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Michka Assayas, author of Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas, was born in 1958 in Paris to an Italian father and a Hungarian mother. It was a creative family: his father was a screenwriter, and his mother designed for Hermès (including inventing the trademark "H" belt buckle). His elder bother, Olivier, is a film director working in French and English. Assayas has a master's degree from the Sorbonne and an extensive writing background: rock journalist, literary journalist, and award-winning novelist (his novel Exhibition won the Prix Le Fouquet's Figaro Magazine and the Prix des Deux-Magots). He is currently a columnist with French magazine VSD.

Assayas spoke with @U2 from his home in Paris, where he has just finished the French translation of his book with Bono.

@U2: What was your vision for the book? What did you hope for?

You know, I didn't plan much ahead when I started out. I wanted to embark on this particular journey because it felt exciting and absurd: a French guy living in Paris putting together a book with the #1 one rock star in the world, whom he used to know in a different lifetime. I don't know how that seems to you -- to me, it was appealing. As I mentioned to Bono before we got started, I love the literary genre of the dialogue. You don't have to go back to Plato. In France, we had Diderot who wrote very entertaining dialogues in the 18th century. I guess dialogues are the closest you get to a play taking place in real life: a "two-hander" I think is how you call them...I love the diversions, the cat and mouse game, the serious thing being broken off by the surreal anecdote...It's serious, but at the same time it's got lightness: I think that's what Bono found appealing in that project too. And another thing (as the great man would say himself...): I've tried to be a painter here as well. You know, this was like working on the portrait of a royal: the hardest part was to have him sitting still for a couple of hours. He'd always have a thousand things to do, the sessions were brief, my patience was really put to the test, and sometimes desperation set in...But my faith and hope were ultimately rewarded. Sure, Bono has made thousands of interviews, and he tends to repeat things a lot. He's been represented so many times...But what I had in mind was that impression that has struck me once in a while in front of a portrait. Sometimes, you just stop and wonder: how did the painter manage to get such a truthful and revealing look? Well, if the reader is feeling that too, I'm rewarded.

What were the process and ground rules for this work? I know there was wine involved...(smiling). How did you decide on the goals for each conversation? Were any topics off-limits?

You're right...wine was involved, but more as a kind of reward after a session. Usually, I'd write down my first question very carefully, but the other ones, less so. I used to serve first, then Bono would return in the oddest direction. You've got to be careful around Bono (as Bob Dylan wrote in his Chronicles): he loves to destabilise his opponent. Most of the time I was forced to scrap the set list. As you may imagine, he's very hard to steer. We started with the death of his father and went there back again. In the meantime, we've covered a lot: the band, marriage, Ireland, God, Africa, the Americas...It's natural for him to deal with the abstract. But many of his ideas are based on personal anecdotes and experiences...and he can be very shy about them. They are the ones I wanted him to "cough up," to use one of his phrases. I think I partly succeeded, but, God, he was tough. Nothing was off-limits, but you can feel Bono stepping on the brake more than once. I guess it has created some positive tension, and may have turned to the book's advantage to some extent.

What surprised you most in your conversations with Bono?

First...that he would do it. I didn't expect him to agree to that, and I'm still surprised that he did. Why did he want to be so revealing? That's another mystery. I think the distance helped. I'm French, I have a different point of view, I guess that's helped keeping him on his toes...He was curious. But the most surprising thing is what we French call la fragilité..."Frailty" might be too negative a notion, I don't know. Bono is extremely strong-minded when he discusses ideas, statements, convictions, other band members, friends...But when he discusses his own personality, his own story, he is unsafe, anxious, even wary. What surprised me the most is that, despite of that embarrassment, he'd agree to go there. To me, that's close to a miracle.

In talking with you, Bono chose to reveal himself in a way that is both personal and public -- intimate conversation for public consumption. I imagine the two of you had to find a balance between friendship and reporting. How did it feel? Was it difficult?

The thing is: we knew we got on very well, but we didn't know each other very well. So it was tricky. At first, I felt awkward about this: there are things I wanted to know about as a reporter, but couldn't bring myself to ask as a friend. I think Bono helped me a lot with that answer: "Seriously, you enter a conversation with somebody whom you trust, whom you can talk to about your motives. I would have to think that it was part of some creative work, before I'd ever do it." As far as I'm concerned, it's not such a contradiction: I've always tried to insert my own life into my books, and have sorted out the problem for myself. Singing can be a public therapy, so can be writing. So why not talking? A dialogue can be a revealing work of art.

