Editor Comment: When I was young I found a quite peace within the lyrics at the time I had no idea what my future would hold only that I believed that everything is possible and nothing is by chance. Turning 50 is only a number, mile marker, a chance to look back and reflect. For tomorrows work has yet to begun its with the knowledge of yesterday that you go forth and make a difference. You don’t have to be a rockstar to make difference you only have to be human and listen to your heart.
-Dre
As Bono turns 50, spare a thought for a man you’ve probably never heard of before. His name is Richard “Dik” Evans. In 1976 together with Paul David Hewson (Bono), Adam Clayton, and his brother David Evans (The Edge) he’d answer a newspaper advert stuck on a bulletin board calling for members for a new rock band. The four would audition, but soon after in a key moment of separating fortunes, Bono and friends would abandon doing cover songs in favour of writing original material and move on to form a group called U2. Dik Evans would choose to leave just before the formation of U2 to join a band called The Virgin Prunes.
The rest of the story is rock history. Dik would fade into obscurity, his only fame by proxy of his brother The Edge. Bono would become an overachieving legend. Not happy with global domination as frontman for one of the greatest bands of all time, or with being arguably one of the biggest singer-songwriters of his time, Bono, like Geldof before him, would put Africa on his list of “things to save”.
Born in an ordinary hospital to a working-class Dublin family on 10 May 1960, Paul David Hewson would be reborn as Bono thanks to his friend Gavin Friday and group of mates who were in the habit of giving each other nicknames. After several iterations Paul became Bono, and although he didn’t warm to the name initially, it sat more comfortably when he learned that Bono was a derivative of “bona vox” which translated from the Latin means “good voice”.
When he was 14, Bono suffered a significant trauma when his mother collapsed and later died after suffering a cerebral aneurysm at her father’s funeral. The pain of this loss is evident in many of his songs, including “I will follow” which the group have played on just about every tour, becoming U2’s most frequently played number.
Winner of 22 Grammy Awards, Bono pens most U2 songs which have ranged from the early inspired religious themes, to political statements to the more recent personal and self-deprecating. In 2005 with the rest of U2, Bono was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Three years later Rolling Stone magazine would list him as one of the greatest singers of all time. Having sold more than 150 million albums, U2’s latest are less remarkable than the earlier hit spinners like “The Joshua Tree”, “War” and “Achtung Baby”.
Nowadays Bono’s focus is increasingly geared toward solving the problem of poverty, saving Africa and championing the fight against Aids. Like Sir Bob before him Bono travelled to Ethiopia after 1985’s Live Aid concert and was reborn as a self-styled superhero with the view that “every human life has equal worth”.
This has spawned a number of pop-styled Bono movements to end Africa’s woes including “The Campaign to Make Poverty History” and Product (RED). The latter is a consumerist-type fundraising campaign that encourages people to buy, buy, buy designer branded products to raise funds for Aids drugs in impoverished Africa. As Bono once said: “Rock stars always want to do two things. They want to have fun and change the world. If you can do both at the same time you’re okay.” Bono has won way too many humanitarian awards to mention here, but the bigger ones include being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 and an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 2007.
Thanks to his humanitarian efforts, Bono is now rubbing shoulders with global leaders, speaking at world economic forums and addressing political and economic heavyweights at platforms such as Davos. Nowadays the songwriter with “good voice” is telling world leaders how to be good and save the world.
How will the rock god celebrate his half-century? According to the Irish press, he’ll be having an intimate do with a few close friends in New York.
Today, Bono, the U2 singer, global activist and one of the most powerful leaders on the world stage, turns 50. At this important milestone, it is worth briefly taking stock of his journey thus far—a journey of purpose, impact, passion, and humor. It is a path with lessons for leaders from all walks of life.
Let’s begin by considering all the roads Bono (who was born Paul David Hewson in Dublin) did NOT take as he has traveled these last five decades. He has never been the CEO of a major company. He has never held public office or scored a big campaign contribution. He did not graduate from an elite university. He did not make most of his considerable wealth in the global equity or debt markets.
