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"People can get confused and think that because your issue is worthy, therefore you are. To be in a position where people expect a lot from you personally, rather than from your work, is dangerous." -- Bono, 2000 |
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"People can get confused and think that because your issue is worthy, therefore you are. To be in a position where people expect a lot from you personally, rather than from your work, is dangerous." -- Bono, 2000 |
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In a World of Their Own (Part Two)
The Observer,
December 18, 2005
U2: 10
"They're very tolerant," smiles Bono, remembering sullen meetings where no one would look him in the eye because of some wild, wonderful mad-hearted scheme about Africa or AIDS he wanted to lash to the back of U2. "It's not that they don't agree with the issues, I just think they sometimes wish it could be someone else doing it all. I'd love there to be another Bono who doesn't go to the meetings with Blair and Bush, who can have a gigantic sulk and a tantrum and it really mean something and change events. We could use one of those characters right now. It would be great to have someone banging the dustbins and chaining himself to the railings, as well as me meeting with the politicians. I'd love to do both, but I can't, but I don't think even my worse critic would say that things would be better if I didn't take those meetings and make those speeches. And we make our audience feel powerful, like they're part of something, and that doesn't often happen with a rock band. You know me, I like a bit of a row. It keeps you sharp. To be honest with you, I expected far more bile and spleen than I actually get. I'm used to that. Oddly, in the last few years it's died away a bit, people have been quite generous and prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt for my work. I expected a hail of blows, and I'm up for it!" U2: 11 Up in the rock star penthouse, overlooking a city dreaming itself awake, or peacefully asleep, Bono is still talking and thinking and asking himself questions. "You know, that idea of me being like the leader of the nation of the imagination, that's interesting, it's like there are four provinces in Ireland, and the fifth province is the province of the imagination, and it is as important as any physical constituent. It should be represented. The American constitution was really a poetic tract, full of wild imaginings. Ideas about how the world should be run should come from a place other than conventional politics. The whole of society should have the din of argument as much from musicians and film-makers and writers as anyone else. That's what makes every thing better. In a way, the hardest place in the world for what we try and pull off as U2, with my stuff stuck on the side, is the U.K., where the arts and politics are very separate and people don't like you to cross over disciplines. They like the politics in one place, pop in another, art over there. But it's better that they all rub against each other, that's when things can really start to happen." U2: 12 In the library, closer to the pavement, it's getting darker, and soon Bono will be whisked away back into the calm moving fury, or repetitive cracked everydayness, of the U2 machine. The crowd outside waiting for a sign, or a signature, is steadily growing, but Bono is for now oblivious to them. I tell him that the Sex Pistols have just been inducted into the American rock 'n' roll hall of fame. Does he feel that such institutional actions sanitise pop music, turn it into something meek and ordinary? "I shouldn't in some ways be put out by the idea...but yet I am...and some of the best nights of my life have been spent at Hall of Fame induction evenings. We give awards and honours to filmmakers, authors, poets, artists...why are rock 'n' roll people meant to be more rebellious than filmmakers? Are they truly more wild and frightening? Ultimately, this is another really juvenile idea. Maybe because me and you came to life during punk there's a bit of us that resists rock being like any other discipline. We believe that music is some kind of sacrament, it's special, it's like they say, all art aspires to the condition of music. That's why zealots like you and me will cut off someone's head defending it. We're on a crusade. This is not just a business, or fun, or fashion, this is the holy cup! There is something about music that unlocks our spirit in ways other drama cannot...not on a daily basis...not unless EastEnders has got really incredible while I've been away. That's what it is -- it's not about feeling that these ceremonies betray some irrelevant notion of rebellion, it's that they threaten to take away the mystery. They're fun, but you don't really want the smoke and incense to be taken away." It's dark in the library, the only light coming from a crackling fire. Bono, in the twilight, is wearing those damned dark wraparound glasses. His dad hated them when he was alive -- Bono takes them off when he sings on stage the song he wrote for his father "Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own" -- his brother hates them, and during my own arguments with non-believers, I find opponents scoffing at this middle-aged man apparently making such a prat of himself. "Well, I'm quite happy for it to offend the kind of people who find it offensive. I understand why people get upset -- it's like, you look at Jack Nicholson in the front row at the Oscars, that's something where you laugh with him, and I suppose some people just don't want to laugh with me. They're always going to laugh at me, whatever happens. Look, there are practical reasons, it's body armour, it's a note of necessary insincerity, and the eyes are a giveaway, and although I have got used to the stares I get, I quite like not having people who I don't know looking right into my eyes, as if they might find something out about me. They do, they walk right up to you, and stick their head right into your face. So it's good that there's a barrier. And of course, the light, and the drink, makes my eyes go red, there's bit of vanity there, I don't want people to see me all puffy. Yeah, they're really handy, for a myriad of reasons. You go and tell people that!" I guess you deserve a little kink of Howard Hughes behaviour this far in. "It should be OK, for God's sake! But, you never know, it might be time for the naked face. It might be coming. The naked stare." U2: 13 After the interview is over, I follow Bono out of the library into the lobby of the hotel. He spots the blushing Mademoiselle Champagne-Joly, and asks if she's coming to the next show. No, she admits. Bono is puzzled. Hasn't it been arranged? Yes, some people from the hotel are coming to the show, but she isn't one of the chosen ones. Why not? She does not know. Bono promises to find out what is going on. She thanks him, and for a moment I swear she curtsies. In the lift, Bono worries that she has been picked on because he showed favouritism towards her, anticipating all manner of shadowy, intriguing hotel politics. No cause is too big, or too small, for Bono. I leave the lift when it reaches my floor. As the doors shut, we salute each other, for old times' sake, or even new times' sake. "See you along the road," he says. That could mean next year, in five years, or 10 years. It might even be that U2 will still be touring, and getting better, and Bono will still be talking, and rearranging the world, in another quarter of a century. The lift doors shut, and Bono rises to the sky. Yes, we love him... "Bono has a willingness to lead, to achieve what his heart tells him, and that is nobody -- nobody -- should be living in poverty and hopelessness." - George Bush, 2005 "I think that politicians are attracted at first by the celebrity, but once they meet him, they find that he is an outstandingly capable interlocutor." - Harvard economics guru Jeffrey Sachs, 1999 "You have made people listen. You have made people care, and you have taught us that whether we are poor or prosperous, we have only one world to share. You have taught young people that they do have the power to change the world." - Kofi Annan (U.N. secretary general), 1998 "He's a poet. He's a philosopher. And last night, I think I saw him walking on water." - Mick Jagger introducing Bono as he received his MTV Free Your Mind award, November 1999 "When we get the Pope and the pop stars all singing on the same sheet of music, our voices do carry to the heavens." - Bill Clinton, 2000 "He's somebody I admire. He does a lot of good in this world of economic development." - U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, John Snow, on rumours the U2 front-man should become President of the World Bank in 2005 "He's charming, he's persuasive. And the politicians can go home to their daughters and say: 'I had a meeting with Bono today'." - Bob Geldof © Guardian Newspapers Ltd., 2005.
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