Bono (31 page)

You're up to your neck in all this stuff! How did you get involved at such a level? It seems that it's only happened over the last five years. Mandela was released in 1990, but you didn't set foot in South Africa until the late nineties.

First time, I think it was on the PopMart tour. As I told you, U2 were frontline agitators for the anti-apartheid movement. We were the first artists invited to the new South Africa by the ANC [the PopMart tour stopped in Cape Town on March 16, 1998].

So it was about thirteen years later. I think you offered an explanation, albeit unconsciously. I have here the speech you just made a couple of weeks ago when you received an honorary degree at the University of Pennsylvania, trying to raise the consciousness of future American decision-makers about AIDS in Africa: “I know idealism is not playing on the radio right now,” you said. “You don't see it on TV, irony is on heavy rotation, the knowingness, the smirk, the tired joke. I've tried them all out. Idealism is under siege, beset by materialism, narcissism, and all the other isms of indifference.” What I'm underscoring here is: I've tried them all out. In the early nineties, U2 was very much into nihilism and irony. You and the band made a point of not being as earnest as you had been before. Does that account for your personally forgetting about Africa?

Firstly, let me say the music was not ironic in that period—it was wrapped in irony. Actually, there was real blood going through those veins. Secondly, concerning the packaging, the presentation, I think even then it was ironic in a very idealistic way. As to forgetting about Africa, all through that period, Ali and myself were quietly involved. As I told you before, it was not part of U2's agenda.

So you really don't think you lost your idealism, and to use your own kind of terminology, “surrendered to the world and its way,” which is surely the smirk?

Look, we didn't want to look like the group that was too stupid to enjoy being at number one!
[laughs]
There's only so much people can take of four angry young men. We had much more dimension in our personal lives. We wanted to reflect that in our public lives. Laughter is the evidence of freedom. A sense of humor is not always defensive. It can be a great attack dog. I mean, we described
Achtung, Baby
as the sound of four men chopping down
The Joshua Tree.
We had amassed a lot of moral baggage, and we just wanted to lighten the load a little bit for those four frozen faces on the cover of that album. We had painted ourselves into a corner. We needed to circle the square. Every sort of “Right On” movement was outside our door and knocking. We couldn't let every serious issue in. We continued our work with Amnesty International and Greenpeace. That's where we met the wider world, through those organizations. We stormed Sellafield with Kraftwerk and Public Enemy, and it was amazing. But I admit the period was more inward- than outward-looking, and at a certain point, maybe the worldview suffered, I'll admit that. Compassion fatigue: I don't think we had it, but it could have been an issue for our audience if we were to take on Africa at that period. I mean, I was reading about Africa in the newspaper or in the odd specialist publication, but I wasn't anxious to stare at it for too long. I hadn't heard any new ideas at that point.

When you did Live Aid and the Conspiracy of Hope tour, humanitarian work seemed to be at the core of your music. But afterward, humanitarian work was the small print on the list of acknowledgments in your CD booklets. I was wondering if you were touched by that wave of self-disgust that was going on in the nineties. There was Nirvana, and with grunge came the business of self-loathing. I mean it was not a business, but it was a trend . . .

[interrupting]
No, it
is
a business!
[laughs]

OK. Let me put it simply. Did you go through a crisis of faith?

Errr . . . a crisis of strategy more than a crisis of faith. I mean, taking a television station on the road, and spending a quarter of a million dollars a day wasn't just a thrill.
[laughs]
It was a bit of a worry! I mean, we were burning money, a bonfire of our vanities. But we were at least spending it on our fans. We were risking bankruptcy for an art project.

But hadn't you stopped trying to change the world in the real sense? Art projects are not something people would associate with U2.

