Bono (3 page)

What was the first Beatles song that you learned?

“Dear Prudence.” All the things you could do with the C chord. Neil Diamond . . . that's another songbook he had. I loved the “Diamond.” A song called “Play Me.”
[sings it]
Genius . . .

So back to your brother. Did you get on with him?

Yes, but we used to fight—physically fight.

Most children fight. What was so special about this?

Because you would have this sixteen-year-old little Antichrist who resents the house that he's living in. As I say, I'm sure I was a pain in the arse to be around. My brother would come home from work, I'd be sitting there with my mates and be watching TV. I wouldn't have done the washing up or
something I said I would do. He would say something or he'd slam the door; we'd end up in a row.
[laughs]
There was literally blood on our kitchen walls, years later. I mean, we could really go at it.

But when your mother died, I'm sure he supported you. He had turned twenty by then.

He's a great man. My brother couldn't tell a lie. Back then he was trying his best. I remember once we had a big fight, and I threw a knife at him.
[laughs]
I didn't throw it to kill him; I just threw it to scare him. And it stuck into the door:
boing . . .
And he looked down at it, and I looked at it. And I realized: I didn't mean to, but I could have killed him. And I think both of us wept, and both of us admitted that we were just angry at each other because we didn't know how to grieve, you see . . . Because my mother was never mentioned.

How do you mean: never?

After she died, my father didn't talk about her. So it never came up. So that's why I don't have any memories of my mother, which is strange.

It
is
strange, because you were fourteen. I read that she died after she came back from her own father's funeral. Is that so?

She collapsed at the funeral of her own father, picked up and carried away by mine. She never regained consciousness. Well, actually, we don't know if she did or she didn't. My father, at his most fetal, when he was losing it or we'd been having a big row, would say: “I promised your mother on her deathbed that . . .” Then, he never finished the sentence. These and other things, I would have liked him to have coughed up at the end.

Do you feel there are questions you wanted to ask your father that remain unanswered?

Yes.

But why didn't you ask them?

I tried to. He didn't want to answer them.

Like what?

I wanted to get into the conversation where I could actually ask him why he was the way he was. I have discovered some interesting family history since, which is extraordinary. It's not something I want to talk about now. But no, he would disappear into silence and wit.

What is it exactly that you wished you knew about his way?

So closed, I suppose . . . And so disinterested, in a certain sense. As I say, my father's advice to me, without ever speaking it, was: “Don't dream! To dream is to be disappointed,” which would be a pity, wouldn't it, never to dream . . . And, of course, this is where megalomania must have begun. To never have a big idea was his thing. That's all I'm interested in.

But how was he trying to put you off?

“Why would you want to go to university?” I mean, he was confused, but in the end he said: “Yeah . . . go to college. Sure, I'll help you . . .” He'd eventually pay for guitar lessons, but it didn't come easily to him. And yet the thing he regretted the most in his life is that he hadn't become a musician and a singer. I mean, that's very hard to figure out. I am now the father of four children, and I cannot imagine thinking like that. But his way of guarding you from being disillusioned was by not letting you have illusions in the first place. At some point he stopped reaching outside of himself. I think he maybe had to cut off something, and he didn't want his kids
to go through that. Either that or he was just perverse. I can't figure it out. I mean, what else? What other explanation is there?

So what did he think would become of you?

Hmm . . . I think . . . either join the civil service, like he did, which was a safe job, which you couldn't be fired from . . . or a traveling salesman. A lot of our family were traveling salesmen. And of course that is what I have become!

In a way, possibly.

Oh no, in more than just a way. I am sure of it. I am very much a traveling salesman. And that, if you really want to know, is how I see myself. I sell songs from door to door, from town to town. I sell melodies and words. And for me, in my political work, I sell ideas. In the commercial world that I'm entering into, I'm also selling ideas. So I see myself in a long line of family sales people. I really do. Thank God for my Uncle Jack!

So there were success stories in your family, on your mother's side.

One of her eldest brothers was very successful in the insurance business. He went away to London, and then all over the world. They all did very well, but he did extremely well. I think that was another thing they thought I could become—an insurance salesman. For a circus performer who never looked for a net, that's pretty funny, isn't it? Anyway, it's a wonderful thing—I have to tell you—to come out of an environment where you really didn't have to achieve anything, isn't it? It's usually the opposite from that. But, God bless them, I was a very unruly kid. And when my mother died, that turned into rebellion. So I can't really blame my father for not seeing my future as being bright, because he saw me setting fire to myself. I wasn't interested in school, though I was pretty good at it. It's really funny, you
know, my grades were at the top of the class, until this period. Also, most of the people I was hanging around with weren't interested in school. So I don't want to hold him to too much blame.

Because you were trouble.

Yeah, that was really it.

Eventually you went to university, though.

Yeah, I did. Because my school friends were going. I was even interested in ideas then—I've always been interested in ideas. I mean, I was in university for two weeks, doing an arts degree in English and history. I would have loved that.

How do you mean “two weeks”?

I had falsely matriculated, they told me. In the National University, you are supposed to speak the national language, and I didn't. I had flunked Irish, and they found that out. They threw me out of college, even though they had accepted me on my other results.

How did your relationship with your father evolve after your mother died? I guess you've gone through various stages until his recent death.

After my mother died, I think I tortured my brother and my father. There were three men living alone in a house. There were some awful times that we shared, really, about as low as you can get for three men. I remember, physically, my father trying to knock me out. I never returned fire, but it was hard. Mostly, they were comical moments. He worked out some of his own anxieties by so-called “worrying about me.” I'd be seventeen, and I'd be going out to punk rock gigs, and coming back. He'd be waiting for me at
the top of the stairs, with some heavy artillery.
[laughs]
It was like an obstacle course for me and my gang of friends: how to get back in the house without waking him up.

