NEWS LYRICS PHOTOS CALENDAR BAND FORUM CONNECT ABOUT HOME

Anyone who wants to know what Bono thinks about debt, aid, and trade for Africa can go to the websites of DATA or The One Campaign. If you want to know how Bono feels, then there is no substitute for being in the room.

That's the important part.

That's when the 300th delivery of the DATA speech turns into an evening that is electric and personal in a way utterly different from the concert experience. Concerts leave me ecstatic, with an emotional broadband connection to the band and the fans and myself. Being in the room with Bono has left me challenged to find my connection with people a half a world away who may never hear the music, and who would be ecstatic to live long enough to see their children grow up.

It turns out that 4,000 people can feel like an intimate group when the biggest rock star in the world is standing on stage without his band, talking to us as if the most important thing in the world at this moment is to help us get on board his train. That intimacy began right up front, when he told us about the return of the October lyrics. Here's the story in his own words:

"It's been an extraordinary day for me, and I can't quite believe that a funny thing happened to me on the way to the theatre. I can't quite believe I just said that. But it did, and I came across something that I haven't seen for 23 years, since the first time I came to Portland, Oregon. A little club called the Foghorn. (Cheers from audience). Remember that place? You can't remember the gig, because as far as I recall, there were only eight people at the gig, and four of them were the band. The fifth was the bartender. The sixth was security. And the seventh and eighth people who were at the concert were thieves. I'm not kidding. And if there's only two people come to your show, you have to meet them. We were so grateful that we didn't notice them walking out with my suitcase. And in it were the lyrics and notes for U2's second album. The album was called October. Well, this October, 23 years later, this very day, I was given them back. (Cheers). Can you believe that? People who could have published and sold my papers, for absolutely no reward handed them back, an act of grace, an act of goodness. You will never know how much that means to me."

The emphasis in that last sentence is all his -- his voice fierce, passionate, personal. It doesn't matter that some of the details might be wrong: Bono's stories aren't about dates, they're about people, about heart, about principle. This one was about how something important that he thought was lost was given back to him. And isn't that the theme of an evening like this one? People are losing their lives for no good reason; Bono wants us to give them back. To help anti-retroviral drugs reach the people who are dying every day from AIDS and leaving their children orphaned. To insist that our governments relieve African countries of the debt that prevents them from educating their children and caring for their sick. To make human rights and dignity as important as a lost notebook full of rock and roll lyrics -- to give them back.

You won't find that connection in the speech, but it was surely in the room. And there was more: joy, pain, humor. A revival-meeting moment that happened when Bono said, "That is not a cause, that is an emergency," and turned it into a call-and-response, giving us an example of something that needs to be fixed and saying, "That's not a cause, that is an..." Emergency!, we yelled, Emergency! An inside joke: "I buy Brand USA. I buy the iPods...." And the moment when he said, "I'm in love with this country called America," and I believed him, and loved him for still believing in us.

And there was the old story, told with such urgency and obvious truth that it was new again, and hard to hear: the story of the father in Ethiopia 20 years ago who tried to give Bono his dying son to take back to Dublin, to take back to life. "I turned him down," Bono said, "I turned him down...and it's a feeling I can't quite ever forget." And now his voice was rough and low, conversational, confessional. Just a man standing on stage, telling us what happened one day.

It wasn't all like that. There are parts of this speech that make me want to howl in frustration, like the sentence right after the one above, when he says, "At that moment, I became the worst thing of all -- a rock star with a cause." Because of course we laughed, and phhtt, the dying little boy was gone, lost in Bono's self-deprecation. I want to take him out for a beer and tell him that he shouldn't dilute the punch, and that he is well past needing to apologize for being a rock star with a head for politics and a heart for justice.

There were moments when he became disconnected from his words and from us, and then it was just the same old speech he's given so many times before. (I come from punk rock. Brand USA. Watering cans.) It didn't matter: what mattered is how much of his talk was fresh -- not as if he were saying the words for the first time, but as if he has said them three hundred times and still feels them as he did when he wrote them, as if their power and meaning, their distress and hope, are still strong within him. As if nothing were more important than saying them again, to us.

