Bono (5 page)

Of course in the eighties, you thought that bands like Echo and the Bunnymen or the Teardrop Explodes were more fashionable, that the British press would praise them more than U2. Was there a time when you felt those bands were now behind you? Was it because of America?

These are great groups you're talking about, but they had the conflict of being celebrated in their countries of origin. We weren't a British band. We accepted the U.K.—they never fully accepted us. Because Irish people are very different to English people, actually. I love the English reserve, I love the rigor, but I think we were just kind of bleeding all over them a bit too much, too emotional, and just too in-your-face. We were hot when they were cool. We had a phrase to describe some of the bands of the time—not the Bunnymen or the Teardrop Explodes—but the ones you'd see walking down the King's Road in London, so looking the part with so little to say: “Everything but It.” We, on the other hand, had “Nothing but It.” And that was the difference. Some of the bands really could have been contenders, but the mood of the time and media didn't encourage thoughts of world domination like the Beatles, Stones, or even the Sex Pistols. They weren't allowed to own up to their ambition. It was like the cultural revolution, it was like Mao. The music press just wouldn't let you put your head above the parapet. You know, you'd have a custard pie. I thought: “Fuck, I don't mind. I'll be the clown, throw the pie.” Because my definition of art started with: you put your hands in under your skin, you break your breastbone, you rip open your rib cage. If you really wanna write,
that's what you ought to do. Are you ready to do that? Or is rock 'n' roll for you just a pair of shoes and a haircut, or a certain sour existentialism or a certain sweet decay? That was one of my first definitions of art. Blood. That comes from Irish literature, that comes from Oscar Wilde writing
De Profundis,
that comes from Brendan Behan walking on the stage while his own play is being put on in front of an audience, telling people to fuck off. In Ireland, that pain of opening your rib cage, it's in us.

That's not just Irish, you know. There is this famous quote from Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who wrote
Journey to the End of the Night
: “When you write, you should put your skin on the table.”

Rock 'n' roll is often the opposite. Rather than putting your skin on the table, it's finding a second skin, a mask.

That's one of the big contradictions for an outsider like me. How do you reconcile your earnestness with the need for a showbiz facade?

Never trust a performer, performers are the best liars. They lie for a living. You're an actor, in a certain sense. But a writer is not a liar. There's a piece of Scripture: “Know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Even as a child, I remember sitting, listening to my teacher in school talking about the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats. He had a writer's block—there was a period where he couldn't write. I put my hand up and said: “Why didn't he write about that?”—“Don't be stupid. Put your hand down, don't be so cheeky.” But I didn't mean it as a smart-arse. I have lived off that idea: Know the truth, the truth will set you free. If I've nothing to say, that's the first line of the song. In fact, even on our second album
[October]
, I was about having nothing to say:
I try to sing this song . . . I try to stand up but I can't find my feet / I try to speak up but only with you am I complete
. This has always been the trick for me. And maybe it is just that: a trick. But it tricks me out of myself. I am able to write, always, because as a writer, I am always unable not to be true. As a performer,
it isn't always so. You know the thing that keeps me honest as a performer? The fucking high notes I have to sing. Because unless I am totally in that character, I actually can't sing—it's out of my range. That's what keeps me honest on a stage. If I could perform with one step removed, I probably would. It is very costly, by the way, to go on tour and have to step into those songs every night. I suppose I'd like to be a non-Method actor.

Well, you put yourself closer to the tradition of gospel, of the preacher possessed. I mean, when rock 'n' roll first appeared, it had evolved from mad preachers.

That's right.

Are you implying that you're not able to be a pure comedian, and that you've become this mad preacher?

Isn't that interesting that U2 is, in one sense, in exactly the same spot as so many rock 'n' roll people, right back to Elvis? That thing of the gospel and the blues: one hand on the positive terminal, one hand on the minus terminal. And Elvis's dance was really electrocution.

Coming back to the early eighties, is there some point when you said to yourself: maybe this won't work out, maybe this band will fail, and maybe I will have to go back to having a proper job, and earning a living and being a serious person?

