back, going to see Sing 2 with the kids over Christmas and being charmed by Bono voicing a cartoon lion, and reworking one of the more treacly U2 songs, Stuck In A Moment That You Can’t Get Out Of. I was genuinely moved. And it forced me to reconsider.

What was all this nonsense I’d been ranting around – why was U2 dead to me, why had I had enough?

I’ve had a couple of goes through the whole catalogue over the last couple of years (I’d always insisted that The Unforgettable Fire and Zooropa, which bookend their mega years, are the flawed but untouchable albums in their discography) and I’ve picked up a new appreciation for a song here and there.

But damn it all, Bono’s book was wonderful. And not only that, it made me want to further connect with the music.

I took my time reading Surrender. Because I was loving it. It is that rare thing, a rock’n’roll memoir written by a real writer, or someone who might have chosen that instead of music in another life (cue: wish he had jokes by the old me).

I started reading Surrender before Christmas and was instantly into it – such vivid descriptions, a lot of attention to the anger in his house after his mother died when he was a teenager. Three men just yelling and never directly addressing their sadness and anger.

Initially I wasn’t too concerned with hearing the songs as I read. But with time, I was pulled back in to the catalogue once again. And if I remain a little unmoved by most of what’s been released in the last decade or so, I found a whole new rekindled love for 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. I liked it at the time, but somewhat swiftly moved on. It was almost a revelation to go back to it now, stripped of any of the pretensions around being a critic, I feel it’s probably stood the test of time a whole lot better than a lot of what was sitting alongside it. But also time is a funny thing, right?

I finished Bono’s memoir earlier this week and swiftly wrote a poem called The stridency of some of my cherished positions is softening. Which obviously has nothing to do with Bono, U2, and the book. And then of course has everything to do with all of those things too. Because that is how it works. Everything is connected.

What seems palpable on nearly every page is Bono’s love of music, and a deep sincerity that connects to that, stems from that; Bono’s heroes were punk musicians and U2 was borne of post-punk. And it might utterly shit some music fans around Bono’s age to know this, since it was always easy to see U2 as Big Music sell-outs, but there’s an authentic punk spirit and commitment that drives the energy of the band in its early days and is still there in some of that music.

It’s fun to read about too.

A band forming at school. Bono marrying his high school sweetheart. They’re still together. Both Bono and Ali. And the band. Hate neither the player nor the game.

Ego was the thing that made Bono unlikeable. For me at least. The big bravado of the sunglasses and leather look, and its various offshoots, from mid-90s on, it was hard to see this as the same guy that loves Americana and wrote a poem for Bob Dylan on his 50^th birthday, and wanted to save the world, and was always proudly a Christian regardless of season, and was then so busy with activism that it became his job rather than being a singer in a band. And it was all so annoying, and there was a phoniness about the persona that Bono seemed to be caught up in, he wasn’t escaping through it, he was hamming himself up, sure. But he was also so fully in character as to become that.

Well we are all many things, and contradictions abound.

To read Bono’s book is to get the full context. The sunglasses are for headaches. The activism was always real but the personality that grew around it got a little out of control. God complexes sneak up on you. They are rarely, if ever, planned.

To read Bono’s book is to delight in the writing of Angel of Harlem, the line about touching down at JFK on a cold and wet December day, coming from U2’s first arrival in America, just days before John Lennon was murdered. Bono had written to Lennon and asked him to produce Boy. It obviously never happened, but suddenly we imagine what parallel worlds might have mustered.

There’s something so charming about Bono going full Fanboy in his book. Writing with skill and dedication about the loves of his life: Ali, his children, his bandmembers, the best of their music, and mostly the art that he has absorbed along the way. It pulls you in.

And his ego is in check.

He is sometimes deeply embarrassed it seems. He is aware of the bad press, but not completely haunted by it.

He will also just tell you amazing yarns about Brian Eno’s philosophy in the studio, or the time they had to wait for big Pavarotti to consume a fishbowl-sized tank of pasta then have a wee snooze, before singing Miss Sarajevo’s magic into place from his bed.