Well you should, because it is one, and a commercial project, and a spiritual project, and a political project when it wants to be. We still had the idea in our heads that a rock star has two instincts: he wants to change the world, and he wants to have fun. If he can do both at the same time, that's the way to go. But though we had a lot of interesting and arty ideas that were flashing around on our expensive TV sets, the mainframe of Zoo TV was still pretty radical. The siege of Sarajevo was going on, and we were broadcasting it.

Yes, it's true. I'm being unfair. You were still setting up these operations. But that is my point. They were operations.

Heart wasn't enough, you had to be smart in the nineties. We were trying something new. We were looking for hard juxtapositions, the kind you'll find in conceptual art. It was uncomfortable. Because that's the thing about television—you move from a kind of McDonald's commercial to Africa in a second. And this sort of schizophrenic channel-hopping image of life that we were all leading was part of that whole thing. We needed new weapons for our arsenal. That was what Zoo TV was. We called it judo. Have we discussed that yet?

Yes, using the enemy's strength to defend yourself. What did you have to defend yourself against?

Caricaturing in the media. We were being reduced to simple lines, there was no shading. We looked naive. Yes, that's what was going on in that period. I don't think it was a crisis of faith, no. Just looking for a new way to express old idealism.

But didn't you go through a period of doubt in your personal life? I have this feeling that you were a little lost at that time.

On the contrary, I was going through a kind of glasnost.
[laughs]
The Politburo was coming out of the deep freeze.

Same years, by the way: 1989–1990.

I know. Of course I slept in Brezhnev's bed. That must have been when all this started. I told you that, didn't I? I went from the tents of Amhara to sleeping in Brezhnev's bed.

I don't remember the Brezhnev story.

When we were recording
Achtung, Baby,
the night we flew into Berlin was the last of the old divided city. And our tour manager, Dennis Sheehan,
had found the old Soviet guesthouses for the old Soviet leaders. I happened to be sleeping in Brezhnev's room. What a laugh! This was a brown room. All I remember is there was brown everywhere, and very large knobs on everything, even on the stereo. If I haven't told you, I should probably. It's a complete distraction to go back to Berlin, but if you want, I will, because the most extraordinary thing happened as we were living in that house. For our very first night, there were celebrations.

Oh yeah, when you joined the wrong crowd and found yourselves with people who were demonstrating against the destruction of the wall. I'm not surprised that happened to you.
[laughs]

How perfect is that? U2 chills out. We want to be part of the parade and the fun, and have celebrations. We're looking around, and we're going: “These people, they really don't know how to have fun, do they?” We'd heard about Bierkellers and we thought: “This is not looking like the Berliners we've heard about . . .” Then we find out: “Oops! These people are protesting the Wall coming down. They're diehard Communists.” It's just a great photograph, isn't it? “U2 protests Wall coming down.”

You're digressing again. In that speech at the University of Pennsylvania, you said: “I've tried them all out: the smirk, the tired joke . . .” What is it that you tried exactly?

That smirk annoys me, whenever I see it. Mostly, it's the sign that I'm uncomfortable. It's like a nervous twitch. There was an amazing moment when we played the Super Bowl recently, the finale of America's football league. It's a hyper-event in the U.S., the biggest date of the year. We had to build the stage in six minutes. Our idea was to have a music crowd on the pitch and then walk through that crowd to get up on the stage. I had on these earphones that were wireless. The band are walking through the crowd and there's a camera right in front of me, and the punters start
slapping me on the back. I realize that the tiny wires of my earplugs are vulnerable. All one person has to do is pull the wire, and I'm off air. I would hear nothing. Off the air in front of a billion people! And this is going out live, and there's nothing you could do. So because this wire had been left exposed, I just started to quietly panic. But if you look at the film of that, you'll see me swaggering with the most annoying smirk ever seen. You just think: that guy is such a prat!
[laughs]
The confidence, you just hate it. I hate anyone with that much confidence. Confidence gets you not very far in this life. But for me, it's a sure sign of pure panic.

I still don't know exactly what you were trying out with that smirk. You were suggesting an intentional change of image.

