This last conversation happened in August 2004, in the villa owned by Bono near Nice. After nearly two years, we had to draw a line somewhere. As I am writing this, I don’t seem to remember exactly what happened there, or in what order. Disconnected images flash through my head. Bono orders his sons Elijah and John to attack me in the pool . . . It’s 8:15 A.M., the sun’s already scorching, the house is silent, Bono and I are reading through the manuscript on my computer screen, bursting into laughter from time to time . . . Invisible Italian fans lying on the narrow beach down below are giving out a surreally sparse applause between numbers of the new U2 album played on the house CD system as the sun sets . . . White wine again . . . Ali closing the doors, not to hear the album again . . . More wine . . . A reading session ending way past midnight, Bono hardly raising an eyebrow when I say we have to go through one more chapter . . . The endless rattle of cicadas threatening to drown Bono’s voice on my MiniDisc recorder . . . The two of us, at dawn, sitting side by side across the street in a nondescript café, in the midst of indifferent regulars, reading through more chapters, trying to get the language right, adding new lines . . . Bono pedaling and sweating in the gym downstairs, sitting on a machine thought up by the Devil himself . . . and finally waving good-bye with a broad smile.
I think there is something we need to make clear for this last time. Last year, you wrote and delivered long speeches in front of German bigwigs, students at the University of Pennsylvania, and not least the U.S. Congress. You turned your hand to writing a few screenplays, and your friend Wim Wenders even filmed one of them, The Million Dollar Hotel. Bob Dylan is about to publish the first volume of his Chronicles.* So, I mean, you would not be the least qualified person to write a memoir. I’m sure a lot of people will see this book and say: “Why the hell did he need that French guy with a strange name [Bono laughs] to tell us what matters the most to him in his life? Why didn’t he do it by himself?”
It’s like playing handball. I need a good hard head to be the wall. The speed of the ball is going to set the mood of the game. You’re really slow.
Thank you very much.
Of course, I could have written this book, but it wouldn’t have been this book. And it would have taken a year.
Or ten . . . Anyway, I presume the results would not have been the same.
That’s right. The results would not have been the same. It would be more interesting in some ways, because it would be even more personal. But it would be less interesting in the sense that it would not have an argument up against it. I like to be pushed, I’m familiar with being pushed. And I think, at this point in time, I have some explaining to do.
Explaining? But who’s asking?
I suppose I’m talking about our audience, the ones who gave me this incredible life. The nature of magazine interviews is such that they often have to condense things into some easy quotes and explanations.
I still don’t know why you need to explain yourself to anyone.
Maybe I’m trying to explain myself to myself.
So that’s what you need my hard head for.
I told you, at the beginning of this, the past is not a place I like to visit. This project is forcing me to go there, to tidy up a few things in my mind before I can move forward. I normally wouldn’t give time to such thoughts. I’m not normally a navel-gazer. I’ve always thought you find yourself in other people. I’m visiting here. I don’t want to set up house.
That’s why you never thought of psychoanalysis. Or maybe I’m completely wrong. Maybe you actually did.
As I told you, this is as close as I’m going to get to introspection.
So I’ve become a part-time celebrity shrink. I should be ashamed.
Shrink or priest—you choose.
A cross-examining cop, while you’re at it. How about bartender? I mean, I supply the booze [which I actually do each time I visit], you tell me the stories.
Perfect. Though wine can be cloudy. What we need here is probably plain ol’ still water, cold and clear.
I guess a head can get too full. Maybe yours was about to burst.
I have a room, which is my brain, and it’s very, very, very . . . untidy! There is stuff fallen everywhere. There are some very important ideas next to some very silly ones. There is a bottle of wine that was opened five years ago, and there is a lunch I haven’t eaten from last summer. There are faces of children who are going to die but don’t have to. There’s my father’s face telling me to tidy up my room. So that’s what I’m doing—tidying my room.
And you really think talking helps you do that?
I could write it, I could paint it. I usually sing it. I usually talk my way out of things—not into them.
I know that the painter Louis Le Brocquy is an important figure for you. Also, the presence of that big Basquiat canvas in your house in Dublin makes a statement. Your best friend Guggi went on to become a painter. You do sketches yourself. You told me once that one of the most important people you’ve met in your life was Balthus. It seems to me that he was as important to you, in a way, as Johnny Cash.