So what has Bono been up to that accounts for his enormous influence—influence that extends from the 100,000-seat stadiums that U2 plays to the White House, Vatican, and Downing Street to debt forgiveness and medical aid to Africa? After all, he was not born with cash or connections. His father, Bob Hewson, who was a postal worker, used to tell him not to dream so he would not be disappointed. So how did a curious, restless boy whose mother died when he was 14, leaving him with what he later called a “God-shaped hole” at his core, become a leader who could convince Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Jesse Helms to increase America’s aid to Africa more than fourfold, from around $2 billion in 2000 to $8 billion in 2009? Whose Global Fund has committed $19 billion to fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria in 144 countries?
Bono’s leadership journey has its roots in U2, the Irish band that he and several schoolmates, including Larry Mullen, Jr., David Evans (who later became known as “The Edge”), and Adam Clayton, founded in 1976. The story of U2’s success is one of commerce as much as art. At its center is the creation and stewardship of a very powerful brand, a brand that, in the midst of an ongoing perfect storm of turbulence in the music distribution business, is still going strong around the world.
Another important part of U2’s success has been the very profitable business model that the four musicians and their savvy manager Paul McGuiness have developed. It is a model that keeps evolving—usually a step or two ahead of the gales of creative destruction buffeting the larger industry—and one that has benefited from a lot of experimentation, ongoing reinvention, and a consistent willingness to challenge industry standards.
But brands and business models are only as good as the product and people behind them. The U2 team, including musicians, management, administrative staff and others, is a vibrant, highly productive organization focused on producing relevant, world-class offerings—from CDs to stadium tours to films—that sell briskly in virtually every market on earth. Worldwide, the band has sold more than 140 million records. Its 2005 “Vertigo” tour grossed $389 million, second only to the Rolling Stones for a single-tour gross.
Leading this enterprise has meant keeping the key team members motivated, engaged and growing—as human beings as well as music makers—for almost 34 years. Growing the organization four gangly teenagers - who in 1979 had to sell one of their instruments in order to buy passage home after a short London tour—to one of the most successful rock bands in history has demanded abiding faith, a steady stream of courage, huge reserves of personal energy, and a disciplined openness to the world as he continues to meet it.
From this solid foundation, Bono has acquired great agency. Not only money for himself and sway with his customers—music fans of all ages, shapes and sizes—but also extraordinary access to other movers and shakers as well as influence on a wide range of issues outside rock music. One of the most compelling aspects of Bono’s leadership is how he has chosen to use the authority that has accompanied business success. He has decided, over and over again, to put his artistic, political, strategic, and spiritual muscle to work to alleviate suffering in the world’s poorest countries.
He talks a lot about justice as animating his work and spirit. But this is perhaps too abstract a term for what Bono seems to be doing on a daily basis. One of the most important things he does every day is to keep educating himself on the people, economies, and pressing problems of developing countries. Many of the experts, including the developmental economist Jeffrey Sachs, have commented on how thoroughly the singer-turned activist does his homework.
A second, important part of Bono’s days is leading a spectrum of organizations like the ONE campaign and RED that each advance his broader mission. This involves coordinating these groups and monitoring their progress. As of late 2009, the Global Fund had helped support antiretroviral treatment for 2.5 million people; helped provide 105 million HIV counseling and testing sessions; and helped finance 4.5 million instances of basic care and support services for orphans and vulnerable children. Bono’s leadership also involves selling these organizations and their work to all kinds of stakeholders.
Amidst all this activity, Bono keeps turning his energy to making and distributing music. This is part poetry, part packaging for the band and himself (he once said he had to learn how to be a rock star), part dollars-and-cents, and part competitive drive. His work as a musician is as central to his humanitarian efforts as the money he helps raise or the politicians he wins over for debt relief. At the same time, his activism has become part of the U2 brand, animating the way that millions of people think about the group and their offerings.
