Bono (36 page)

Great!

Among all the stars you've met in your life, what do you think all the greatest ones had in common? I'm talking about stars in the sense of people who went on to achieve extraordinary things. It may be Frank Sinatra or it may be Balthus.

[ponders]
Well, the older stars in the firmament, the more ancient stars in the firmament, I look at them sometimes just to understand how they're
still in the sky, OK? Wisdom. My fascination is warranted just by that. But the ones whose light will remain with me long after they have burnt out are the ones that had grace. Because it's rare that the gift comes with grace. You get the gift—you don't get the grace. Some of the biggest assholes I've ever met are the most gifted. So when you're getting both together, like Louis Le Brocquy, like Nelson Mandela, like Johnny Cash, like Willie Nelson, they leave an indelible impression. Because it's “pretty girl” syndrome. Being gifted is like being born beautiful. You don't have to work a day in a year in your life for it. You were born with it. In one sense, it's like blue blood, money, gift, or beauty. They are the things that should make you the most humble, because they are not things you have earned. They are things you were given. Yet, it is my experience that they make people the most spoiled. And the people who work the hardest, and who have overcome the most obstacles in their life, who have a reason to be arrogant, who have a reason to beat their breasts are the most humble, sometimes. I can't get over that. If it's maddening to me, how mad must God be, who's giving these gifts out. I don't quite know how He dishes out those gifts, whether it's DNA or favor, but it's bewildering to me. So to make it through success and still have manners, to still have curiosity, intellectual curiosity, to still have some grace, to keep your dignity, that is really . . . rare.

You mean there are very few examples.

We'll, I'm not one, but I'd like to be. I think there are very few. In music, the hardest thing seems to be to make it through with your marbles, your mentality intact.
[laughs]
You might even be a nice person, but . . . the drugs! You're looking at people and they've one eye. You're thinking: was it really worth it? Why did you give yourself to this? And they look at you like they're Van Gogh who had to cut off his ear. I think: “You know what? I didn't need you to cut off your ear. I liked your paintings before you cut your ear off.” I don't want people to climb up on a cross and die aged thirty-three to be a great musician. My heroes are survivors, the ones that
lived: Bob Dylan, who kept his privacy by creating disinformation by a series of elaborate masks, by avoiding the mainstream and creating his own path through the thicket. So I love these people. I'm much more interested in them than in some new star or starlet.

I was wondering: were you ever fascinated by cult figures such as Syd Barrett. The ones who died or disappeared into seclusion when they were young?

Death cults.

Yeah.

No. Never.

I mean, it's quite widespread in rock culture, that mythology of the shooting star.

I'd rather be the North Star. As Bob says, you can navigate by it.

Speaking of stardom and fame, you know that you're a cult figure. I mean, a massive one. Right?

Is that better than celebrity?

I mean, there are so many Bono obsessives out there.

Mmh . . .hmm . . .

Isn't there a secret part of you that wonders: “Sure, I'm proud of what U2 and I have achieved. But what the hell do they see in me?” or “No, they got it all wrong. I never wanted to be a cult figure”?

I understand the mechanism . . . They say the worst fans, the most obsessive fans of magic . . . are magicians. They know they put the rabbit in the hat earlier but are still amazed when they pull it out later.
[laughs]
I have no illusions at all about myself as to why people care about me. I know why they care about me. I'm in a great band that has stuck together. I'm being open and vulnerable in my music, and I've gotten away with it. End of story. That explains it all, OK? So I swear to God I do not even consider it. These days, I sometimes forget that I'm in a band. That's the strangest thing. I've gotten used to the extra leg. I don't see it anymore. Actually, I've got to the stage now where I'm almost a civilian again.

So you're saying that whether you're a cult figure or not, it's all the same to you.