Very similar.
Do you regret not becoming a painter?
They are two very different actions that you can do completely at the same time. You can paint and listen to music, and be in complete discipline, which is interesting. Painting strikes me as just a way of getting to those feelings that are from somewhere way off. And rather like writing songs, rather like talking to you, painting helps me clarify my mind, which is an untidy mind, and pick up the stuff off the floor. I feel better after I painted.
Would you go so far as to use the word remorse?
You mean a sadness that I’m not doing it? No. As I get older, I’m doing it more and more.
I didn’t expect you to surrender unconditionally when I compared the importance of Louis Le Brocquy to the importance of Johnny Cash in your life.
They’re both men that left me with the most important clues on how we should live. Both had incredible dignity, incredible honesty. Louis’s still alive. I’m always looking for clues. Some people have them, and some people don’t have any. When people don’t have any clues, I’m less likely to stick around. I don’t in any way consider myself to be above anybody else, but I’m just excited when I’m in the company of older people, because they have so much more to offer. Sitting there with some punk rocker who’s just figured how to look good in the mirror is not really on to keep me up, nowadays. [laughs]
I don’t know much about that relationship with Balthus.
We had a very unusual relationship. It was very intense. He lived very privately, some would say reclusively, in a place called Rossinière, in Switzerland, in this extraordinary-looking “grand chalet.” I had met him through Louis Le Brocquy, who was very aware of Balthus when he was the head for the Villa Medicis [from 1961 to 1976]. He was just in his eighties then. Louis told me to bring a bottle of Irish whiskey. With his wife, Setsuko, they lived a formal nineteenth-century life, really. I just adore this woman. When I first met her, she was in traditional Japanese garb. Harumi, their daughter, has become a very good friend—she’s a jewelery-maker, a very gifted girl. I also knew Stash and Theo, who were from an earlier marriage. I think I just got on with the whole family. I remember Balthus showing me a room that he had in honor of Harumi, called “the room full of toys.” He made this room full of all her toys as a child, collected as art objects. Then they had another room full of birds, with these beautiful birds just flying around. It was a magical place. So whenever I was there, he wanted to say hello, and so did I. We would meet up and talk about everything: God, death, sex, painting, music. And it became ongoing, this discussion. He asked me to his eighty-fifth birthday [i.e., 1993]*. I arrived, and the room was full of friends and family, some famous faces, some down-to-earth locals, some of what you might call . . . the noble rot. [laughs] Old European families. It was very interesting. I felt honored to be there. There was a moment when Setsuko explained this was a costume ball. I said: “I didn’t know. I don’t do costume balls.” She came to my room and said: “Balthus has chosen something for you. He’s the only other person that’s going to be wearing this.” And it was a . . . samurai costume! [laughs] So, OK. So I put on the samurai costume. In the end, myself and Balthus ate together on our own, dressed as samurais. Because he wanted to talk. I don’t know what it was with Ireland, or what it was with musicians, but I think he wanted to talk more about art and music. So we just spent a lot of time together. At one point, he took me into his studio. He was staring at what must have been one of his last paintings. I asked him if he was finding it difficult to paint. He said: “No, I can paint.” He said: “The thing that I miss the most is drawing. I was a very good draftsman, he said, now I can’t draw. It makes me feel afraid for the future.” And in that moment the great man looked bereft, abandoned by the future. This man, accused of arrogance all his life, humbled himself in front of a musician. I asked him: did he pray? He looked around at all the unfinished work in the studio: “These are my prayers.” And he wept. I have no words to describe to you how that moment changed me as an artist. This old dignified painter—the only painter Picasso ever spoke enviously of, however much he loved Matisse—one of the great masters of the twentieth century, wept in front of me, about how he could only paint now and couldn’t draw.
I guess you didn’t dare to mention your own drawing or painting to him.
No, it wasn’t the right moment to hit him with my demos. [laughs] Mind you, I’ve been drawing a lot recently.
Which one do you prefer, by the way, drawing or painting?
I guess, drawing would be my answer. It’s where you make the breakthroughs. Painting is where you execute what you learned in the breakthroughs. The thing about Balthus that struck me was his attempt to turn his life into art as well as his work . . . even his death. His funeral was extraordinary. Most incredible thing.