Herein lie several lessons. First, all successful organizational leaders—from presidents to police chiefs to CEOs—wield power, often in excess of that granted them by their office. How such individuals decide, explicitly or not, to use this control is a question of grave importance for the world today. The most important problems confronting us now, including a precarious global financial system and an equally vulnerable environmental system, do not come in separate buckets labeled “business” and “public policy.” These are challenges that are smashing through older boundaries and helping redefine organizational place and mission.
Second, as Bono seems to understand, these issues demand a new kind of leadership, one based not in aging hierarchies and status systems but in humility, an ardent desire to learn and a respect for the individuals that organizations serve.
Third, individual leaders have to keep getting right with themselves about their own path and impact.
Finally, effective leadership today demands a willingness to stay open, not only to one’s own enterprise but also to the teeming global village around it. Bono, like Abraham Lincoln 150 years ago, has not let himself become isolated in an elite atmosphere. He has used his touring and travels as classrooms to help him understand the hopes, dreams and tribulations of his fellow citizens, whom he often calls his brothers and sisters. And he has used this knowledge to light his way, his music and his leadership.
Happy Birthday, Bono.
To many times we have said “Bono,said what?” and come to find out that Bono has had a lot to say about many subjects. Over the years the press has had an opportunity to catch the one liners, and of course write them up. - Often its a snap shot into a bigger message.
As a rock star, I have two instincts, I want to have fun, and I want to change the world. I have a chance to do both.
Books! I dunno if I ever told you this, but books are the greatest gift one person can give another.
Distance does not decide who is your brother and who is not. The church is going to have to become the conscience of the free market if it’s to have any meaning in this world - and stop being its apologist.
It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.
It’s stasis that kills you off in the end, not ambition.
Music can change the world because it can change people.
My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them.
Rock ‘n’ roll is ridiculous. It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms around it and giving it a great big kiss.
The less you know, the more you believe.
To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.
U2 is an original species… there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.
We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.
Americans, Irish people, are good at charity. We like to give, and we give a lot, even those who can’t afford it. But justice is a higher standard.”
“And this wise man asked me to stop. He said, Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing — because it’s already blessed.”
“As an artist, I see the poetry of it. It’s so brilliant. That this scale of creation, and the unfathomable universe, should describe itself in such vulnerability, as a child. That is mind-blowing to me. I guess that would make me a Christian. Although I don’t use the label, because it is so very hard to live up to. I feel like I’m the worst example of it, so just kinda keep my mouth shut.”
“At a certain point, I just felt, you know, God is not looking for alms, God is looking for action.” Bono Quotes
“But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep s—-. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace.” Bono Quotes
“But my point is that the world is more malleable than you think and it’s waiting for you to hammer it into shape.”
“But we’ve got to follow through on our ideals or we betray something at the heart of who we are. Outside these gates, and even within them, the culture of idealism is under siege, beset by materialism and narcissism and all the other isms” of indifference.”
“But you know what’s amazing? Everywhere I go, I see very much the same thing. I see the same compassion for people who live half a world away. I see the same concern about events beyond these borders. And, increasingly, I see the same conviction that we can and we must join together to stop the scourge of AIDS and poverty.”
“Celebrity is currency, so I wanted to use mine effectively.”
“Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Jesus says that [Luke 6:30]. “Righteousness is this: that one should… give away wealth out of love for Him to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and the beggars and for the emancipation of the captives.” The Koran says that [2.177]. Thus sayeth the Lord: “Bring the homeless poor into the house, when you see the naked, cover him, then your light will break out like the dawn and your recovery will speedily spring fourth, then your Lord will be your rear guard.” The Jewish Scripture says that. It’s Isaiah 58 [verses 7-8] again. It’s a very powerful incentive: “The Lord will watch your back.” Sounds like a good deal to me, especially right now.”