Somebody said: “Do not judge your fans by the people you meet.” I think it was me.
[laughs]
I don't know, because it's not true in my case, because U2 fans are kind of easygoing. Generally we have very good relationships with our fans, but sometimes they go too far. I know the fringe people who deny you your privacy and are sort of rooting through your dustbins—and we had somebody taking our dustbins just recently—are not our audience. I do not judge our audience by them.

Bob Dylan had a guy called A. J. Weberman, who hailed himself as a “Dylanologist.” He actually went through his dustbin once. May I reassure you? I'm not ready to screw a plaque reading “Bonologist” on my wall yet.

When I went to Los Angeles the first time, in 1980, I wanted to go to the house of Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson. Did I tell you that? The first thing I wanted to do. These two people's music touched my life. I could not give them back what they gave me. I wanted to pay homage, to just go and say
thanks. Then, of course, I caught myself and thought: “Maybe they don't want me to say thanks.” And I stopped. So I have tolerance. When people arrive at my house, I explain to them: “I can't talk to you now, because, if I do, I will be divorced.” The Italians go: “It's Mamma!” And I say: “Yeah, that's exactly right.”
[articulating in kind of baby talk, putting on an Italian accent] Mamma will kill Bono! [laughs]
It's not like I look at them and go
[imitates heavy sigh of exasperation]
. I'm not fuming like some sulking movie star, you know.

And what's your reaction to sycophants?

Sycophants? I'd like some. Thank you, please!
[laughs]
I am in a band. All my life, I'm surrounded by arguments. All my friends I've grown up with are brutally truthful. Sycophants? Where are they? Do I meet them? Of course. But not in my life as a general rule.

So what do you do?

When I meet them?

Yeah.

Yawn.
[laughs]
I mean, you will notice this. It hasn't happened here because you keep me on my toes, but I have a very low concentration span. If it's not the case, I go to sleep, because I usually haven't slept very much. So I'm not likely to spend much time with people where there is not an equal relationship.

[looking at list]
Err, this is a good one. An early nineteenth-century French woman writer, Mme. de Staël, said: “Fame is the shining bereavement of happiness.” Would you agree?

[pause, then low voice]
Oooh, wow! Myself and Simon [his friend the screenwriter Simon Carmody], we've spent two hours on such semantics last night. You should talk with him. There's a line in a song called “Mercy” that we left off this album: “Happiness is for those who don't really need it.” So I can live without happiness. If that's the price of fame, good riddance! Joy, on the other hand, is not up for sale. And my joy comes from a completely different place. But you're not wrong, Michka. Somewhere there does seem a deal with the devil, concerning celebrity.

Which is?

Which is: you can have the seat at the table, but you can't leave with your sense of humor.
[laughs]
And I'm not running with it. I'm just not. In U2, it was our sense of humor that's negotiated our way through this whole jamboree. We nearly lost it in the eighties.

Really?

Yeah. We thought too much about it.

About what, exactly?

Fame, that is. What it was to be stared at, what it was to be photographed, what it was to be muttered about in a restaurant. We thought a lot about it.

And what did these thoughts bring you to?

Self-consciousness. These thoughts can bend you out of shape. You walk differently. You carry yourself differently. Ask any photographer. Ask Anton [Corbijn]. You see, a photographer understands that a face once beautiful can become ugly because of self-consciousness. The great gifts of
models are not that they're more beautiful than the next person, it's that they're able to be photographed and not be self-conscious. And so the distorting lens that is fame makes people ugly and self-conscious. The lips drain of blood, the face is suddenly harrowed. The photograph is being taken, but the reason why you wanted to take the photograph has gone. In the eighties, I was that. I thought about it too much.

I would see you occasionally in the early eighties. I didn't think you were then the person that you are describing.

I wasn't like that with you, because I felt a kindred spirit, I felt relaxed, there were things we had in common. But I would feel, when I was going out, that I didn't want to let people down who looked up to me. I was trying to live up to their expectations.
[puts on angry, self-righteous voice]
“I'm not a rock star, I'm a real person!” Now, I just go: “I'm a fucking rock star. Get over it.”
[laughs]
It took me a long time, but I eventually got there. If rock 'n' roll means anything: it's liberation, it's freedom.

