Four months passed without my hearing anything from Bono. All that filtered through was that he was “very busy,” which was not exactly breaking news to me. During that period, Bono, on behalf of DATA’s campaign Keep America’s Promise to Africa, had ensured a $289 million contribution from the U.S. Senate; had been made a Doctor in Laws at Trinity College in Dublin; had illustrated the booklet for a modern version of Prokofiev’sPeter and the Wolf,produced and narrated by his old friend Gavin Friday. He wanted to show his gratitude toward the people at the Irish Hospice Foundation, who had taken great care of his father (whose features inspired him to draw the character of Peter’s grandfather), as all royalties derived from the book’s sales went to that institution. He also enthused about the new album that U2 was preparing: “It has to be a monster, a dragon, and this is!” he claimed.
Actually, the gestation of that dragon seemed somehow painful. I got the impression that the band, tired of Bono’s endless traveling around and his second job with DATA, were holding him hostage in order to speed things up. In late September, a magazine sent me over to Dublin for a quick piece of travel writing. At that time Bono was in his house near Nice. Catriona arranged a meeting for me at the Ocean Bar, right across from U2’s Hanover Quay Studios (it is said that band and crew, using a little motor boat, often come here for a bite). At some point her phone rang.
“It’s my boss,” she said.
“Our next conversation will be on the phone,” warned the Godfather, after having described in a lyrical tone the sun setting on the Mediterranean Sea.
A couple of weeks later, I had a phone appointment. It was a Sunday morning. I was in the countryside near Paris, in the house where I was raised. It felt weird to talk to him in a place where all my child’s memories still linger on and where the world, in my view, seemed very small. On the street below, my son was playing with a friend, both of them crouching on an old trolley formerly used to carry wooden cubes. Sometimes their screams would disrupt the recording of the conversation, here and there shot through with their cries of excitement. This time again, I was struck by the serene tone in Bono’s voice.
Maybe you remember the handwritten letter I sent to you right after Bologna. I don’t know if you got it.
Yeah, I’m sure I did.
I want to hear your thoughts, so let me remind you what I wrote. “After spending a day with you in Italy, I saw a whole new dimension to your character. You are what people make of you: you are there, as you say, to be used. In my view, you try to represent what’s best inside of them. So there’s one big question here. Since you are such a flexible and pliable person putting yourself out to be used, some people may try to take advantage of that, with a different agenda in mind. A violent or fanatical one, maybe. My hunch is that you are well able to defend yourself against such people. But that, in a way, is an interesting question. I have this impression—I don’t know why—but I wouldn’t want to see you crossed. I mean, why do I feel that way about this man of peace? I’m sure you’ve been through situations in your life when you could have turned into a monster.” Now what would you say?
Well, I despise violence, but violence is something I know a little bit about. [long pause] I’m sorry, that last question’s taken me aback for a second, but you’re not way off. I think the time that I knew that I was capable of all the things that I disliked the most in other people was, oddly enough, one of the most joyful moments: when our first child was born. And I just felt this love for this beautiful little girl who was so fragile and so vulnerable. Some point around that week, I started to understand why wars were fought. I started to understand why people were capable of cruelty in order to protect themselves and their own. And I was very humbled to realize that.
But what happened exactly?
I can see it in your eyes.
I can’t recall. This is one of the great and bewildering things to me: the more you experience love, the more full of it you should be. But the opposite sometimes happens, because you fear the loss of life. You fear the vulnerability that can take the goodness of it away. This might have happened because when I was just a kid, I had the sense that your whole life can change with a death in the family. It’s like they say—at least I say—it’s the loss of money that leads to the love of it. You know, the people who care about money are never the people who just made a lot. They’re the people who have lost a lot. And I think that might be true in relationships, when if you’ve lost somebody important to you early on, you live in fear of that the rest of your life. I suppose that’s one of the things that I would fear, and that might explain the rage that you referred to earlier, which is real in me, at some point, it really is. An odd thing to own up to, but I do know it’s true. I’ve not entered any period of analysis. I haven’t questioned myself enough.
Were you ever tempted to go into analysis or therapy?
Maybe that’s why I’m doing this. Seriously, you enter a conversation with somebody whom you trust, whom you can talk to about your motives. [laughs] I would have to think that it was part of some creative work, before I’d ever do it. Because if I was sitting there and talking to a psychiatrist or something, I would be thinking: “God, I could do other things with that hour. I could take my kids for a walk.” But if I’m sitting down with you, an old friend, in doing something that my kids might someday read, then I can excuse it. So, here we are, Michka. These questions are big buttons to press, and I don’t know the answer to all of them. Where that rage comes from? Partly, I would say it’s a sense that a life can be taken away from you, quickly, in a dumb second for the dumbest reason. That makes me mad, defensive and protective.
