Bono (37 page)

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.

This phone conversation happened on December 8, 2005. Bono called from his New York apartment. It was twenty-five years to the day since John Lennon's murder. Bono mentioned that he was “up the road from where that happened.” As had happened more than once in our talks, I heard him singing when I picked up the phone.

[
singing
]
“Well, we all shine on . . .”
*

You sound like an AM transistor radio from the sixties. I feel like I'm listening to some Polish station on the short-wave band. Your voice has this submarine sound to it.

Mmmmh . . . Typical French snobbery again . . .

Well, what else would you expect from me?

I thought that your success now and newfound celebrity in the book fairs of the world might have brought you some humility.

That's why I'm expecting you to use a different tone with me now.

[
laughs
]

. . . but I can't hear it in your voice yet . . .

I'm working up to it. How are you, my friend?

I'm okay.

My friend and torturer . . .

I think I'll tickle you, rather than torture you, first. Last July, you shared the stage with Paul McCartney at the big Live 8 concert. Backed by U2, you sang “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” with him, standing in John Lennon's shoes, so to speak. Didn't you somehow feel that you weren't entitled? Didn't you worry, even for a second, that the ground would swallow you up?

Oh, you know I don't think like that! [
laughs
] I have the immodesty or foolishness. We put our band up there with the Beatles. I think if I'd gotten to know John, I would have got on really well with him. I was proud to stand in his shoes. As I'm speaking to you, today is the day of the anniversary of the taking of his life, which is horrible. Last night, we did a version of “Instant Karma,” which I was singing to you. It's an amazing
song:
“Pretty soon you're gonna be dead
” is the line that sounded the hardest to sing.

But Paul McCartney is alive. You once told me you were “in awe of him.”

You know he'd never played “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the full song, live before—only the coda version at the end of the album. We'd stood beside him in the rehearsal room and watched him singing for the first time a song he'd written forty years ago. I was singing John Lennon's part and he was teaching it to me. It was both amusing and frightening. It has been an extraordinary twenty-four hours. He was very particular about the arrangement. He wanted it exactly as it had been.

So you didn't feel awkward around him.

We had a very easy kind of repartee between him and the band. He was probably waiting for us to have a lot of attitude, but we played students to the professor, not big rock band, which is correct pecking order.

You and Edge taking notes while McCartney speaks makes a funny picture.

There was a funny moment when he came into our caravan by the stage. We were giving him a grilling about how certain songs were written, how the Beatles got to that level of songwriting. We were just really enjoying his company, and I hope he ours, when he changed the subject to wardrobe. You forget Paul McCartney was the guy who probably conspired with Brian Epstein to come up with the mop-tops. From the back of the caravan he spotted a jacket. He kind of goes: “Is that a Dior? Who's wearing this?” And Sharon Blankson, our wardrobe designer, says: “That's for Bono.” He says: “Hold on a second, I'm wearing that later on in the show,
my daughter Stella found it for me. We can't both wear it, can we?” Sharon said: “Of course you can. Not a problem.” Well let me tell you before he left the caravan, he had bargained me down from my designer jacket to the denim jacket you see me wearing on the stage. So the Macca had the Bono to go out there as a gypsy.

So how did you feel singing “Sgt. Pepper” in that gypsy outfit?

Lots of things went through my mind as I stood just beside him. It was a pretty good version. We downloaded it, and it became the fastest-selling downloaded song.

Twenty years after Live Aid, Bob Geldof set up Live 8 in conjunction with the G8 Summit in Gleneagles (Scotland). A few artists, such as Blur's Damon Albarn, publicly complained that no African stars appeared on stage in London at Live 8. Bob Geldof replied, quite bluntly, that it's not his fault if African kids care more about Eminem—who, by the way, didn't show up—than their own stars. Would you give the same answer?

No. Damon called me, and I tried to ease the situation. There was a few of us worried about it. Bob was being protective of ratings, because the ratings, he felt, would in the end be the thing that protected Africa, underlying their situation. I wasn't so clear-cut though. But it's Bob's show. I mean, Youssou N'Dour did appear, and many African artists performed in Jo'Burg that day. Most of the world cameras chose not to cover the concert in Johannesburg, which maybe proves Bob's point.

Not many South-Africans attended the concert in Jo'Burg.

Does anybody know how almost impossible it was to put on Live 8? Geldof gave up his life for a year working on this stuff. No sleep and a lot of grief.
The same with people like Richard Curtis and his wife, Emma Freud.
*
Some balls were going to be dropped . . . most went into the back of the net. The Jo'Burg show was a late development.

African involvement was missing, there's no denying.

Personally, yes, I think it was a mistake not to have more African artists. A missed opportunity. I love African music. Whether it is Youssou, or Angélique Kidjo, Baaba Maal, Salif Keita, these artists have all sent messages of love to us, and are working with us on these issues.Youssou N'Dour played in Paris. It has to be said that he is not just one of the most extraordinary voices in world music, but in the world.

Did you know that the great blues guitar player Ali Farka Touré from Mali, who's known for his work with Ry Cooder, said that he didn't support Live 8? He said he wasn't interested in “being used as a political pawn.” He's the mayor of the Niafunke county in Mali, and he does a lot of work for his people.

If he doesn't reckon Live 8 are helping his people, maybe they should rethink him being mayor. [
laughs
]

Okay, he'll get the warning [
laughs
]. Now, 2005 looks like it's been a rough ride for DATA. First, you were hit by some bad news. The Millennium Challenge Account, the U.S. initiative for Africa that was created in early 2004, has only devoted four hundred thousand dollars to African aid. That's far less than what had been promised. Then you had some great news at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, where the most powerful countries in the world pledged that together they would devote

an extra $25 billion a year to Africa. In the fight against malaria and for free access to school for every child in Africa, the
New York Times'
James Traub, who wrote a piece last September about your work with DATA, reported that real progress had been made. Still, it seems that you are not even making progress on an issue that you believe is crucial—fairer trade for Africa. You succeeded in sounding the alarm about AIDS and malaria, and thus of course helped save lives. But, as of now, structural reform and fairer trade for Africa don't seem to be on any rich country's agenda . . . especially mine, by the way. What do you say to that?

