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"Dublin people will never kiss ass, and I don't want them to kiss ass." -- Bono, 2000 |
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"Dublin people will never kiss ass, and I don't want them to kiss ass." -- Bono, 2000 |
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Interview: Bono on RTE TV with Dave Fanning
RTE TV,
February 05, 2000
(thanks to Melissa T. for the transcription!)
David Fanning: Now, I mentioned at the top of the program that we have the most famous living Irishman in the world, he's from the Dublin rock band called U2. Let's meet him -- BONO! [Audience cheers. Bono comes in, he and Dave sit down] Bono: Hello. DF: How are you? B: It is amazing, isn't it? You know, all of these tough men, like Mike Tyson and Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn, and then God just goes, "Well, I'll give them a lisp." [Laughter] DF: Oh yeah! Yeah, good enough, Bono, yeah. B: God is fair. DF: God is fair, indeed. How are you doing? You alright? B: I'm great, really good, you old pirate. DF: Good. Me old, yeah, you saw that in the beginning, yeah. Pretty sad, that. Did you see the hair, yeah? B: It's amazing to see you, I have to say, having seen you in that bearded, eh, state, in that pirate radio station all those years ago, and, and to see you looking younger than you did 20 years ago... DF: [Pointing to face] Makeup. [Laughs] B: ...is a little bit of a shock. How do you do it, Stanley? DF: I don't take compliments very well, so shut up you bastard and answer the questions! [Everyone laughs] DF: Well now, let's start with something, like next Thursday in Berlin... B: Right. DF: The Berlin Film Festival opens. B: Yeah. DF: Another string to the Bono ball [unintelligible] this is a, uh, this is a movie, right? This has been going around for a long time, I mean... B: Right. DF: You wrote this movie, or something, you wrote the story, you tell them about it. B: It's, it's a movie, it's called The Million Dollar Hotel. It's hard to describe, eh...stars Mel Gibson, he plays this kinda supercop with a arm [laughs] sticking out of his back and that's about the most ordinary, normal thing about the whole movie. It's, it's set in a downtown L.A. hotel, which still exists, called The Million Dollar Hotel. And, uh, Wim Wenders is the director...and, I can't, I mean, look, you go out on tour and you get these big ideas in your head and, and then years later they come into some fruition. I'm really thrilled with it, actually. DF: OK, Wim Wenders made things like Paris, Texas, Wings of Desire, The Buena Vista Social Club recently. You've been collaborating with him for a good while, he made videos with you, you dedicated a song on one of the albums to him as well, all that sort of thing. Have you hung around with him a lot? B: Yeah, we, we made an album called Achtung Baby in Berlin, and Wim Wenders lives in Berlin and we kind of got to know him there, and we did the title track for a movie of his called Until The End of the World, and another one called Stay (Faraway, So Close!). So, it's a kind of, it's an ongoing relationship we have with him. I really like him, he's a real gentleman... DF: Yeah.. B: And it's not, the movie is not an action picture, it's not what you would expect from Mel Gibson, it's a very odd, European look at America and, and the kind of people you might find in this low-rent accommodation in downtown L.A. We lived in L.A., eh, the band moved there at the end of the '80s and I was quite attracted to this place. DF: OK, OK, so it's about friendship, it's about betrayal, the main guy is Jeremy Davies, who's simple? Can I say simple? B: Yeah, well... DF: Slow? B: The, the protagonist, his name is Tom Tom, and at the opening of the movie he jumps off the roof of the hotel and the first line is: "After I jumped, it occurred to me: Life is perfect. Life is the best. It's full of magic, full of possibilities...and television." DF: Yeah, OK, OK, so Mel Gibson is in this movie here as an FBI guy who comes to the hotel... B: Yeah. DF: ...to try to find out who may have pushed, or did the guy jump, the Tim Roth character? B: Yeah. Mmm... DF: OK, now, he turns out to be a very rich guy and they didn't know all this, and all the guys in the hotel thought they knew him very well, he was a junkie or an ex-junkie or something. B: Yeah. You shouldn't try and tell the story because