Maybe before PopMart [the 1997–98 U2 tour]. Around that time.

That was late.

Yeah, because, well, we were risking bankruptcy. You see, Zoo TV cost so much, I mean, it cost a quarter of a million dollars a day to take that thing
around. So, if ten percent less people had come to see us, we'd have gone bankrupt, and with those kinds of bills, you don't go bankrupt a little, you go bankrupt a lot. I can't think about it now. A quarter of a million dollars a day, that's a lot of money. We've since found good people who are prepared to take that risk for us, but anyway at the time it was scary. I remember speaking to Ali about the consequences of failure. She was fearless: “What's the worst, to sell the house, and get a smaller one to get rid of the other one we don't need, end up living like all our friends who lead a normal life? What's wrong with that? They're still our friends. It wasn't like we changed communities and we're like a great disgrace. They'd probably be relieved: ‘Oh, thank God . . .' ”
[laughs]
She didn't mind. I didn't mind.
Rolling Stone
described it as the
Sgt. Pepper
of live shows. It was ground-breaking. We had fun, and in the end it made a few quid. A few. But this is better; I don't want to be glib or churlish. It's better to be on top than at the bottom. But that's the only time I actually thought about failure. I never thought about it up to that.

Be honest. Are you really telling me that you'd never contemplated failure before?

I don't remember it. I would get angry, I would get upset that we weren't what we could be, I remember that. I don't remember thinking that we never would, I always thought we would. And as soon as we did, it would be clear, you know.
[laughs]
Doubt, self-doubt was about the material, the doubt was about our abilities, but the destination was never a doubt. If we weren't able, we had the faith, because we could still walk into a room, play together, and the hairs of everyone's neck would stand up, everyone. No matter if there was five people in the crowd, or five hundred. It was haphazard. It mightn't happen. But when it did, you knew you weren't having that feeling a lot, going to gigs. Joy Division, maybe. See, there's a chasm between envy and desire, OK? Envy is like wanting something that's not yours.
But desire is different. Desire comes out of wanting what is yours, and still wanting it even if it's not yet there, but it's not envy. When desire becomes envy, there's a difference. And there's even a difference from the point of view of the fan. One looks up at this person who they can't be, one looks up at some person that they can be. I and U2 were always what you could be.

That's true if you consider the early eighties. But I'm not sure that's the way you're perceived today by a fifteen- or twenty-year-old. To them U2 is that huge band that has sold more than a hundred million records, that puts on these huge shows.

Yes, but when they listen at night when the lights are turned off, on headphones, I don't think they're listening to lofty ideas, they're listening to something that sounds familiar.

Still, I'm not sure that listening to your music now, they'd feel that they can make it on the same level as you.

It's less true, all right. We've gotten better at being rock stars; that's something I'm not sure we should be proud of. We got good at insincerity, but only to protect ourselves, to be able to continue to be sincere in our work. OK, now it's MTV, oh my God, there's cameras in your face everywhere! We'd better get good at this stuff. But we're not fully believable as rock stars.

The weird thing was that you seemed to work very hard at being rock stars. Some people started off being glamorous, like Prince. You were not and weren't aiming to be. You aimed to be anti-glamorous. After a few years, changes came.

After ten years . . .

At some point, that zealot attitude of “us” against “the system” became obsolete.

Anachronistic.

And then it seems that you went back to school, not to find deeper roots to your music, the way you did with
Rattle and Hum,
but you went back to school in order to learn how to be rock stars.

That's very good. That's exactly how Zoo TV was. The rock star I put together for myself was an identi-kit. I had Elvis Presley's leather jacket, Jim Morrison's leather pants, Lou Reed's fly shades, Jerry Lee Lewis's boots, Gene Vincent's limp. You want rock 'n' roll stuff? I'll give you some.

The flea market.