Actually, that leads me to another question. You have often evoked the idea of suicide in your lyrics. One of the first songs that you recorded with U2, “A Day Without Me,” was about a friend’s suicide. One of your most popular recent songs, “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” deals with your friend Michael Hutchence’s suicide. Is taking your own life and turning that violence against yourself, like Ian Curtis from Joy Division or Kurt Cobain did, something that you may have considered at some point in your life?
I think everybody, in their teenage years, plays with that thought, and I certainly did. But I was very distressed in my teenage years. I was kind of all over the shop. I didn’t know who or where I was. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become very intolerant of those thoughts. I am tempted to see it as self-indulgence. That was very hard when Michael took his life, because you understand that people can get to a black hole and they just can’t climb out of that. In fact, the more they try—as they say, if you’re in a hole, stop digging—the more they examine the process, getting lost in their own life, the bigger the hole. And Michael. I often think: Gosh, if he’d just put it off for half an hour, so that despair left him, he’d still be here. But the thing that finally I’ve got a low tolerance for, is that having seen so many people struggle for their breath and for sustenance in Africa, where I do a lot of work, and watching people beg for their life, it makes me very angry when I think of people throwing theirs away.
Sure, but if someone feels hopeless and despairing, and you tell him: “Yes, but put this in perspective with the real pain and the real suffering that people have in Africa,” it doesn’t . . .
[interrupting] Well, I do think perspective is a cure. [laughs]
But very often, it simply doesn’t work at all. People may be aware and have access to plenty of information through the media, but knowing that people suffer from hunger or AIDS in Africa will not help them solve their problems.
It’s a very real illness, depression. I understand chemical imbalance and all that. But I do think its prevalence has a lot to do with a lack of perspective on your life and a lack of empathy of what’s going on in other lives. This may seem hard, but I read a story of a mental hospital that was next to a school, that burnt down. So the headmaster of the school was visiting in this hospital, and, after the incident, decided to recruit patients who were recovering well to get them involved in a community project, and sought out for volunteers to help clean up their next door. And nobody put up their hand. Was this shyness? He was confused. And one of the doctors said: that’s why a lot of these people are here, they’re pickled in themselves. That was the expression I remember from the story, and it stuck with me.
That’s a very good phrase.
It is. And of course you’re gonna be careful, especially if you’re undergoing that kind of analysis, Michka, my friend. [laughs] We must be careful not to stew in our own juices. See, if I look at depression from another angle, I could be more positive. If you look at it as a nerve end. A leper would love to feel pain in their hands, as he catches in a door or as he falls into a fire. So perhaps we should see depression as a nerve end, as a thing that reminds us that everything isn’t OK. Because, really, everything isn’t. There are reasons to be uncomfortable in the world, and we’re not gonna take them on 24/7. Occasionally, it is worth asking some very hard questions about yourself and the world that you live in, the inequalities of it, and I think that that’s a way to put depression to use—as a nerve end to remind you of what’s not right and get about fixing it. But there’s another image I could use about analysis, which I’ve heard, which is “the rusty nail that sits at the bottom of the glass of water.” You take it up through analysis, you take it out of the glass of water and you’re staring at it, and go: “Gosh, look what I found in my subconscious—or unconscious—I found a rusty bent nail . . .” You look at it, and you stare at it, and go: “Wow. I didn’t know that it was there.” Then you put it back in the glass of water. [laughs] The only difference is: now you know it’s there, and the water’s been disturbed and discolored. But you didn’t take it out and get rid of it. So I think, if you’re gonna listen to yourself in these moments, and you discover stuff about yourself that you don’t like, that you have a duty to fix them. Because if you don’t, then it’s either the thing that I said earlier, the “pickled” thing, where it’s just self-indulgence, or you just end up disturbing the waters, and it doesn’t lead you anywhere. I’m all for it if it leads you somewhere. So I hope this conversation will lead me [pause] to the pub!
[laughs] You mean to a positive place.
Yeah.
I was thinking about that phrase you just used: “We must be careful not to stew in our own juices.” I feel it applied to me at some point in my life, so I went through therapy for three years, because I thought I was too self-centered, and it was not interesting at all. Contrary to popular belief, you go through therapy to stop stewing in your own juice.
And this therapy brought you out of yourself. Did it, eventually?
Eventually, it did. Also, it helped me understand that being depressed, and feeling that you’re a failure at some point in your life, is quite positive, actually. It’s very good. [laughs]
Yeah, but if it brings you somewhere. And it obviously did with you. Yeah. Now, that’s positive. I’ve a couple of friends that have been down that road, and I’m amazed at them. I’ve one particular friend who’s been through that, and he’s really practical about the fact that he fucked up as a kid, and just messed around with people, and had never dealt with it. So he kind of went, and it was like taking a car for a service.