What was extraordinary about it?
It was in Rossinière, with those twenty-foot Alphorns being blown, and a horse-drawn hearse driven by an undertaker in a black top hat. The night before, his gorgeous daughter Harumi picked me up at the train station. We went to the “grand chalet.” He was lying in his bed, windows open, snow blowing through. We spent some quiet time with him, and I thought: I haven’t spent a lot of time with him. Why do I feel so close to this man, to this family? Then Balthus’s wife Setsuko came in, and asked me the most disarming and unexpected question. She explained to me that she was a Buddhist, but wanted to become a Catholic. She said: “The cardinal’s coming down from Rome. I want to be made a Catholic. Will you be my godfather?,” which is really one of the most moving moments for me. Now I have a Japanese godchild in her sixties who, I might add, is getting younger by the year. I’m not a great godparent. I forget to send the Christmas cards, but she always remembers to send me. She is the angel at the top of my tree.
Did he ever say anything about music to you: your own, or music in general?
[pause] He didn’t really. He didn’t speak a lot about music. He didn’t know our music. He knew my conversation. That’s all that he knew.
He knew you were a musician.
Conversation to him was music. I don’t think he had ever listened to a U2 song as well. It was the conversation we were having. Somebody told me that at one particular event he was eating with twenty or thirty of the “litterati glitterati.” He banged the table and just said: “Has anyone here got anything at all interesting to say?” [laughs] Look, I’m not sure if I had. But maybe it was just a different accent, a different point of view. His work was obsessed with the concept of youth . . . and innocence, and the moment of losing it.
Rotting innocence. That’s the subject of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. And of course U2’s Boy as well. Even on How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, you’ve been back there again.
Yeah, exactly. I hadn’t thought of that, but that is exactly right. I think he had what some of us share—a certain Tourette’s syndrome. The Tourette’s syndrome is where you say the words you’re not supposed to say. The best example of it I know was in a church in Dublin. The vicar’s wife, as people were leaving the church in the morning, would be saying: “Good-bye, Mrs. Andrews! Fuck you, Bitch!,” “Hello! What a nice little fucker bastard cow!” And it’s the most amazing syndrome. I think myself and Balthus had it in terms of subject matter. In his era, the only subject you couldn’t approach with any curiosity was puberty. You weren’t allowed to go there, so he had to go there. For me and rock ’n’ roll, it was spirituality. You just can’t go there, so I went there. There’s a little bit of Tourette’s syndrome involved, I think.
So what did Balthus leave you with?
He left me with the idea, best said by the Dalai Lama, which is: “If you want to meditate on life, you start with death.” That’s what the beginning is. I’ve always held older people to be more interesting, as I say, right through from Frank Sinatra to Willie Nelson, to Johnny Cash, to Balthus. In this sense, I have more in common with Hindu societies than with Judeo-Christian, where we are obsessed with youth.
You quoted your late friend Michael Hutchence, who said: “Stars are the worst starfuckers.” But it seems to me—and it’s a good thing you’d mention your relationship with Balthus—that you are a bigger fan than a star. I think of you as a superfan as much as a superstar.
Great!
Among all the stars you’ve met in your life, what do you think all the greatest ones had in common? I’m talking about stars in the sense of people who went on to achieve extraordinary things. It may be Frank Sinatra or it may be Balthus.
[ponders] Well, the older stars in the firmament, the more ancient stars in the firmament, I look at them sometimes just to understand how they’re still in the sky, OK? Wisdom. My fascination is warranted just by that. But the ones whose light will remain with me long after they have burnt out are the ones that had grace. Because it’s rare that the gift comes with grace. You get the gift—you don’t get the grace. Some of the biggest assholes I’ve ever met are the most gifted. So when you’re getting both together, like Louis Le Brocquy, like Nelson Mandela, like Johnny Cash, like Willie Nelson, they leave an indelible impression. Because it’s “pretty girl” syndrome. Being gifted is like being born beautiful. You don’t have to work a day in a year in your life for it. You were born with it. In one sense, it’s like blue blood, money, gift, or beauty. They are the things that should make you the most humble, because they are not things you have earned. They are things you were given. Yet, it is my experience that they make people the most spoiled. And the people who work the hardest, and who have overcome the most obstacles in their life, who have a reason to be arrogant, who have a reason to beat their breasts are the most humble, sometimes. I can’t get over that. If it’s maddening to me, how mad must God be, who’s giving these gifts out. I don’t quite know how He dishes out those gifts, whether it’s DNA or favor, but it’s bewildering to me. So to make it through success and still have manners, to still have curiosity, intellectual curiosity, to still have some grace, to keep your dignity, that is really . . . rare.