I've tried, I'm pitching it to Hollywood... DF: Yeah, I haven't even seen it. B: ...and it takes about a half an hour. DF: ...I know, it's strange. OK! We're gonna show a clip from it now... B: OK. DF: ...and this is the clip where Mel Gibson decides he's sick of all these guys and I'm going to take a bit of control here, and let's have a look at this bit here. [Clip shown] [Audience applauds] DF: The Million Dollar Hotel is what it's called and, uh, it's gonna start the Berlin Film Festival next Thursday. And it's really done extremely well review-wise so far, yeah? B: Yeah, Rolling Stone magazine said it's the best Wim Wenders film, eh, a few people, look -- I think some people will love it and some people will loathe it, being, being honest! You know, it's not for everybody, it's kind of a tone poem. It's a very, very beautiful thing that he does, though, as a filmmaker. If you're tired of the usual Hollywood schlock, and I know your favorite movie is Titanic, so you probably aren't... [DF and audience laugh] B: And, uh, but if you're tired of all that. He's a status quo Titanic man, you know. DF: No, I'll tell you, one of my favorite movies of all-time is Harold and Maude... B: Oh yes... DF: And Harold is in this movie and I haven't seen him in a movie for thirty years... B: Bud Cort. DF: Yeah. B: Yeah. Extraordinary man. DF: He's still alive and well, he was very young, of course, in that first one. Okay! Em, you're in another movie, by the way, you're only in this movie for about three or four seconds, aren't you? B: Yeah, he talked me into it, I, I, I wish I hadn't been talked into it. It's just, you know, the shot goes by and you see, "Oh, there's Bono, he's in his own movie," it's, to me it's a bit of a vomit, but, uh, [audience laughs] anyway, I did it for Wim. DF: OK, but what about the one you actually act in and talk in, Entropy, what's that about? B: Ohhh, ohhhh... DF: As in "Ohh, you wish I hadn't brought that up?" B: No, no, it's fine to bring it up, it...myself and Larry are in this movie called Entropy. It's, it's not been released ever... DF: [Laughs] Great! [Bono laughs] B: You can get it on video, and eh, it's great...eh, um...[laughs] I'm very proud of it. DF: Good. B: The movie's very good... DF: The movie especially... B: My own performance is wooden, to say the least. But you know, hey, did it for a mate. DF: Did it for a mate. OK, you got an album coming out probably what? September, October direction maybe? B: Yeah. Yeah. We're finishing, we'll have it finished by May. DF: And what kind of an album is it? And don't just say a U2 album. B: It's...look, if I was a painter or a writer or a filmmaker or a poet or whatever, when you get into your thirties you, you know, you'd just be hitting form, you'd just be figuring out and getting, getting on it. DF: Yeah... B: With rock bands, it's not often the case. And, you know, they get burnt out. Well, I, I, U2 is not burnt out right now. A [laughs] little shagged out this evening, but, not burnt out and we're ready to make the best record, the record we've waited all our lives to make. And it has to be great to break that thing that people have, "Oh yeah, they've had it, you know, they've hit it, they've made it. Now they'll just chill out and, you know, have a fish farm in Wales." We're not ready for that. And, you know, some good bands out there now, uh, Oasis and Radiohead and all these good bands, and, they're, they are good, they're the boys. We're the men. [Lively applause and catcalls from the audience] DF: So, wait a minute there Bono, on that note, since the first album was twenty years ago and it's called Boy and you're forty in May, is this called Men? Man? B: [Laughs] No man. DF: No man. [Audience laughs] B: No, Gay, but how's the Harley anyway? [referring to appearance on Gay Byrne's TV show in May, 1999] DF: The Harley's fine, actually... B: He looks good, I think he should be on every week here. [Audience applauds loudly] DF: When you're in the studio, with this album, with, say, Brian Eno, you're going around the place, is there a different way that you might approach it this time? Like, there was one story I heard that Eno says, "I want you all to tell us what your fifteen or twenty favorite songs are of all-time" and the four of you or whatever, you had sixty songs, I heard that 52 of those were from black artists. Is that true? B: Completely untrue. DF: Oh! Well then... [Bono laughs] DF: We'll go on to something else then...