Bono describes seeing a photo of himself that Anton Corbijn took around 1980 or so. Bono says, "It was my first face." You met him when he wore that "first face." What do you still see of that young man in the Bono of these recent conversations? What are the greatest changes? The fervour and the excitement...The voice, the animation, the passion...He's the same guy to me. But the face has acquired a certain stillness, a certain hardness now. He seems to be scanning everything round him now, as though he had developed an extra sense. But that's deceiving, because the openness at the core is the same. The laugh and the smile are the same. The greatest change? When he doesn't shave, his beard's pepper-and-salt...Hope I'm not betraying some big secret here.

He is very candid with you, although it's clear that sometimes this is only because you push him rather hard, you confront him directly about the questions he wants to avoid. At one point he says, "Just for once, Michka, could you not ask the hard question?" Why did you ask the hard questions? Why do you think he answered?

Well, because I'm a tenacious character. I think he's put me to the test a little, wanted to see if I was able to stick at it. Bono keeps coming up with those genius catch phrases and images. He might have become a big shot working for the advertisement industry but I think he wouldn't have been happy doing that job. He knows you have to dig deeper. My hunch is that he keeps asking those hard questions to himself. So I don't know...Maybe he needed an excuse to get them out of his chest.

I assume that from your perspective as a music journalist, you'd agree that U2's music is important in many ways; but is it important to you personally in any way? What do you connect with in their music?

Well, to be honest, it meant a lot to me in the early '80s, and then it meant less. And now it has become important again. I think that U2 are a living paradox, i.e. huge mass appeal linked with utter intimacy. When I listen to them, I feel like I'm on the back of a 15-ton whale and, at the same time, a friend's whispering in my ear about his doubts and defeats. That's a very strange combination -- the strongest and the frailest at the same time. I've fallen in love with Bono and U2 again, and I guess that process struck a chord with Bono, because he and U2 have fallen back in love with the "U2 sound" of the old days too.

Your conversations with Bono parallel the making of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Do you see influence of those conversations in the music? What do you think of the album?

When he answered some of my questions, Bono unconsciously quoted some of his lines: "A feeling is stronger than a thought," "You can't deny for others what you demand for yourself" ("Crumbs from Your Table")...Once, in Dublin, he said to me: "Fear seems to play an important part in your life." He was right. With that book, I've made the journey from fear to faith myself. So I guess lots of people will identify with that. To me, the book is a very good document about what went inside B's head when U2 made that album. I'm not far from thinking it's their greatest ever. I certainly keep going back to that record. I need it, and that certainly hasn't happened with a U2 record for some time, as far as I'm concerned.

In the book's introduction, you talk about becoming shy of the band as they became superstars. You say, "The thing is U2 didn't need people like me anymore." What do you think they need now?

Difficult one. I guess when a band becomes huge, people's perspective changes, and I'm a living example. Fear sets in, and you become somehow estranged. But this is not inevitable, and that's what I've tried to convey with that book. People can come together again. Nothing's lost forever. U2 need people who are able to go back there, or younger people who have the instinct to look beyond the platinum records, the huge shows, the star status, etc...They've got to understand these people are huge because they're still able to stand naked. U2 just need people who can see them the way they are, not in the way the media makes you see them.

You end the book by asking Bono, "Do you think that there are things about yourself that have been revealed to you in our conversation? Was it of any use to you? What have you learned from it?" I am curious to hear your answers to these same questions -- what did you learn about yourself in your conversations with Bono?

Bono's answer is: "I've learned that I needed to do it." Mine would be: "I've learned that I could do it." Which means: that it was possible to have a natural and candid conversation with this man I'd become in awe of -- who, in my view, had become some kind of monster. I've learned that all these modern golden calves -- fame, celebrity, success... -- only exist in the eye of the viewer. And that it's sometimes very difficult to restore a relationship with such a person. The simplest things, the more spontaneous feelings are the richest and the most resilient, but sometimes they get buried. Once you get back in touch with them, they're the ones that, as Bono put it when he mentioned Bob Geldof, make the impossible possible.



© @U2, 2005.

Related Article:

• Apr 18, 2005 - Book Review: Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas

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