Of course, Surrender arrives as U2 needs to regroup, or, um, re-remind us of themselves.

They’ve done that with a new album of re-recordings. Which I want to like. And mostly do. It’s just a little too much (volume-wise).

There is a doco on the Disney Channel which has David Letterman interviewing them and introducing Bono and the Edge to play some of the new versions in an intimate concert setting. And again, it’s not all there, not all the way, but it is charming. And interesting.

And there was even a recent Tiny Desk Concert. Which is worth your time.

The Edge has had to put up with a lot of pisstakes around his cultivated, pedal-driven sound, laughing to the bank all the way of course. But here he is doing the hard yards on just an acoustic guitar, and now in possession of a better falsetto than the band’s lead singer.

But in all of this, Bono’s book, the recent album, the shows, the promotion around it all, it’s not a band anymore. It’s just two guys.

Larry (the drummer) is having surgery on his shoulder. But beyond that he’s asked for a year off. It’s his turn to think about quitting, to think about a life outside the band. They’ve all had thoughts around walking away. They’ve all been pulled back. But Larry is the one that put up the poster advertising for some mates to jam with – he started the band by that very simple gesture.

Later this year, they’ll undertake their first tour without him. A tech stepping in as replacement to form a new rhythm section with bassist Adam.

Adam Clayton is either the rock of the band, or its wayward wind. But of course he can be both, since human beings are always many things, and within the many things we contain even more multitudes than we’re often aware of. Adam has walked from the band a number of times, or been too wasted to stand up on stage with the band. He’s also, according to Bono’s book, been the singular component of the sound, or the guy that stood up for everyone, and in one moving passage, Bono talks about a real life death-threat and how nervous he is to sing on stage. Adam moves to the front to cover his singer, to be prepared to take the literal bullet.

But Adam is hardly on the new album and nowhere in the promo.

So Bono and The Edge are selling the sound of the band, and going back to basics, and attempting to strip the catalogue away from Bono’s activism, from all the hobnobbing with far too many US presidents, from any of the political talks and ambitions.

And they sure aren’t about to sneak it onto your phone!

They are selling the sound of the band as separate from Bono’s side-hustles.

And Bono has done an incredible job, in his book, of showing such utter awareness around all of this.

He is humble, and funny, and wise. And the best of his music has meant a lot in my life, particularly in my early life.

So I went back to U2, and heard that I still haven’t found much to look for in anything after 2000’s All That You Can’t. But I heard a whole lot on Pop that I forgot I cared about. I was able to listen to The Joshua Tree with nearly as much love as when I first heard it – where once I had foolishly (?), punkishly attempted to write it off!

I have always loved everything up to Joshua Tree. And that hasn’t changed. Just hadn’t always felt the need to check back in. But those albums stand up as little monuments. Kids becoming men. Working things out. Together. So many great moods and movements and, yes, songs. Some glorious songs. Deceptively simple songs. Workmanlike songs that suddenly snap right into place and give you their big feelings as a gift.

And then U2 in the nineties. That’s where I left them. I played dozens of their songs in a covers band. It helped me to fall out of love with the music. That’s just what happens when you play music in a band. It can elevate some songs. It can leave others on the side of the road.

But there was so much ambition in and around all the pomp and headlines. And to go back to those 90s albums now, is to hear great music inside all of that outward-facing “Show”. The antics were one thing, but the songs were clearly there.

And it probably took Bono’s book to crystalise that for me.

My hope is that the book will be read by non-fans. Or lapsed fans like myself. Because it’s so wonderful to read the engaging stories, to feel the heart at every step of the way.

It's not so much about being born-again a U2 fan once more. Just an interesting step on the journey. Right?

Well, I decided to make a playlist of various U2 songs and versions. This isn’t so much a best of for me, as it has been a way back in. Some of the new renditions of old classics, some of the bog-standard old album cuts. All mingling. So maybe also give that a listen sometime.

Have you read Bono’s book? Or will you give it a try? Tempted?