France is one of the biggest problems in reaching a trade deal. People are worried that dismantling the Common Agricultural Policy in Europe would really affect small French farmers. We don't think it should. We think small farmers in the United States and Europe have very similar interests to small farmers in Africa. The big farmers, the big giant corporate farmers in America and Europe are receiving most of the subsidies. These subsidies are cruel to a farmer in the developing world who is trying to compete. Look, we've made progress on debt and aid, and that must be celebrated. Trade will be a long-haul fight, an epic long-term battle. Everyone told us when we started to work on debt cancellation that it would never happen, and if you didn't believe the impossible is possible, you'd never get anywhere on this stuff. But we've got there. Thirty-six countries have had a brand-new start, set free from bilateral and multilateral debt. It's more than a paradigm shift. We have changed the game.

Would you say that when you started to work on debt, your goals looked as unachievable as the ones you have for the trade issue seem to be now?

Oh yeah. People thought it would never happen. By the way, working with a conservative administration in the United States . . . people laughed openly in my face at the idea that the U.S. government and President
George Bush would have four hundred thousand Africans on antiretroviral drugs this year. There was none last year. So that's incredible progress.

Speaking about the conservative administration, I've never heard you make a negative comment about the Bush administration. You've always chosen to stress the positive. Yet in 2005, the U.S. aid to the UN program against the AIDS pandemic decreased, and the Bush administration doesn't show any sign of matching the 0.7% on foreign aid spending in the U.S. GNP. Your friend, the economist Jeffrey Sachs, was reported to have said: “Even aside from denouncing the president publicly, I would just like Bono to say it to himself.” So, please, Bono, tell me. Do you call President Bush names in your sleep?

[
sniggering
] Well, look, I have had sour times over the AIDS funding's level back in 2003, when the cash was coming too slow. We had a bit of a row in the Oval Office, and even a few weeks ago, we had another difference over funding for the Global Fund, which you're referring to. But, again, this can be hard to follow. This administration, with backing from Congress, has funded the most extraordinary successful AIDS program with nearly four hundred thousand Africans on ARVs. Now, you mentioned the Millennium Challenge, and I'm pissed, I'm mad, in fact, that not more has happened. It's very frustrating. But, still, more happened than any could have imagined from them back in 2001. And even though four hundred thousand dollars is the figure, you're right, over two billion has been appropriated and set aside for Africa. We have had a heated debate about this, myself and the president. Funnily enough, on the Millennium Challenge, he was almost as pissed off as I was.

Really? What did he say?

He said there was no excuse, but it's clear they had a lot on their mind. I think the initiative was thought up before 9/11. After 9/11 and entering
into the war, some desks got very busy and overcrowded. It's not an excuse that I am accepting, but I do believe they will put that right. Even the most staunch critics of the administration's aid development will concede that the president has tripled aid to Africa. And he has the biggest AIDS initiative on the globe. Most will say we had a part in that. These are just facts. Is it enough? No. Did they start from a low number? Yes.

Some might say that publicly denouncing the Bush administration would help you further your cause, that maybe you could obtain more.

I've just been through this, Michka, with you. I told you we have had lots of rows, and we have denounced the administration when they have made mistakes, but we're not placarding and throwing rotten tomatoes at people who are trebling aid to Africa.We've just been in a very big row with the prime minister of Canada, whom I admire as a brilliant financial manager of his country. He's going into an election. It's not helpful having me being a nuisance and telling the Canadian electorate that he's not doing enough. But we will do that. We'll bare our teeth. And we will bite if we have to. But some of our critics, I've met them in rock 'n' roll in the early days. They're the same people, Michka—cranks carping from the sidelines. A lot of them wouldn't know what to do if they were on the field. They're called the party who will allways be in opposition. So they'll never have to take responsibility for decisions because they know they'll never have to implement them.

Some might say that you need people in that position to point at some harsh truths that can't be dealt with diplomatically.

It would look really good on me, and it would score points with the pseudo-revolutionaries. Guess what? The best way to represent the poorest and most vulnerable in this world may not be to divide a country the size of the United States in half, by making this a left-wing issue. When we
went into Gleneagles, fifty billion dollars, twenty-five for Africa was like an unthinkable and an amazing goal, but as soon as we got it, some were saying: “It should have been a hundred.” And of course they're right, but it sours the air and puts governments who are taking some pain to do the first deal off. We get hits from the left like that. Then you have on the right people whom we've discussed in our earlier interviews like Paul Theroux, who say they shouldn't even be getting even the fifty billion, because it will make matters worse: “Don't give them aid, it will go to redecorating presidential palaces, it won't go to the poorest of the poor.” Well, we're over that. We have mechanisms in place. We get hits from the left, we get hits from the right, but in the end, every year, the world's poor are better off for our presence, and we are, I think, I hope, a unifying force across the political spectrum of this sort of expertise. Most NGOs from the left like Oxfam, to the right like World Vision agree broadly with our general direction. Sure at times each of them, on the right and on the left, gets frustrated with us. But our general flow is to serve them.

Last September, you said you felt bleak about the next six months after the White House withdrew the statement on development it had prepared for the UN summit meeting. Shouldn't that make you less confident about the success of the “One Campaign” you and your friends are planning for 2008?