“Eight million people die every year for the price of going out with your friends to the movies and buying an ice cream. Literally for about $30 a head per year, you could save 8 million lives. Isn’t that extraordinary? Preventable disease - not calamity, not famine, nothing like that. Preventable disease - just for the lack of medicines. That is cheap, that is a bargain.”
“Even then I prayed more outside of the church than inside. It gets back to the songs I was listening to; to me, they were prayers. How many roads must a man walk down?” That wasn’t a rhetorical question to me. It was addressed to God. It’s a question I wanted to know the answer to, and I’m wondering, who do I ask that to? I’m not gonna ask a schoolteacher. When John Lennon sings, “Oh, my love/For the first time in my life/My eyes are wide open” — these songs have an intimacy for me that’s not just between people, I realize now, not just sexual intimacy. A spiritual intimacy.”
“Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will.”
“Every era has its defining struggle and the fate of Africa is one of ours. It’s not the only one, but in the history books it’s easily going to make the top five, what we did or what we did not do. It’s a proving ground, as I said earlier, for the idea of equality. But whether it’s this or something else, I hope you’ll pick a fight and get in it.”
“Fear is the opposite of faith.”
“I believe in the kingdom come. Then all the colors will bleed into one.”
“I love this work I do. It’s a privilege to serve the poor,….”
“I was jumping up and down. The president deserves a lot of credit for that. He really stuck his neck out. He was right, it’s important the people know at this time what America is for as well as what America’s against. on George Bush’s announcement of increased AIDS funding for Africa.”
“If I could put it simply, I would say that I believe there’s a force of love and logic in the world, a force of love and logic behind the universe. And I believe in the poetic genius of a creator who would choose to express such unfathomable power as a child born in straw poverty”; i.e., the story of Christ makes sense to me.”
“If I could, you know I would. If I could, I would let it go. This desparation, dislocation, separation, condemnation, revelation, in temptation, isolation, desolation.”
“I’m not in a position to be seen as a spokesman for a generation. I mean, how can you be a spokesman of a generation if you’ve nothing to say, other than ‘Help!’”
“Imagine if a third of the kids at your local primary school were AIDS orphans. That’s a reality in Africa where the parents of 13 million children have been killed by AIDS.”
“Isn’t equality a son of a bitch to follow through on. Isn’t Love thy neighbour” in the global village so inconvenient?”
“It’s not enough to rage against the lie…you’ve got to replace it with the truth.”
“It’s patently clear to anyone living in New York or London that whole corners of their cities were about to be taken out, whether with chemicals or dirty nuclear devices. So I’m not full of criticism for the way the Americans have behaved. I’m with them.”
“Look at what happened in Southeast Asia with the Tsunami. 150,000 lives lost to the greatest misnomer of all misnomers, mother nature.” Well, in Africa, 150,000 lives are lost every month. A tsunami every month. And it’s a completely avoidable catastrophe.”
“My heroes are all alive. I never have worshipped at that altar of burnt-out youth.”
“Sing the melody line you hear in your own head, remember, you don’t owe anybody any explanations, you don’t owe your parents any explanations, you don’t owe your professors any explanations. You know I used to think the future was solid or fixed, something you inherited like an old building that you move into when the previous generation moves out or gets chased out. But it’s not. The future is not fixed, it’s fluid. You can build your own building, or hut or condo, whatever.”
“So my question I suppose is: What’s the big idea? What’s your big idea? What are you willing to spend your moral capital, your intellectual capital, your cash, your sweat equity in pursuing outside of the walls of the University of Pennsylvania?”
“The attention of the world might sometimes be elsewhere, but history is watching. It’s taking notes. And it’s going to hold us to account, each of us.”
“There are many side roads and back streets to rock ‘n’ roll, and most of us get lost down them at times.”
“There are potentially another 10 Afghanistans in Africa, and it is cheaper by a factor of 100 to prevent the fires from happening than to put them out.”