It's a different experience of Bono than I've had before: not the rock star, not the soul-channel for the music, but the activist-performer with a mind at constant work, looking for whatever will open my mind enough to get the message in: charm, chat, personal revelation, passion, data, idealism, pragmatism. Trying to connect with me in any way he can, so that I will go out and do something, anything, for these millions of people that he cares about. He will tell me how many are becoming sick with HIV (9,000 a day) and how many are dying of AIDS (6,500 a day). He will tell me why it's in my own interest to medicate desperate people back to life so that they won't give their last energies to the terrorists and the ministers of chaos. He will toss out a joke about the women's soccer team in the rock star's hot tub, to make me laugh, because he knows that we're more inclined to help people we like.

I do like him. I like Agnes Nyamayarwo too, who met Bono in Uganda during his trip with Paul O'Neil and Chris Tucker, and who took part in the Heart of America tour in 2002. This night, she traveled to Portland to talk with us. She's HIV positive; she lost a husband and one child to AIDS, and another child to despair. She works, on her behalf and theirs, to bring education and HIV medication to people in Africa. She spoke with grace and dignity, and she got a standing ovation. She also asked us to "...send messages, talk to your President, talk with your Senators. Please do it to save the lives of people in Africa."

After the speeches, Bono took questions. These were handled in the standard format for this kind of lecture: the audience wrote them on cards, and the moderator selected which to ask. It ended up as a mix of political and personal inquiry. I assume that some people submitted U2-related questions, but the moderator didn't ask any, and I think that was exactly the right thing to do: this wasn't a music event, and it would have taken focus away from the issues that Bono was there to address.

One person asked how Bono's faith influenced his passion, his commitment to these concerns? Bono said, "I generally find it very hard to talk to people who can sum up their whole faith in three minutes...the kind of people who bleed all over you. They make me very nervous, and they keep asking me, 'Am I right with the Lord?' Well, ask the Lord!" Someone else wanted to know his parenting advice: "Don't smoke in bed, don't torture your mother...pick up your dirty clothes -- oh, that's me!"

The moderator asked the question I submitted, about the complexity of the process when so many people and agencies are involved. Bono said my question gave him a headache (not exactly the impression I would have chosen to make), and that the process is indeed complex. His biggest frustration, he said, is "the badness of bureaucracy, and not being able to get to people because of red tape, and because of process. I get very, very upset, and I lack a lot of patience for those kinds of excuses."

And whom would he vote for in the U.S. presidential election? "It's very hard for an Irish rock star to keep his mouth shut on anything. But I no longer have the right to express that opinion, because I will have to work with either of them, and I'm not working on my own account. I'm representing Agnes, I'm representing people who can't get in..." It's easy to believe, when you're in the room, that every single one of those people is important to him. And that all of us in the room are, too. At the concert, it matters that the crowd is there, the vast-hearted thousands of us, the energy we bring. In the room, it matters that I am there, and you are there, and the woman from Washington, D.C., who flew all the way to Portland for an hour of Bono's time is there. He talked about we, and he meant him and me, him and you, him and the woman from D.C. He told us, "This is the straight truth, this is the righteous truth...we can actually work together to save a continent. We can work together to change the world. It's in our hands." He told us, "Congress is about to decide how much money goes to the battle against AIDS and poverty for the next year...it turns out it's your job to tell the politicians what you want from them on this, okay? You tell them to do right by Africa, you tell them to do right by America, and you tell them if they do right by Africa and America, they'll be doing right by the world. We really need your help on this. Please promise me you will tell them." Not preaching, not performing: just a man standing on stage, asking for my help.

And this is what sent me home feeling challenged: what if it's true? I can be quite cynical about my government. I don't really believe politicians care about my opinion, or listen to my requests. But what if my phone calls or emails to my president and senators and representative will make a difference? What if the $10 that I might spend in a week on three lattes and a chocolate chip cookie will, as Bono told us, buy ten days of anti-retroviral drugs, ten days of life, for a human being in Africa? He said, "When we admit we can do something about it, then we have to do something about it....But do we have the will?" Do I?

A man whose music I love talked to me on the night of October 20. He asked for my help. He told me straight up that the choice I make matters, to him and to millions of people half a world a way. Sure, I know this tune. I've read the speech, I've seen it on TV. But this time, I was in the room. It was exhilarating and fascinating and fine. And it isn't over. I can stay there if I want. All I have to do is send the email, pick up the phone. Just help.



© Eskridge/@U2, 2004.

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