[laughs]
The fly market! As I just said to you, I still think we're not really believable as rock 'n' roll stars, though we've gotten much better at it. And I'll tell you how I know that: because I still travel and I walk through the world without security. I don't take security with me, I never felt the need to, I can get by. If it comes to it, I can look after myself. But not just that: I like the rub of people, and people find me very accessible. People talk to me, people walk up to me—they don't treat me the way I've seen them treat my contemporaries or my influences. They walk straight up to me because they know from the records that even if my face isn't as open as it was ten years ago, I am. And they can tell. Even in New York, I'm walking down the street, and people say: “How are you doin'?” They beep their horns, or they walk up, they're not afraid of me. Maybe I failed as a rock 'n' roll star.
[laughs]
Occasionally, I get some celebrity geek who treats me like one. I just walk on by. People who know our music, they know who you are. They've been in the dark room, they know you better than your best friend, because you don't sing like that to your best friend, you don't sing in their ear.

So I guess that a few people crossing your path these days must think you are an impersonator. Is that true?

I am one more times than I could admit, but let me tell you an amusing war story. I can't give you the name, but let's say I'm recording with a famous singer from a different genre, OK? They come to Dublin, and they can't get into any of the big studios. So they end up in this fairly modest city-center studio. Now, they already think Ireland is the Third World. So they're a little freaked, being here. The only thing that's gonna make this all right is: the big star turns up. I turn up in my car, and it's not such a fancy car. I've made them keep a parking space outside—I'm not very good at parking. There's some of the star's security waiting outside the studio watching this idiot trying to park in the big star's space. “I'm sorry, my man. We're keeping this parking space.” I'm going, “No, it's OK, it's me.”
[laughs]
The security guy says: “I'm sorry. We can't let you park here, sir.” It's like the land of the giants! I'm saying, “No, no, I'm the Irish singer, please.” Because, in their mind, there is no way I could not have a lot of security, and the setup, and the guys coming with the walkie-talkies. That happens all the time. You turn up at a big party in Beverly Hills, and you're not in the car with the entourage, and you're used to walking up the hill. It's just people are very confused. The thing I'm the most proud of, I think, is the life I have, that never have I lost it. We're under the radar of celebrity, really.

You've got some nerve to say that. I don't think that's really true.

Most of the time, our lives are not vivid enough for that kind of coverage. And I think, generally, even the paparazzi have learnt to respect our position on privacy, because, of course, the way to encourage the paparazzi is to hide from them, or try to punch them out. There've been a couple of moments, but in general, I've just said to them: “Look, here I am. You want my photograph? Take it.” On the odd occasion, I've gone out for a drink with them. No one buys them a drink. They're working for a living, you
know. And I've learnt to like a lot of them. So I do feel people are very respectful of my privacy in general.

But what are those peers you are alluding to most afraid of, then?

Well, my friend Michael Hutchence used to say: “This is a business of star-fucking, and stars are the worst starfuckers.” So, there is the syndrome of “Somebody's not taking my photograph. I don't exist if somebody is not trying to get my autograph. My last album must be crap.” At an unconscious level, we're attention-seekers. And I'm sure I must be one of them. But I think I get enough of it in the work, to really not want it in my private life. But maybe not . . . because I'm finding myself, oops, by accident, talking to you for publication, shaking the hand of the odd president in front of the world's media. I mean, what would your pocket book of psychology make of that? “Haven't you got enough attention?” So if you find yourself in those situations a lot, you must want to be there. I probably want it both ways, but the emphasis must always be towards privacy. I just love the retreat of Dublin and Ireland. It has given me the best of both worlds, to go out and play at being a star, even though I don't think I particularly look like one or act like one off the stage. But then, when I want my other life back, I get it in Dublin, Nice, and New York. I spend a lot of time in New York. People are really cool to me, even if they recognize me. Even the cops. New York's finest, so many of them are Irish. And after what happened with 9/11 and U2's support for the city, there's a lot of affection. I really get looked after. Sometimes I'm hailing a cab, and a cop car will pull up: “Hey, Bono, we'll take you anywhere you wanna go.” That's the greatest.