You mean there are very few examples.
We’ll, I’m not one, but I’d like to be. I think there are very few. In music, the hardest thing seems to be to make it through with your marbles, your mentality intact. [laughs] You might even be a nice person, but . . . the drugs! You’re looking at people and they’ve one eye. You’re thinking: was it really worth it? Why did you give yourself to this? And they look at you like they’re Van Gogh who had to cut off his ear. I think: “You know what? I didn’t need you to cut off your ear. I liked your paintings before you cut your ear off.” I don’t want people to climb up on a cross and die aged thirty-three to be a great musician. My heroes are survivors, the ones that lived: Bob Dylan, who kept his privacy by creating disinformation by a series of elaborate masks, by avoiding the mainstream and creating his own path through the thicket. So I love these people. I’m much more interested in them than in some new star or starlet.
I was wondering: were you ever fascinated by cult figures such as Syd Barrett. The ones who died or disappeared into seclusion when they were young?
Death cults.
Yeah.
No. Never.
I mean, it’s quite widespread in rock culture, that mythology of the shooting star.
I’d rather be the North Star. As Bob says, you can navigate by it.
Speaking of stardom and fame, you know that you’re a cult figure. I mean, a massive one. Right?
Is that better than celebrity?
I mean, there are so many Bono obsessives out there.
Mmh . . .hmm . . .
Isn’t there a secret part of you that wonders: “Sure, I’m proud of what U2 and I have achieved. But what the hell do they see in me?” or “No, they got it all wrong. I never wanted to be a cult figure”?
I understand the mechanism . . . They say the worst fans, the most obsessive fans of magic . . . are magicians. They know they put the rabbit in the hat earlier but are still amazed when they pull it out later. [laughs] I have no illusions at all about myself as to why people care about me. I know why they care about me. I’m in a great band that has stuck together. I’m being open and vulnerable in my music, and I’ve gotten away with it. End of story. That explains it all, OK? So I swear to God I do not even consider it. These days, I sometimes forget that I’m in a band. That’s the strangest thing. I’ve gotten used to the extra leg. I don’t see it anymore. Actually, I’ve got to the stage now where I’m almost a civilian again.
So you’re saying that whether you’re a cult figure or not, it’s all the same to you.
Somebody said: “Do not judge your fans by the people you meet.” I think it was me. [laughs] I don’t know, because it’s not true in my case, because U2 fans are kind of easygoing. Generally we have very good relationships with our fans, but sometimes they go too far. I know the fringe people who deny you your privacy and are sort of rooting through your dustbins—and we had somebody taking our dustbins just recently—are not our audience. I do not judge our audience by them.
Bob Dylan had a guy called A. J. Weberman, who hailed himself as a “Dylanologist.” He actually went through his dustbin once. May I reassure you? I’m not ready to screw a plaque reading “Bonologist” on my wall yet.
When I went to Los Angeles the first time, in 1980, I wanted to go to the house of Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson. Did I tell you that? The first thing I wanted to do. These two people’s music touched my life. I could not give them back what they gave me. I wanted to pay homage, to just go and say thanks. Then, of course, I caught myself and thought: “Maybe they don’t want me to say thanks.” And I stopped. So I have tolerance. When people arrive at my house, I explain to them: “I can’t talk to you now, because, if I do, I will be divorced.” The Italians go: “It’s Mamma!” And I say: “Yeah, that’s exactly right.” [articulating in kind of baby talk, putting on an Italian accent] Mamma will kill Bono! [laughs] It’s not like I look at them and go [imitates heavy sigh of exasperation]. I’m not fuming like some sulking movie star, you know.
And what’s your reaction to sycophants?
Sycophants? I’d like some. Thank you, please! [laughs] I am in a band. All my life, I’m surrounded by arguments. All my friends I’ve grown up with are brutally truthful. Sycophants? Where are they? Do I meet them? Of course. But not in my life as a general rule.