Exactly. I was extremely down to earth about it. It’s just like: I have a flat tire, I have to fix it. Because I’m not going anywhere with a flat tire. [laughs]
Yeah, well, that’s it. I’m not against it if I had the time. I think it’d be a good thing to check your thought process. Unless you have a plumb line, the wall can be built crooked. So I think, for me, that is prayer, and my life worshipping God through music.
It’s funny, you know, because when I discovered U2’s music, way back in 1980, I could feel the faith that emanated from it. Still, your music seemed based on a very depressing view of life. Your sound had that heavy, gloomy thing to it. I mean, you made it a matter of principle to record your first single with Martin Hannett, who was Joy Division’s producer.
You’re absolutely right about the color of the period: purple turns black. That industrial stuff was just gray. But I think our music, even though working with Martin Hannett, was always shot through with light. Even if some of the subjects were dark, the music had within it the antidote for the subject matter. It was strange. But, you see. You’re in your teens, or you’re coming out of your teens. This is what people want to read: the great novel, with the moral subjects that matter, because you want to understand life and the forces that make you. So inevitably, in a teenage way, you grapple with the big questions. And I love that about youth. I don’t know if I told you this—this is self-indulgent—but Anton Corbijn had an exhibition in an important museum in his native Holland, and he asked me to open it for him. He warned me there was one room just filled with pictures of me. “Giant Bonos,” he laughed. “Isn’t that how you see yourself? Ha! Ha!” Well, I’m a huge fan of his, and his hugeness—he’s a very tall man. So I went along to introduce one of the great photographers of the age and ended up in this room full of Bonos standing and looking at me over twenty years. And I saw this picture. I must have been twenty-two or something, getting into a helicopter for a video. I think it was “New Year’s Day.” I just saw this face, and it was my first face. The eyes were so clear, and so fearless, and I looked at it. A journalist walked up beside me and said: “What would you say to that person now? You’ve got one thing you can say to him. What is it?” I was going to be funny, but then I thought I shouldn’t. I told him: “I would tell my younger self: ‘You’re right. Don’t second-guess yourself.’ ” I felt it so strongly. I wish I knew then how right I was. I wasn’t wrong. You’re supposed to go: “Oh, I was foolish then. I’ve grown up, and I laugh.” I do laugh at some of the music, some of the statements I’ve made. Some of the image problems do leave me a little embarrassed, a little red-faced. But there’s a strength to that naiveté. I wasn’t wrong about the world. The world is more malleable than you think. We can bend it into a better shape. Ask big questions, demand big answers.
Well, actually, that’s something people tend to say about their youth: “I wish I had been braver back then.” Is that the case with you?
Well, I was. We were brave, but we didn’t know how brave at the time. Because here’s a band who couldn’t really play, who forged their own music, because they couldn’t play very well other people’s, with the audacity to say: “We can be a big success without having to sell out. And we don’t have to be embarrassed by our ambition.” It’s worth remembering that wanting to make big music in a big band was a hanging offense in the music press at that time. “Selling out” was a popular pejorative. Ideas like “street credibility” dominated discussion. We knew a lot of this stuff was nonsense. What street were they talking about and who did you want to be credible with? “Do you have anything original to say?” was our point. “Are the tunes any good?” So we were right about so many things. That naiveté is very, very powerful.
But after growing out of that naiveté, and maybe getting disillusioned, weren’t you tempted to become cynical?
Well, I think cynicism often disguises itself as humor.
Irony.
Yes. But finally, Zoo TV was not cynical. It was fun and it was a strategy.
The strategy was judo: to use the force of the attacker to defend yourself.
And we were being attacked from all corners, because we were very open.
That face that I talked about earlier was an open face. It was wide open. It was ready for a slap, and to be mocked. So we could feel the media about to close in on us. That was an amazing thing that happened. I realized the force of the media at the end of The Joshua Tree. We had a big record, and the natural thing to do would be to just make a live album at that point of the tour, cash in and go on holidays. But we decided: “Oh no, we can’t do that.” So we wrote songs to put on this. We’d have new songs. We’d make a film about our journey through America. We’d make it much more interesting: we’d make a double album, put it out at half price, and rather than being a band who thought they were the center of the world, we would put these musicians that we were fans of at the center of our world, and in the artwork, with pictures of Johnny Cash. We wrote songs—not all great songs—but we would sort of declare ourselves as the fans that we are. And this Rattle and Hum thing came out. But the opposite came back at us. It was like: “Oh, this is egomania, they think they are now one of the Pantheon of these great artists, and they feel they can quote our music.” I remember thinking, “This is exactly the opposite of what we are trying to do!” But we actually couldn’t undo that. It was just a given that these so-called fans had now lost the run of themselves. “Egomaniac,” “messianic.” These were the kind of words that were being thrown at us. So I just thought: “Right. If people want megalomania, let’s give them megalomania! Let’s really have some fun with this!” [laughs] Let’s try to communicate with the people who don’t like U2 because we’re not real rock stars. I don’t think it was cynical, it was more fun. And by the way, there’s a part of me that kind of would like to be that rock star.