[laughs] B: No, you know, it's, the thing about it is, on our last record, we were, you know, we had a lot of fun experimenting with eh, what was going on in dance music and club culture and trying to bring it into rock & roll. This record is about doing, making a record that only a band could make. So if you like the band, and what Larry, Edge, Adam and myself do, you'll probably like the record. If you don't, you, you really won't. 'Cuz, it's, it's a record made by four players, in a room. We're approaching it like...it's...all or nothing, for us. DF: Yeah. B: We're just, we're not ready to, I'm not ready to be in a band relying on your past work. I'm not ready for that. I have too much, what is it, vanity, ego or self-respect, you can decide, but, we all feel the same. We feel we're either going for this, or we're not. So we're making a great record, as I said, it's a record we've waited all our lives to make, it's even easy to make. Some of our records are nightmares. And Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, our producers, are really helpful. Daniel Lanois is a very gifted musician. He's in, I think he's in physical pain unless he's around a great, great music. So, we'd either make a great record, or he or us will be dead. [Laughs] DF: Yeah, but, but sometimes I wonder about Brian Eno, you know, he being the producer of the album of, of, certainly working with you on the album, he suddenly said he hates rock music. B: You should never work with people who are your fans, is my opinion. I knew he didn't, I knew he wasn't a fan of us, it was one of the reasons we got to work with him. I wanted to know the other side of the argument. I knew what was right about us... DF: Yeah. B: I wanted to find out what wasn't. DF: OK, how's Il Papa? B: I beg your pardon? DF: The Pope. B: Eh... DF: Was he cool? B: He was very, very cool. DF: Yeah, yeah... B: He was. Genuine! And in fact, the word is cool. And he had some massive dancing shoes on. I, and... [Audience chuckles] B: Myself and Geldof were there and we were kind of giggling as we went through his summer residence, Castlegandolfo. And they kept bringing us from inner sanctum to inner sanctum, it was like a video game, just, you know, where's he gonna be and the rooms were getting smaller and the thrones were getting bigger and eh, we were kind of giggling, we couldn't help it. Quincy Jones was with us, who's kind of a legendary jazz guy, produced Michael Jackson, he was saying, "Look at all the, all the tapestries of the apostles, they're all gettin', you know, they're all gettin' down on the hood!" [Makes gestures like he's a homeboy] [Audience laughs] And we were sort of laughing. And then we stopped laughing as this very beautiful man with a beatific face walked into the room, just this kind of, just overwhelming, kind of concentration to be there, and to get over his infirmities and to be with us. And, uh, I found it quite moving, and then I noticed the oxblood Gucci slip-ons. And I thought, whoa! [Laughs] He was, he, I thought he was staring at me, I wasn't sure and then I thought, well, why would that be? and then I realized I had these, uh, glasses quite like these on. And I thought, oh gosh, I hope he doesn't think I'm disrespecting him in any way and so I took off my glasses. When I was talking with him, he was looking at them, and I think very spiritual people, uh, I think they probably have, above a lot of things, a sense of fun. DF: Yeah. B: He kind of just looked at the glasses...and he put them on! And he got this kind of mad, kind of wicked grin. [He's acting this out as he's describing it and it's hilarious] [Audience laughs] B: And all the, all the Vatican photographers went "poof" [goes like he's clicking a camera], and I thought, Fantastic! You know, we'll be on the cover of every newspaper, cuz Jubilee really needed the exposure, Jubilee 2000 is a debt relief thing we've done. DF: Yeah. B: And I thought, this is amazing, but in fact they wouldn't release the photographs. I think they feared the T-shirt, you know, the Pope with [gestures like he's putting glasses on]. I mean, the people around him didn't have, unfortunately, the same sense of humor as he had. But I was very moved to be there. And, and what he read out, by the way, was this incendiary kind of, eh, diatribe about how the West has a responsibility