So what do you do?
When I meet them?
Yeah.
Yawn. [laughs] I mean, you will notice this. It hasn’t happened here because you keep me on my toes, but I have a very low concentration span. If it’s not the case, I go to sleep, because I usually haven’t slept very much. So I’m not likely to spend much time with people where there is not an equal relationship.
[looking at list] Err, this is a good one. An early nineteenth-century French woman writer, Mme. de Staël, said: “Fame is the shining bereavement of happiness.” Would you agree?
[pause, then low voice] Oooh, wow! Myself and Simon [his friend the screenwriter Simon Carmody], we’ve spent two hours on such semantics last night. You should talk with him. There’s a line in a song called “Mercy” that we left off this album: “Happiness is for those who don’t really need it.” So I can live without happiness. If that’s the price of fame, good riddance! Joy, on the other hand, is not up for sale. And my joy comes from a completely different place. But you’re not wrong, Michka. Somewhere there does seem a deal with the devil, concerning celebrity.
Which is?
Which is: you can have the seat at the table, but you can’t leave with your sense of humor. [laughs] And I’m not running with it. I’m just not. In U2, it was our sense of humor that’s negotiated our way through this whole jamboree. We nearly lost it in the eighties.
Really?
Yeah. We thought too much about it.
About what, exactly?
Fame, that is. What it was to be stared at, what it was to be photographed, what it was to be muttered about in a restaurant. We thought a lot about it.
And what did these thoughts bring you to?
Self-consciousness. These thoughts can bend you out of shape. You walk differently. You carry yourself differently. Ask any photographer. Ask Anton [Corbijn]. You see, a photographer understands that a face once beautiful can become ugly because of self-consciousness. The great gifts of models are not that they’re more beautiful than the next person, it’s that they’re able to be photographed and not be self-conscious. And so the distorting lens that is fame makes people ugly and self-conscious. The lips drain of blood, the face is suddenly harrowed. The photograph is being taken, but the reason why you wanted to take the photograph has gone. In the eighties, I was that. I thought about it too much.
I would see you occasionally in the early eighties. I didn’t think you were then the person that you are describing.
I wasn’t like that with you, because I felt a kindred spirit, I felt relaxed, there were things we had in common. But I would feel, when I was going out, that I didn’t want to let people down who looked up to me. I was trying to live up to their expectations. [puts on angry, self-righteous voice] “I’m not a rock star, I’m a real person!” Now, I just go: “I’m a fucking rock star. Get over it.” [laughs] It took me a long time, but I eventually got there. If rock ’n’ roll means anything: it’s liberation, it’s freedom.
You weren’t feeling that freedom in the eighties.
The eighties were a prison of self-consciousness. “Oh, my Lord, I’m making money!” [caricaturing cry of terror, then adopting voice of a person followed by a vampire in a horror film] “Oh, I must be selling out. But hold on a second, I haven’t screwed anyone over today. Oh, I must have!” [laughs] Now, I don’t feel I have to prove myself to anyone. It’s like: Are your songs any good? Is your band any good? That’s it, mate. I can’t live up to the songs. These songs are better than me. Don’t fence me in as a good person, because I’m going to let you down. Hey, I’m complex, I’m an artist! I can be a jerk. I’m over it. Now I’m very happy to let people down. Now, if somebody sees me crawling out of a nightclub on all fours, they can’t go [caricaturing cry of a shocked person]: “But YOU said!!!”—“WHAT did I say? I want you to take your fucking flashbulb out of my face, pal. [putting on drunken voice] And by the way, this is a friend of my wife.” [laughs] Now I’m over it. Our family doesn’t live by the media. We don’t read those newspapers. Occasionally, they get under our door. Everyone’s got to get their teeth filled, you know.
So how did you get your sense of humor back? What happened?
Interestingly enough, in terms of this discussion that you started out, it began in 1986, when I made up the ground I had lost in my relationship with my friends Guggi and Gavin, and we started to paint together. We used to go out on Thursday nights, painting and playacting. I found the beginnings of freedom there, that later kicked in.
Funny. You make celebrity sound like a disease you had to recover from.