You weren't feeling that freedom in the eighties.

The eighties were a prison of self-consciousness. “Oh, my Lord, I'm making money!”
[caricaturing cry of terror, then adopting voice of a person followed by a vampire in a horror film]
“Oh, I must be selling out. But hold on a second, I haven't screwed anyone over today. Oh, I must have!”
[laughs]
Now, I don't feel I have to prove myself to anyone. It's like: Are your songs any good? Is your band any good? That's it, mate. I can't live up to the songs. These songs are better than me. Don't fence me in as a good person, because I'm going to let you down. Hey, I'm complex, I'm an artist! I can be a jerk. I'm over it. Now I'm very happy to let people down. Now, if somebody sees me crawling out of a nightclub on all fours, they can't go
[caricaturing cry of a shocked person]:
“But YOU said!!!”—“WHAT did I
say? I want you to take your fucking flashbulb out of my face, pal.
[putting on drunken voice]
And by the way, this is a friend of my wife.”
[laughs]
Now I'm over it. Our family doesn't live by the media. We don't read those newspapers. Occasionally, they get under our door. Everyone's got to get their teeth filled, you know.

So how did you get your sense of humor back? What happened?

Interestingly enough, in terms of this discussion that you started out, it began in 1986, when I made up the ground I had lost in my relationship with my friends Guggi and Gavin, and we started to paint together. We used to go out on Thursday nights, painting and playacting. I found the beginnings of freedom there, that later kicked in.

Funny. You make celebrity sound like a disease you had to recover from.

The people who really revere the cult of celebrity are the ones who spend all their energy trying to avoid it. People who . . .
[suspends sentence, caricaturing sigh of someone who's tired of it all]
. Somebody told me of this character, I won't tell you who he is. He once was a completely regarded and respected figure in music. It's twenty years later. He still leaves his house
[imitates gaze of a Cold War spy in a Hitchcock film]
and shuffles into the taxi, lest the fans spot him. No one's there, no one's interested! Look, no one is a star by accident. To reach that place and cry foul is churlish. The ones that hide do that so they can be discovered. They give it too much energy.

Who or what helped you chill out?

Chrissie Hynde was a real gift to me at a time when I was thinking about it too much. She had humor and attitude: grace for the right people, and abuse for the ones who put her on too high a pedestal. Here's a mad
tangent for you, Michka. I heard a story about a church, and in the congregation, there are demons, devils. The preacher keeps trying to cast out devils, but he keeps being thrown on the ground. They keep making a fool of him. So they bring on another priest. He speaks to the congregation: “You must rid your life of these devils. Who is it here?” He calls them out. They knock him down. They run amok, the organ starts playing, and all the ladies end up with their dresses over their heads. Eventually, after three or four or five exorcists, the Big Cahuna arrives. And he speaks to the devil. He says: “In the name of Jesus, I command you to identify yourself.” And they all identify themselves. They're afraid. He goes: “Why are you terrorizing this place?” And the answer comes back
[putting on shy voice],
“Because we get so much attention.”
[laughs]
You know what I'm getting at? The people who run away from stardom, like me in the eighties, must be the ones who are thinking too much about it. Who do the paparazzi chase? The ones who avoid them or punch them.

Were there moments when fame made your friendships more difficult?

In the very early eighties—'82, '83.

Did you ever regain them?

Yeah, I had to go after them. I don't let go of people very easily. I still have all the people I love in my life—and some of the people I don't.
[laughs]
I'm very stubborn about people.

Do you ever wake up and forget completely about being Bono and in U2?

It's true. Most mornings, now, I really don't think about being in a band. I think about being a father, I think about being a husband, I think about being a friend.

But what else do you think about when you open your eyes in the morning and you're still lying in your bed?