to deal with what's going on in the rest of the world. And, I think that one of the lines he read out was, "With private property there comes a personal, there comes a, a uh, personal mortgage. And with intellectual property." And he was talking, the same guy who had worked behind the scenes to pull down the, the Iron Curtain, is, in his last days, and I hope he has many more to come, he is now working at a much bigger, and higher wall that he wants to pull down, which is this obscene and widening gap between the people who have, like myself... DF: Yeah. B: And the people who haven't. So I applaud him and I'm very grateful for him. DF: OK, well let's just take a look at this bit here, of Bono meeting the Pope, 'cuz we have just a few seconds of this. B: [Laughs] They edited it! You'll see them edit it. [Clip shown] B: [Laughing] Very cool. DF: Bono, on a political, intellectual... B: I gave him Seamus Heaney's poetry. DF: That's right, you gave Seamus Heaney's poetry to him as well. From all the levels, like morally, economically, etc. Jubilee 2000 makes complete sense. What is it, in a nutshell? It's basically to reduce or completely obliterate Third World Debt. B: You know, I can't do anything in a nutshell [laughs], but I remember, and some of you may remember Live Aid and I remember after Live Aid...we, you know, raised 200 million eh, dollars, for Africa. We were jumping up and down, we thought, this is incredible, we've cracked it, we were so proud of Geldof. We were all proud to be a part of that. DF: Yeah. B: We were jumping up and down, we thought, this is amazing, and then you discover that Africa pays 200 million dollars a week to us, to the wealthiest countries in the world, to the West, on old debts! On loans that sometimes they didn't even want to take out but were pushed on them. You know, people like Mobutu ran off with billions of dollars that were given to him at a good rate because -- for political reasons a lot, old Cold War, uh, reasons. And we're saying, let's give the millennium a ring, let's give it a resonance that will outlast the fireworks and the dumb parade and give these people a chance to get up off their knees. And, and, start taking care of themself, cuz they're tired of the nipple of aid as well. And, and eh, so, we went after it, I, we announced it at the Brits, people laughed, people said, "This'll never happen, it's another one of those, you know, one of those pie-in-the-sky ideas. And...we went after it, Geldof particularly concentrated on Tony Blair, and I concentrated on Clinton and the U.S. and we just knocked on doors, we doorstepped people, I doorstepped everyone from David Rockefeller to the Secretary of the Treasury there, Robert Ruben, then hit the fellow who followed him, Larry Summers, I mean, we just went after them. And we asked them the question, "Give us a good, give us a reason why you can't do this?" And in the end there was no good reason. DF: Yeah. B: And, it was difficult, but finally Clinton came out and, eh, and cancelled 100% of the debt for 36 countries. And then Tony Blair came, came through, and now we're working on the French and the Germans, those, there, I was over in France last week. DF: Right. B: Look, I don't know, it's mad that they'll even listen to a pop star. You know, I walk in and, you know, I haven't exactly got a bowler hat and a briefcase on, and I'm telling them, you know, what I believe is right, and I'm not an economist. But they're listening. For whatever reasons, they're listening. DF: OK. Well, listen, just one last thing is this. Em, you have not been touring over the last year so I can only assume you've had more time at home in Dublin. In which case, to Bono and Ali a son, Eli, was born. How's Eli doing? B: He's great! Em, I mean, he's really, he's a beautiful boy and, I mean, I see him all the time 'cuz I'm breastfeeding. [Audience laughs] B: He's amazing. Edge just had a little boy as well, Larry's had a little boy, Adam says he doesn't have any children. [Everyone laughs] B: But I'm thinking, you know, we gotta think for the future. I, I actually meant to talk to Louis Walsh about that...he's got all the kids at home! DF: Yeah! [Laughter] DF: OK listen, Bono, thank you very much for talking to us on the program and uh, good luck with the album. B: Thank you. [Audience applauds] © 2000 RTE. All rights reserved.
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