The people who really revere the cult of celebrity are the ones who spend all their energy trying to avoid it. People who . . . [suspends sentence, caricaturing sigh of someone who’s tired of it all]. Somebody told me of this character, I won’t tell you who he is. He once was a completely regarded and respected figure in music. It’s twenty years later. He still leaves his house [imitates gaze of a Cold War spy in a Hitchcock film] and shuffles into the taxi, lest the fans spot him. No one’s there, no one’s interested! Look, no one is a star by accident. To reach that place and cry foul is churlish. The ones that hide do that so they can be discovered. They give it too much energy.
Who or what helped you chill out?
Chrissie Hynde was a real gift to me at a time when I was thinking about it too much. She had humor and attitude: grace for the right people, and abuse for the ones who put her on too high a pedestal. Here’s a mad tangent for you, Michka. I heard a story about a church, and in the congregation, there are demons, devils. The preacher keeps trying to cast out devils, but he keeps being thrown on the ground. They keep making a fool of him. So they bring on another priest. He speaks to the congregation: “You must rid your life of these devils. Who is it here?” He calls them out. They knock him down. They run amok, the organ starts playing, and all the ladies end up with their dresses over their heads. Eventually, after three or four or five exorcists, the Big Cahuna arrives. And he speaks to the devil. He says: “In the name of Jesus, I command you to identify yourself.” And they all identify themselves. They’re afraid. He goes: “Why are you terrorizing this place?” And the answer comes back [putting on shy voice], “Because we get so much attention.” [laughs] You know what I’m getting at? The people who run away from stardom, like me in the eighties, must be the ones who are thinking too much about it. Who do the paparazzi chase? The ones who avoid them or punch them.
Were there moments when fame made your friendships more difficult?
In the very early eighties—’82, ’83.
Did you ever regain them?
Yeah, I had to go after them. I don’t let go of people very easily. I still have all the people I love in my life—and some of the people I don’t. [laughs] I’m very stubborn about people.
Do you ever wake up and forget completely about being Bono and in U2?
It’s true. Most mornings, now, I really don’t think about being in a band. I think about being a father, I think about being a husband, I think about being a friend.
But what else do you think about when you open your eyes in the morning and you’re still lying in your bed?
Err . . . I do think about what I have, not usually in the mornings, but in the night. I do take time out to thank God. I think to myself sometimes: “What if this was gone?” I’m working as a journalist—I have a smaller house. Nothing else would have changed, because the people who are sleeping in the house or in the garden from the night before would be the same people. The newer ones, because I have developed several new friends over the years, maybe we would not have met up. But should my world change shape, all of the ones that I hold close would still be there. So I do think about it, occasionally, because it’s an incredible lifestyle, not to have to worry about the things most people have to worry about, but usually in the nights. In the mornings, I’m just thinking about how I’m going to fit my life into the day, which is tricky.
Do you have what they call recurring dreams? I have one. I’m always passing an exam, and I’m failing.
Wow! Do you understand what it’s about?
I think there is a word: illegitimacy. It’s like I bluffed my way into my life.
Very good. You feel a fraud . . .
Yeah. A usurper.
I have a recurring dream. I’ve had it for all my life. It concerns two houses. One of them is boarded up, and one of them is not. They’re both on the water. Not unlike these two houses in France. I’ve had this dream years and years before Edge and I bought this place. And oddly, for the first ten years, this house we’re sitting outside now was boarded up, and that house over there was not. And we lived there. They didn’t look like this in the dream, but they must have something to do with this place.
It’s amazing. And what do you make of it?
I have no idea, because when we bought them, they were both boarded up. But then very quickly one wasn’t.
So it’s a premonition.
But they didn’t look like this. They would change locations. I could even draw them. But it’s the same concept. And I’ve had the dream recently.
Do you have a clue?
No. One is a ruin and one is a nice house.
Hard to divine that one. The forked stick doesn’t seem to be going in any direction. [laughs] But I guess the interesting thing is that we’re actually here.
This place has brought me the closest to . . . feeling free. When it was even just two ruins and we were kind of camping here, it really did teach me a way to live that I didn’t know before. How do you call it in French? Savoir-vivre?
Savoir-vivre means how to behave, being polite and civilized.
OK, no. That is the opposite. [laughs]
But in a way, you’re right. In the broader sense, it means the art of directing one’s life. So maybe you mean you’ve learned to taste the good things in life and savor them in style.