“To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.”
“We have to have a very simple standard of doing business, which is: If you are not tackling corruption, if you are not allowing civil society to do their job, we are not giving you any money. Outside of famine, and outside of those kinds of catastrophes, which need money pumped in no matter who’s in charge. We are not marching the streets to redecorate presidential palaces for anyone.”
“We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.”
“Well this is the time for bold measures. This is the country (America), and you are the generation.”
“Well, the going rate for change is not cheap. Big ideas are expensive.”
“We’re not here today for a victory lap; we’re here to pick up the pace. Because AIDS is outrunning us.”
“When the story of these times gets written, we want it to say that we did all we could, and it was more than anyone could have imagined.”
“When you sing, you make people vulnerable to change in their lives. You make yourself vulnerable to change in your life. But in the end, you’ve got to become the change you want to see in the world.”
“Yes, I sometimes fail, but at least I’m willing to experiment.”
“You have worked your ass off for this. For four years you’ve been buying, trading, and selling, everything you’ve got in this marketplace of ideas. The intellectual hustle. Your pockets are full, even if your parents’ are empty, and now you’ve got to figure out what to spend it on.” Bono Quotes
“You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.”
As the story goes, Paul David Hewson came into this world crying and did so for three years before finally settling down (Bono from U2 by U2). The events that shaped his life were hard lessons for a young man; his mom passed away at a young age and his dad suppressed any dream to which he dared to aspire. The moment he entered school he was fixing for a row with anyone who crossed him.
One of the aspects of Bono’s personality that I admire so much is how he grew on this spectacular journey. How he was willing to deconstruct his ego in order for him to be the performer he wanted and needed to be. Many people sometimes live in denial of their situations perfectly happy to move through life sleeping. Bono chose to move through life fully awake. Coming from a small Dublin town born of a Catholic father and Protestant mother, street fighting and general trouble in the country in the way of domestic terrorism was a daily occurrence. On September 25, 1976, just sixteen years old, he answered Larry Mullin’s ad to form a band. Less than ten years later, he married his steady girlfriend who he has loved since 1975…Ali Stewart. Four children and an entire musical career later, they’re still married. And interestingly enough, the couple’s oldest daughter also shares her dad’s birthday and turns 21 today!
These days, there are people who sharply criticize his involvement with politics and the choices he makes in his life (is there EVER a story I write in which I don’t mention the “haters”?) Contrary to popular belief, he never fancied himself a hero and doesn’t think he deserves the title. He’s sees his humanitarian work as work we all should be doing, on any level, big or small. A self-conscious man with suffering self-esteem who craved attention saw only one vocation for him and he pursued it with great vigor, KNOWING from the moment he answered Larry’s ad that this is what he was going to do with his life. After all, he needed to have arenas full of fans screaming and proclaiming their love for him so that he could feel accepted.
Happy Birthday to you and your daughter Jordan, Bono! Keep doing the magnificent work that you do with the band, and thank you for all you’ve done and continue to do for those in need! All of us fans appreciate the artist and person you are. Today, we raise a pint to you! Cheers!
U2 began touring almost immediately and released its first album, Boy, in 1980. In 1987, they released The Joshua Tree, their sixth album and the one that catapulted the band — and its outspoken frontman — to stardom.
Subsequent albums secured U2’s reputation for range and innovation, including 1991’s industrial-sounding Achtung Baby, 1993’s funkier-edged Zooropa, and techno-influenced 1997’s Pop.
U2 has returned to its modern rock roots with 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind. Creating simple, but powerful music, the group scored with such tracks as the soaring “Beautiful Day,” which won the Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Song of Year. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004) also fared well, both commercially and critically. Its two leading singles, “Vertigo” and “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own,” made strong showings on the charts and won several Grammy Awards.
In March 2009, the band released No Line on the Horizon, which reached the top of the American pop charts. It featured such popular songs as “Get On Your Boots” and “Magnificent.” To support the album, Bono and the rest of the group have been touring extensively.