Do you sometimes think about what would have become of you if you had followed your bad or lazy instincts? I’ll give you an example. As I reminded you, Adam once said that if he hadn’t been the bass player in U2, he would have become an average landscape gardener [see Chapter 3]. [Bono bursts out laughing] So have you ever pictured yourself doing an ordinary job, or even following your more base instincts?
[Pondering] The life of crime? You have to have a better memory for the life of crime. So I’d probably be [confidently] a property developer. Beach front, a specialty. “Location, location . . .”
It’s funny that you should mention that. It’s actually one of the questions I wanted to ask at some point. I don’t know much about rock stars, aside from you. What do rock stars usually do? They buy cars, they indulge in drugs. And while we’re at it, what are you willing to reveal about drugs? Paul McCartney recently came clean about cocaine and heroin. What about you? Maybe we’ll have to wait until you’re sixty to find out.
If I ever had so much as a spliff, I would not talk about it, because it’s too easy a headline: “Bono Denies Smoking Joint,” “Bono Admits Smoking Joint.” It’s an invitation to a debate that I’m not interested in.
Right. But you don’t shy away from revealing drunken episodes, do you?
No, but that doesn’t make headlines for an Irish person. Bottom line: I think drugs are dumb. Bottom line: I think abuse of alcohol is dumb. Bottom line: I think that cigarette smoking is dumb. And that’s it, really. My point about alcohol is that if you abuse something, it abuses you back. That’s really it. Whether it’s a spliff, whether it’s anything, there’s a boomerang to it.
OK. And what about a rock star abusing real estate?
[laughing] There’s a couple of people that’d surprise you. I remember RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan telling me that his whole thing was buying land. He didn’t want any buildings on the land. Just land. Because money was losing its value. And I love that. Bob Dylan, I know he loves land. People who live their life off the abstract tend to holiday in the concrete. [laughs] I do love buildings. I just like places.
I don’t want to sound like a part-time psychoanalyst here, but I once read that as a child, you spent your family vacations in a trailer on a wasteland by the sea. Then the property was developed, and you weren’t allowed to stay there anymore. Is there a link somewhere?
That was a railway carriage that belonged to my grandfather, in the sand dunes, on a beach in the north of Dublin. There was an extraordinary moment in my childhood when we arrived. The farmer who had sold the land to my grandfather had died. When his son was looking for the contract that my grandfather didn’t have—it was just a cash transaction—he had told him he had to get off. My grandfather wouldn’t get off, and he bulldozed this train carriage, just smashed it. It was an extraordinary moment I remember as a child. I remember throwing rocks at his glass houses. I was very angry about it.
What was the first house you bought? I’m assuming it was in Dublin.
I bought a tower, a Martello tower, which I think was a French design. The French used the Martello towers to defend themselves against the English. Then the English took it, used to defend themselves against the French. That was a great military idea. There are seven-foot-thick granite walls, and it was like a lighthouse, this one. It had a glass top, a bedroom for myself and Ali, and then a living room in the middle, and at the bottom it had a dining area, with the kitchen in the wall.* We loved it! I have a few nice houses now; I must admit that one of my deepest fears is that I’d become that awful person who would just buy property and leave it there, not even use it, appreciate it, when there’s people sleeping in the street. That would be the sort of person I would hate as a teenager. That would have been my nemesis. I know I’m a little self-indulgent now, but I will say I enjoy them. As I perhaps said to you before, decadence is when you don’t notice what you have around you.
So you’ve been investing in real estate, mainly.
I was never the sort to put money under the mattress, rather make something out of it. I love art, some of my friends are artists, so I buy a little bit here and there. I love places to build an environment, admitting that I’ve made money buying and selling such places. I have a much harder time selling than buying, though.
You mean you do this as speculation?
Most of the time it’s not speculation, but I wouldn’t rule that out.
You bought a place in Paris. Are you going to buy a place in every big city in the world?
When I fall in love with a place, a city, I’m curious about how people live and where people live. I’m anxious to get out of the hotel, experience a little bit of the real life of that city or town. I might want an apartment, I might want not to feel such a tourist, the eye of a traveling rat, you could call it.
Just before we hung up, Bono invited me to come to London for the next week, so we could resume our talk there. He told me that U2 had booked Air Studios to do some work on their next album.