I always felt like a part-time pop star, never fully comfortable with the role. For a few years, I put on rock stars' clothes and a rock star confidence to see where it would get me. I was surprised.

So where did it get you?

Everywhere.

Which means?

It was more fun than I thought.

But you seem to regret it.

No. Insecurity can take you a long way. That smirk opened doors.

You're still not answering. What did they open to?

A concept.

What?

The importance of not being earnest.

And was it painful?

Oh yeah . . .
[laughs]
Agony!

And now you're over it.

Not quite. It's fun being a rock star . . . sometimes.

In that “glasnost” period, even though you worked with Amnesty and Greenpeace, Africa was not on your agenda. But was it on your mind?

No, sadly. Not as much as it should have been. A little, yes, but not a lot. I remember Ali and myself flying back from Africa the first time. And the first few days in Europe again, it was culture shock. We had a lot more difficulty re-entering than we had landing in Africa, and figuring that out. We said to each other: “We'll never forget what we've been through.” But we did. We got on with our lives. When we said grace at dinner tables, we said it a little stronger. We meant it. Food tasted a little more. But you just get on with your life, and you slowly find a place to put Africa, this beautiful, shining continent with all its ups and downs. Occasionally, you'd take it out, you'd look at it again, and then you'd put it back in that safer place called distance and time. But there was one thing I always knew. There was a structural aspect to this problem that we had witnessed. That's where I wanted to put my energy the next time round.

So Jubilee 2000 and DATA led you back to that continent for the first time in more than ten years. But had you met Nelson Mandela when U2 played in Cape Town for the PopMart tour?

No, I hadn't, but we met Archbishop Tutu. Nelson Mandela's story is one of the great stories of the twentieth century. But Archbishop Tutu's is one of the great stories of the twenty-first century.

And why is that?

Because the lessons of his Commission for Truth and Reconciliation can be applied to the Middle East, can be applied to Ireland, can be applied to Kosovo, can be applied to so many places. This is the most important story of the last fifty years. Somehow, they realized, this new African leadership, that truth sometimes is more important than justice. So on the grounds of not being prosecuted, they offer people a chance to come forward and confess to their crimes under apartheid, be they police, be they from black to brown, from brown to black, whatever crimes were committed. You remember the awful “burning necklace.” Those were horrific crimes. But they didn't set up law courts. They began a new kind of convention where you will see a policeman standing in front of the family he has abused, and the man of the house, the tin hut, is saying to the policeman: “Did you see a woman wearing an olive green dress that day?” And the policeman says: “I can't remember the colors.”—“Her name was Melinda, and she was wearing a green dress. Did you see her? Do you remember shooting her? She was my wife.” And the policeman, with tears rolling down his face, is going: “I don't remember her. I just remember shooting into the crowd.” I mean, it's devastating. But Archbishop Tutu felt that the country needed to come clean if it was to go forward, that it needed to repent, and that maybe prosecution was not as important as that. It's an amazing thing, you must find and write about. U2 went to visit that center on that trip, my first trip to Africa in ten years. And the four of us arrived. It was overwhelming. He brought us in to this place of Truth and Reconciliation. We were dumbstruck, but it was not without comedy. I remember this great man rebuking me . . .
[laughs]
It was really a turning point.

How did he rebuke you?

I was making polite conversation with him. He's known by his people as “The Arch.” So it was like: “The Arch, this is The Edge.” He was laughing all the time, big-hearted, big-brained smiling man. Then I said: “You're so busy with all these things. Do you get any time for prayer and meditation?” He stopped at me and said: “What are you talking about? Do you think we'd be able to do this stuff if we didn't?” I felt it was like a rebuke to my own life, because I get so busy, and I have so many things on. At that time, I'm not sure I was spending as much time as I would like in reflection, in prayer and meditation. Not that I'm a monk, but I do like to spend some of the time in quietness, and I hadn't been. I remember it felt like a rebuke.