Bono and his wife Ali have been married since 1982. They have two daughters, Jordan and Memphis Eve, and two sons, Elijah and John Abraham.
But are his lyrics worthy of celebration and will they be relevant in another 50 years, asks TONY CLAYTON-LEA
CONSUMERS OF pop music are fussy about lyrics; the examples of good and bad are far too numerous to list (this writer’s favourite clunkers include “there were plants and birds and rocks and things” from America’s Horse With No Name , and the geographically unsound “Coast to coast, LA to Chicago” from Sade’s Smooth Operator ), but you can guarantee that one person’s rounded gem of a lyric is another person’s dog-eared phrase.
For more than 30 years now, Bono’s lyrics have been on the receiving end of brickbats and bouquets; his detractors might point you to the likes of: “Some days are slippy, other days are sloppy; some days you can’t stand the sight of a puppy” ( Some Days Are Better Than Others ), while his fans might direct you towards this example from So Cruel: “You don’t know if it’s fear or desire/Danger the drug that takes you higher/Head of heaven, fingers in the mire/Her heart is racing you can’t keep up/The night is bleeding like a cut/Between the horses of love and lust we are trampled underfoot.”
The Vatican, meanwhile, extols the spiritual quality of Bono’s lyrics. Earlier this year, in L’Osservatore Romano , a newspaper viewed favourably by Vatican officials, Italian music critic Andrea Morandi argued that references to religion (via the Psalms, Habbakuk and the Magnificat) can be discerned in almost every U2 song. “What Bono is writing is very sophisticated and often misunderstood,” noted Morandi, implying, perhaps, that the mixture of the two can often lead to an appealing level of enigma.
Another religious publication, the somewhat more evangelical Christianity Today , states that, “for many Christians of a certain generation, combing through the lyrics of U2 songs in search of biblical images or references to Jesus Christ and his teachings is almost a sport”.
It is little surprise, then, to discover that at various Church of England ceremonies (known as “U2-charists”) Bono’s lyrics take the place of traditional hymns. Originally devised in 2005 by American Episcopal priest Rev Paige Blair (who has since advised more than 150 churches of U2-charists in over 15 US states and seven countries), the lyrics used are culled from songs that include When Love Comes To Town, Mysterious Ways and Elevation .
Don’t talk to acclaimed US music critic Dave Marsh about such matters, though. In 2009, in the political newsletter Counterpunch , he wrote an article in the wake of Bono withdrawing from a public debate (“Celebrity politics – a complete failure?”). Marsh, possibly suffering from a residual surge of humiliation and hubris, opined that: “It can’t be denied that Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton and the Edge can still make fascinating music.
“Bono’s yelped vocals are another matter, his hollow lyrics – where every platitude yields to an obscurantist pretension and back again – yet another.”
So, on the cusp of Bono’s 50th birthday, where does all of this leave us with regard to what he writes and how it’s received? He’s no Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave or Elvis Costello, but neither is he a Noel or Liam Gallagher. Bono has himself said that the first two lines of Where the Streets Have No Name are “inane”.
In the 2005 publication Bono On Bono he also said: “With the cadence and the way the melody falls, they can be more articulate than any purely literate response. Pop lyrics, in a way, are just a rough direction that you sketch for where the listener must think toward. That’s it, the rest is left up to you. When U2 songs are written, I don’t write them in English. I write them in what the band call ‘Bongelese’, I just sing the melodies and the words form in my mouth, later to be deciphered.”
ALICE JAGO, IRISH SINGER-SONGWRITER
He has also a simplicity of language in lyrics like “all the promises we made/From the cradle to the grave/When all I want is you”. I agree that when you take away the music, it’s something else and maybe a little less profound, but it all works in unison.
