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Bono: Superstar/Statesman |
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Written by Editor
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First Response: November 2005
Bono: Superstar/Statesman
By Don Williams
We have seen a “first.” In September, the New York Times Magazine put a
head-shot of U2’s Bono on its cover and Rolling Stone Magazine launched
its November 3 edition with the same. We can understand Rolling Stone’s
interest, but why the fuss from “The Nation’s Newspaper”? Clearly it is
because Bono has broken out of being the lead-singer of the number one
rock’n’roll band and broken into the political arena big time. His
issues? AIDs, extreme poverty, malaria, and free public education,
focused on Africa where 6,000 adults die daily from AID’s and 3,000
children die daily from malaria.
While the New York Times’ article focused on the politics of the major
industrial nations (G-8) and their commitment to reduce Third World
Debt (largely run up during the Cold War as a defense against Communism
and then corrupted), the Rolling Stone interview, done by Editor and
Publisher Jann Wenner, goes in depth into Bono’s life. The picture of a
complex man, walking a slim line between public super-star and
committed Christian, emerges. Here are some highlights from Wenner’s
interview.
Bono grew up in Dublin, lost his mother at age 12 and lived in a “house
of men.” There he became street-wise and although bright, started to
fail in school. “I started to believe the world outside. Music was my
revenge on that.” Creating an alternative world of the imagination,
Bono and his street gang put on performances in downtown Dublin. Like
Monty Python (whom they emulated), “humor became our weapon.” While
Bono was in many fights, he didn’t drink. “We used to laugh at people
drinking… Because people who spilled out of the pubs on a Friday night
and threw up on the laneway – we thought we were better than them.”
Bono continues, “We were a collection of outsiders.”
Bono’s Dad was his foil. “By not encouraging me to be a musician, even
though that’s all he ever wanted to be, he’s made me one. By telling me
never to have big dreams or else, that to dream is to be disappointed,
he made me have big dreams. By telling me that the band would only last
five minutes or ten minutes – we’re still here.” But Bono learned from
his Dad how to move politically: “He was from the left, but you know,
he praised the guy on the right.”
After describing the start of U2 and the musical influences on his life
(from John Lennon to Bob Dylan), Bono speaks of his spiritual life. His
Protestant mother married a Catholic in divided Ireland. He was raised
Protestant and even joined a Pentecostal fellowship. Wenner asks him if
he felt religious when he went to church. Bono answers, “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?” [Dylan, “Blowin’ in the Wind”] That wasn’t a
rhetorical question to me. It was addressed to God.” When Bono sang
songs such as “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” or “Be Thou My Vision”
“something would stir inside of me” but religion “left me cold.”
Bono moved in with his friend Guggi and attended a Pentecostal church.
“We don’t realize it, but we’re being immersed in the Holy Scriptures.
That’s what we took away from this: this rich language, these ancient
tracts of wisdom.” Bono goes on to describe rock’n’roll as
“backsliders’ music” because these artists could not express their
sexuality before God. They had to turn away. “They were running away
from God. But I never believed that. I never saw it as being a choice,
an either/or thing.” He adds, “The music that really turns me on
is either running toward God or away from God. Both recognize the
pivot, that God is at the center of the jaunt.” The blues aren’t
anti-God; they are like David’s Psalms.
Bono describes his faith today. “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 and poverty”; i.e.,
the story of Christ makes sense to me.
“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 I just kinda keep my mouth shut.”
Bono continues, “I try to take time out of every day, in prayer and
meditation. I feel as at home in a Catholic cathedral as in a revival
tent.” Wenner then asks about the Bible, how much Bono draws on its
imagery and ideas.” Bono replies, “It sustains me.” Wenner responds,
“As a belief, or as a literary thing?” Bono: “As a belief… I’m the sort
of character who’s got to have an anchor. I want to be around immovable
objects. I want to build my house on a rock, because even if the waters
are not high around the house, I’m going to bring back a storm.” He
adds that he doesn’t read the Bible as an historical book or good
advice. “I let it speak to me in other ways. They call it rehma. It’s a
hard word to translate from Greek, but it sort of means it changes in
the moment you’re in. It seems to do that for me.”
Bono rallied many US evangelicals to his cause against AIDs in Africa.
“I used my background in the Scriptures to speak to them about the
so-called leprosy of our age and how Christ would respond to it. And
they better get to it quickly, or they would be very much on the other
side of what God was doing in the world.”
Bono talks about his agenda. Wenner asks him what he wants to change.
He replies, first, that he wants to change himself. Then he wants to
change the wickedness in the world: “A third of the people who live in
it cannot achieve sustenance. And there is no real reason for that,
other than a certain selfishness and greed.” Bono and his wife
confronted this first hand, working in an orphanage in Ethiopia. Here
they saw babies die. He wrote a song, “Where the Streets Have No Name”
about his experience. It contains a very powerful idea: “In the desert,
we meet God. In parched times, in fire and flood, we discover who we
are. That’s my prayer, by the way, for the United States in
2005.” Bono adds, “My job is catching lightening. If there’s none
around, my job is starting a fire.”
Bono has done this by focusing world leaders and culture icons on
Africa. He says he is not afraid of the world leaders he meets. They
should be afraid because they are accountable for what they do on their
watch. “I’m representing the poorest and the most vulnerable people. On
a spiritual level, I have that with me. I’m throwing a punch, and the
fist belongs to people who can’t be in the room, whose rage, whose
anger, whose hurt I represent. The moral force is way beyond mine, it’s
an argument that has much more weight than I have.”
Bono concludes: “God has made a lot of a little. I will say that… It’s
such an extraordinary thing, music. It is how we speak to God finally –
or how we don’t…. I wasn’t looking for grace, but luckily grace was
looking for me.”
PS: My friends report that recent U2 concerts are more like a worship
service than a rock concert. Pray for Bono and the band. God has
spot-lighted them big-time. DW.
Read the whole interview in Rolling Stone, Issue 986, Nov. 3, 2005, pp 49ff.
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First Response 