This is more in an unstylish, uncivilized way; but certainly how to taste them. And I’ve learnt it here, listening to music with my friends. The big thaw happened for me here. The ice age came to an end in 1992.
You are a different person here.
Yeah.
You have so many different personas. The one I meet in Dublin, the one who speaks on the phone, who’s much looser.
On the phone? Much more. On the phone, it’s about as intimate as it can get. The person’s right in your ear. You got to be careful on the phone. You can leave yourself wide open.
There are a few other Bonos: the one who writes in the morning, the one who performs in front of crowds.
[low voice] Hmm . . . hmm . . .
The one who addresses U.S. congressmen, and of course the one who now sits on the board of Elevation Partners.
Hmm . . . hmm . . .
Of course the same person shelters all those different roles. But don’t you ever feel like a comedian?
You mean a chameleon . . .
Well, both do the same job, don’t they? I think that maybe Bono is just a trademark, and no one actually knows the person behind it, starting with you.
[laughs up his sleeve] You’re a tough guy. [long pause] All art is an attempt to identify yourself. You try out many characters on the way to finding the one that most fits you, and therefore is you. I mean, all children do. In adolescence, you see them trying out different sides of their personality. So I’m just exploring and trying to find out what I’m capable of. What’s useful for me to contribute to my family, my friends, and . . . the world.
You mean you’re too busy doing things to understand who you really are.
I will say this: there’s a noise that you see on the surface, a kind of certain frenetic hyperactive person doing lots of things, with lots of interests and ideas that I’m chasing. But below that, really, at the very bottom of that, there is . . . peace. I feel, when I’m on my own, a peace that’s hard to describe, a peace that passes all understanding. Some people look really calm on the outside and serene, but deep down, they are cauldrons. They’re boiling with nervous energy. All my nervous energy’s on the outside. On the inside, there is a calm. If I’m left on my own, I’m not panicking to find those different people that you’ve described. Whoever that person is, that’s the closest to who I am.
But does that calm you’re describing get close to indifference sometimes?
No. It has a lot of concern for my friends. It’s a very warm feeling. And it’s where I go, actually. When things are really upside-down in my life, I do go there. And I’m always restored, and I’m always refreshed. That person is the closest, I suppose, I’m going to find, to who I am, what I’d like to be.
How do you find that person? Reading, praying?
Reading, praying, meditating. It might just be walking around. People often say to me: “How do you do all that stuff? You’re doing this, you’re doing that.” I guess that’s probably how. It doesn’t take me very long to go there. You can call it a Sabbath moment, if you want, because the Sabbath Day was a day of rest. Human beings are not just what they do, but who they are. A lot of my life is about what I’m doing.
Perhaps you don’t have much time to be who you really are.
That’s why I really do need that seventh day. But I don’t necessarily have that Sabbath on the seventh day or on a Sunday, or on a Saturday, or whatever. I just take it in moments. In those moments, I’m incredibly still, and I’m incredibly myself. [laughs] I can’t describe it, but I don’t seem to need to describe it when I’m in that moment. Negotiating a route through the world can be difficult for me. But when you take the world out of the picture and you just leave me on my own, I don’t seem to feel the same need to prove myself. In the outside world, it might be as simple as: I don’t like losing. I don’t like wasting opportunities. There are so many! I get excited. I don’t even mind the obstacle course. It’s fun to run it, jumping, leaping as fast as I can. What’s that? Don’t wanna miss that. Can I help here? I can fix that. Gosh, I’ll take that. What does that taste like? Hmmmm! What is that? Oooh, that’s beautiful. What year is that? Thank you!
There are very few questions left. Who’d you give the first call to when you feel down? Or would you rather keep it to yourself?
I think it would be . . . my family . . .
You mean your wife?
“E. T. phone home!” [laughs]
And what do you fear the most inside yourself?
[long pause] Hmmm . . . Losing perspective . . .
Has that ever happened to you before?
I think.
How would you define losing perspective?
Well, the first signs are depression . . .
Have you ever gone through that?
Yes. It just means I’m losing perspective. I’m not seeing things in their proper shape.
Would it last for weeks? Months?