I guess you gave the poor man many a sleepless night. Do you remember a particular episode?

I used to climb up the two floors on the drainpipe, and then I would reach over to the bathroom window, cross to the window—quite a tricky maneuver—put my hand in the window, open and get in, and go down, and let my friends in, so we can hang out some more. I remember, like, four in the morning, just as I'm making the most difficult part of the maneuver, my father wakes up and goes
[impersonating]
: “Is that you? Is that you?” And I'm outside his bedroom window, hanging out over the housing estate. I'm going
[mutters, putting his hand over his mouth]:
“Mmmmh. Yeah, it's me, yeah.”—“Hurry up! And go to bed”—“Mmmh. Yeah, OK . . .” And he doesn't know I'm actually hanging outside his window like, fuck, I'm about to fall off and break every bone of my body.
[laughs]

You make it sound like he frightened you a lot.

Not really. I guess it was just a combative relationship. We were very unusual, our community. Not every father has two kids calling for their son, wearing Doc Martens, sporting a Mohawk and an occasional dress. Or sometimes Guggi would call to the door on a horse. Because we were surrealists from a very early age, we thought this was very funny. Once, when we fell out, in my twenties, my mates came to wrap my car in tissue paper—the entire car—with dozens and dozens of eggs, turned it into papier-mâché, to seal it like in a cocoon of tissue and eggs. And when I woke up, they were firing eggs at me. Only problem was my father woke up, and he slept with a weapon under his pillow.

You mean a gun?

No. It was like an iron bar. So the two of us, myself and my father, were running down the road after my mates, both of us armed to the teeth. I mean, it was comical! And he was
[impersonating his father running out of breath]
, “I'm having a heart attack . . . I'm having a heart attack . . . Those fucking bastards! I'll get them . . .”

Why did you keep living with him, then?

He gave me a year at home, bed and board, free of charge. He said: “You got one year. If at the end of this year, things aren't happening for your band, you gotta go and get a job.” Pretty generous when you think about it. He started to mellow. There was one extraordinary moment I remember when he really helped me out. This big shot came over to see the band, and offered us a publishing deal. It was a big moment for us, because we were really flat broke. And with the money that he was offering, we booked a tour of the U.K. We still hadn't got a record deal. We said: “On that tour, we'll get a record deal.” But, on the eve of that tour, the publisher rang up and halved the money, knowing that we had to take it, because we'd already hired the van, the lights, the whole thing. The stories you hear—right?—about the music business as full of bottom-feeders are of course true. But we told this man to shove it up his own arse. We went to our families, and asked them for five hundred pounds each. My father gave it, Edge's father gave it, and I think Larry's father gave it. So the mood of the relationship, as you're asking me about, starts to improve.

Did your father eventually tell you he was proud of your success?

Uh . . . Yeah, I think he was proud, in some ways. I took him to the United States for the first time in the mid-eighties. He'd never been there, and he came in to see a U2 show in Texas. And I thought this
would be amazing for him to see this. I got Willie Williams, our lighting designer, to have a Super Trooper focused on the sound platform, and at the right moment, I told the audience: “You know, there's somebody here tonight that's never been to Texas”—they scream and hoot—“that's never been to the U.S.”—more screaming—“that's never been to a U2 show in the U.S.”—they're going bananas—“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE LONE STAR STATE, I WANT TO INTRODUCE YOU TO MY FATHER, BOB HEWSON. THAT'S HIM THERE!” The light comes on, and my dad stands up. What does he do? He starts waving his fist at me. It was a great moment, really. Then, after the show, after coming offstage, he came back. I'm usually a bit dizzy and walking into walls for ten minutes. Normally no one would talk to me—I just need some moments to climb down a few gears. I heard footsteps. I turned round. It was my father, and he looked . . . almost emotional.
[laughs]
I said to myself, “God, he's actually going to say something. This is the moment I've waited all my life for . . .” I think there's tears in his eyes. He's putting his hand out to me, I put my hand out to him, and he looked at me with those red eyes. He said: “Son . . .
[big pause]
you're very professional . . .”
[laughs]

Professional?! That's not quite the impression you made on me then.

That's fantastic, isn't it? I mean, especially if you came from punk rock, the last thing that's on your mind is being professional. But no, he was proud. I think he always probably found me very pretentious, which is probably right. I think he still found me a little preposterous, which I think is probably right. I think, like a lot of fathers with their sons, like no one else they know where to finger you. And he had a very, very wicked sense of humor.

Are you implying that he taught you valuable lessons for your life as a rock star?

He took the Dublin position of “My son, the fucking idiot.” That was the whole thing. So when he walked into that kitchen, you see, downstairs, where there were those presses [Irish and Scottish for
cupboards
]—they're still there—he went:
[shouting]
“Ha!
[claps hands]
Did they see you coming, or what? You big eejit! Antiques . . . Ha! They're rabbit hutches. You wouldn't keep animals in them. You probably paid a fortune for them, haven't you? You fool.” Any risk you were taking, he'd just look at you with his eye raised and would just shake his head in disbelief at your stupidity. “Oh dear, oh dear . . . You really didn't see that one coming, did you?” So, after years and years of things not utterly falling apart as he was expecting, he became kind of bemused at his own bad weatherman. My brother was always very industrious, a very innovative kind of a fellow, very savvy in business, knew how to make a buck, and ambitious in that sense. But I never showed any of that interest in making money at all. So my father thought this was very funny that I started to accumulate some cash.