He’s a great lyricist, but maybe not a great poet. They are two very different things. Most songwriters aren’t overly concerned with how words read on paper, the words work around the melody, and the sound of U2 would be completely different if he was trying to fit colourful language into such strong melodies.
Bono isn’t as poetic as Nick Cave or Leonard Cohen, but he has a unique instinct for what works in a song. He also has a sense of humour that he’s not afraid to use, like in No Line On The Horizon : “Every sweet tooth needs just a little hit/Every beauty needs to go out with an idiot/How can you stand next to the truth and not see it.”
Favourite Bono lyric : It’s from Bad : “If I could throw this lifeless lifeline to the wind/Leave this heart of clay, see you walk/Walk away into the night and through the rain/Into the half-light and through the flame.” It’s more like an anthem, isn’t it?
Least favourite lyric : It’s from Elevation : “A mole digging in a hole” Actually, the whole song drives me mad.
ADRIAN CROWLEY, SINGER- SONGWRITER, WINNER OF THIS YEAR’S CHOICE MUSIC PRIZE
I never considered U2 as the type of band that came from a school of great lyricists. I always saw their appeal as something else, so it’s never entered my mind that Bono would consider the lyric as a really important thing in the songwriting process.
When you take some songs apart, like those by Leonard Cohen, you can publish those in a book of poetry; every single one that I know of his would stand as poetry. But not all songs are like that.
So for me, U2 are about the overall sound, not the words. The atmosphere, say, of The Unforgettable Fire , really brought me into the band, but I subsequently discovered that was more to do with Brian Eno than anything else.
I think U2 have reached a level now, creatively, that works for them. It’s almost as if they have a type of song and they’ve been writing that type of song for a long time. How can you go on that long writing the same type of song? Someone like, say, Scott Walker, has certainly changed over the years.
I don’t think Bono has changed that much since the very, very early days.
PAUL MULDOON, POET
While it’s the combination of lyrics and music that makes U2 such an extraordinary band, there’s no doubt that Bono is becoming a better lyricist per se than ever. One need look no further that the mesmerising One Step Closer on How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb or, on the most recent album, No Line On The Horizon , two of his best songs to date.
I’m thinking of Magnificent , with its really envy-inspiring turn on “justified till we die, you and I will magnify/ the magnificent”.
A similar regard for wordplay that enters the realm of “serious fun” is to be found in Moment of Surrender , in which Bono refers to “a vision of a visibility”, a vision brilliantly grounded in the image of his own reflection staring back from an ATM.
Moment of Surrender also includes a verse with one of the most haunting slant rhymes I’ve come across in a while: “The stone was semi precious/We were barely conscious.”
The “surrender” to which the song refers again combines the sexual with the spiritual, but it also signals a regard for the profound sense of artistic humility to which I’m certain Bono subscribes. He’s willing, I believe, to allow the word to make of him an “instrument”, an idea that all of us who imagine ourselves to be writers would do well to foster.
PAUL REES, EDITOR OF Q MAGAZINE
Bono has written some clunkers, true, but then so do almost all rock stars. He also wrote One , which coupled with the music, is a genuinely moving work. Something from Oasis, for instance, like “See me walking down the hall/Faster than a cannonball” is an awful piece of writing per se, but it still sounds rousing being sung by a stadium. That’s what it’s built for.
The same applies to Bono’s lyrics, with the same successful result.
He’s never put himself up as being a great wordsmith, so I think he does self-deprecation very well. I would rather hope that at this point he really neither reads nor cares what his detractors think. He is a rock star, not a poet. And he’s not done too shabby a job of being the former. In fact, I would say his approach, whatever it is, has served him very well over the years.
He hasn’t got too many reasons to change it, has he? I’d similarly posit that as a songwriter, he’s written his share of proper tunes – most artists, whether they like U2 or not, would trade an appendage for the hit quotient of The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby alone.
Favourite Bono lyric : One , as previously noted. I also think he wrote some of his best lyrics on No Line On The Horizon .