No. It might take a day out of my life, it might take a couple of days. [pause] It’s the only real lesson I remember from my mother, which is: you stood on a piece of glass, and you were complaining too much about the cut and the blood. And she would say: “I’ll take you up to Cappagh hospital—which was close by—and I’ll show you people who’ll never walk again.” So, in a very folksy way, perspective’s very important. I also think it’s one of the first casualties of stardom. You think that because you’re good at acting, at writing songs, at whatever, that you are a somehow more important person than somebody who, say, is a nurse, or a doctor or a fireman. This is simply not true. And in God’s order of things, people like me are . . . very spoiled. I still find it confounding that the world turns people like rock stars or movie stars, artists of any kind, into heroes.
So what do you know about depression? It sure is not easy to have you opening up on that subject. I already tried it once.
Well, occasionally, I feel depression nudging its way into my life. I think that in all our conversations, you have to admit I’m not a whinging rock star, and God spare us from whinging rock stars! But, yes, you screw up, you make mistakes, you beat yourself up. But I have my faith to turn to. If I can be intimate for a second, when you asked me earlier about what happens when I wake up in the morning . . . When I wake up in the morning, I sort of put my hand out—spiritually—and I reach for what you might call God. Sometimes I don’t feel God, and I feel lonely. I feel on my own, and I wonder where God is. And then [pause]—again, I don’t want to be melodramatic about this—I ask God: “Where have You gone?” God usually replies in a way that is hard to describe: “I haven’t gone anywhere. [laughs] Where have you gone? I haven’t moved.” Then I have to check, and I realize that I have somewhere sold myself out. It usually happens incrementally, in tiny steps. You never betray yourself—at least I never betray myself—in big dramatic bold moves, like: OK, this morning, I’m going to rob the bank, and find out where my enemy lives and tie him to his bed. You slowly move away from that person that is most like you . . .
Aren’t you afraid of losing your way for more than a couple of days?
And you’d say God takes you out of there. That sounds pretty exotic to me, though.
Well, especially if you are intellectually curious, of an experimental nature, you’re going to pick up stones, look what’s under them, and occasionally pick up the creepy crawlies, and occasionally they’re gonna bite. You’re going to go: “Oooh!” So that’s what I do, and yeah, I’m surprised at my ability to trick myself. I find myself then waking up in a place you might call despair. [bursts out laughing] Great word! Yeah, right. [keeps laughing then resumes seriousness] You know, I have to find God. You have to put it right. That’s what the problem is. You have to put it right.
So I guess you’re not expecting to be speechless when you meet God? What do you expect Him to say to you?
I’m glad you said that in the affirmative. Err . . . [laughs] “Looking good.” Thank you for your faith in me, Michka. I hope that’s what God might say to me if He can get a word in edgeways: “Come on in, but please stop explaining yourself!” [laughs] And by the way, you asked earlier about why I didn’t write this as a book. Do you think I would be writing about this in a book? No chance!
You said about your father: “He would disappear into silence and wit.” I think that in your case, you do disappear into volubility and wit. [Bono bursts out laughing] What do you make of that?
Guilty, your honor.
No further comment?
“Be silent, and know that I am God.” That’s a favorite line from the Scriptures. “Shut Up and Let Me Love You” would be the pop song. [laughs] It’s really what it means. If ever I needed to hear a comment, it might be that.
Ultimate question, then you’re rid of me. What leaves you speechless?
[sighs . . . twenty-second pause, continuous sound of cicadas] Does singing count?
I’m afraid not. Songs have words.
But not when I start. Usually, it’s just a melody and nonsense words.
Hmm . . . Songs are about as succinct as I get. I’m just sparing you.
[laughs, then ponders for a moment] “Forgiveness” is my answer.
You mean “being forgiven.”
Yeah.
Sometimes you answer a question by quoting a song you’ve written. But would you say a subject becomes over and done with once you and U2 have written a song about it?
No, no. Again, one of the more interesting aspects of agreeing to this dialogue is you ask questions I haven’t asked myself. But when you ask a question that I have asked myself, I probably already answered it.
You mean in a song? Does that mean that a few of the questions I’ve asked you might turn into songs someday?
Hmm, probably. They’re nagging questions.
It’s tough to bring this to an end. But tell me sincerely: do you genuinely think that there are things that have been revealed to you for the first time in our conversations?
[ponders for a moment, then smiles] A life unquestioned is not one you should envy.