Ok, this is long but it's the rest of the story:
A child of a Protestant mother and a Roman Catholic father, Bono was never going to be your identikit cretinous rock star with nothing to say in his songs and a 12-album deal from a Japanese-owned multinational on which to say it. (Though, for a while there a decade ago, I did have my doubts.)
Bono writes about the death of a father in a way that all of us can understand and identify with at a deep level. All of us have fathers who, sadly, are either dead or will die one day. (The title of How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is a homage to his late father, Robert Hewson. "I should have called it How to Dismantle the Atomic Bob," he remarked last year. Bob died in 2001. After that, 1974 was probably the most relevant year of Bono's life: the year his mother passed away suddenly. On a happier note, 1977 was another year not to beforgotten: the year he met a certain Alison Stewart.)
There's a universality, a depth of humanity, to U2's lyrics and music that resonates with just about everyone over 25 who realises manufactured teen bands are not the future. That's no disrespect to Westlife, who deserve their success, but their music can never say anything about our lives in the same way that a U2 song about mortality and the ongoing dilemmas of human existence in the 21st century can.
In part, it is this kind of mass-audience identification that has continued to invest U2 with meaning at an age when they are older than some fans' parents.
Naturally, U2 are a long long way from becoming our Rolling Stones, whose albums are becoming increasingly lacklustre, to put it at its most charitable. This seems to have zero effect on the world's desire to spend huge money to stand in a field and gawp at Richards and Jagger's Antique Rogues Show.
I suspect Bono would pack it in rather than, in ten years, drag his bones onstage for a pointless nightly run-through of Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, One and Walk On.
That's an important point to remember: nobody actually believes U2 - or their bona fide charismatic frontman - are going through the motions for the money.
Indeed, only the very cynical would accuse Bono of being a posing conman with a heart of gold Amex. During the live telecast benefit for victims of 9/11, U2 delivered a potent performance of Walk On - Bono ending the song with a powerful and fitting segue into Hallelujah.
One Christian critic cited the lyrics - " You broke the bonds / You loosed the chains / Carried the cross / And my shame / You know I believe it" - as the most succinct theology of the cross found inany commercial music. Another key part of theband's continued authenticity was being clever enough to reinvent themselves and rebrand themselves at key points in their poplife.They have always managed to move with the times without seeming overly concerned with fashion.
(I'm loathe to use the word strategy because "strategy" implies an evil Machiavellian scheming in a band that probably made it up as they went along.)
Sean O'Hagan wrote in the Observer last year; "They were definably and recognisably Irish, both in the unbridled emotionalism of their songs and, initially at least, theirutter lack of cool.
"Interestingly, their trajectory from rock wannabes to global icons has directly reflected Ireland's transformation from a parochial to a modern European state."
2000's back-to-basics All That You Can't Leave Behind LP put them firmlyback on course after their mid-Nineties mini-meltdown: an excess of irony, club music and dodgy giant lemons almost became their ruination. As records go, 1997's Pop was officially U2's dog's dinner. Things could only get better; and that would not happen overnight.
I was at the opening night of the Elevation tour in Miami in 2001. When the members of U2 walked onstage with the house lights on and dressed in civilian duds it was as far away from the overstylised pomp and ceremony of the 1997 Popmart Tour as it was possible to get. It was intentionally so.
Their unmistakeable presence soon filled the entire arena that night in Florida. What followed was one of the best shows I've seen in years. This was a stripped-down U2. Not surprisingly, their 11th studio album, How toDismantle an Atomic Bomb, is the most U2-sounding album since The Joshua Tree. It toois a memorable moment in U2's cannon.
There are other moments to recall. Bono - and his mullet - surfing the crowd at Live Aid in 1985 was remade in the eyes of the billion people who watched it. Bono, dressed as Macphisto, getting Salman Rushdie to appear on stage with him and U2 at Wembley Stadium in August 1993. This was at the height of the fatwa.
After the brilliant-but-unhip Rattle & Hum LP in 1988, U2 had to go away and start again. Many thought they were staring into an abyss. They returned via Berlin with their best record ever inAchtung Baby.
The Zoo TV Tour presented an altogether different U2: seeming random words and phrases - Whore, Pussy, ******, Bomb, Racist, Everything You Know Is Wrong and Watch More TV - were fed across the giant vidiwalls as Bono rang the Pope and Bill Clinton on a phone from the stage. Plans to construct a gargantuan model baby that would answer the call of nature over the audience were mercifully scrapped, but a dalliance with decadence began in earnest. Suddenly, a freshened-up U2 were hip and on the cover of Vogue.At least Bono was, in December 1992, with supermodel Christy Turlington.
A few months previously, in October, Bono took me out for a surreal evening's entertainment in San Francisco, sadly sans Christy. It was one of the greatest nights of my life. Bono talked of seeing the death squads in South America as he brought me to a late bar at the red light end of North Beach, California, on a Sunday night. He explained his shock at hearing that Miles Davis asked to have The Unforgettable Fire played to him before he died.
The wine loosening his tongue, Bono talked also about his father getting him drunk in a Paris nightclub not long before, which resulted in the leather-clad icon going on stage drunk for the first time in years. Bono looked out the window and mentioned that the joint across the road was the same dive in which he had set a play he was working on about a stripper with HIV who uses painting as a catharsis.
On the other side of San Fran was the gospel church where we had spent that Sunday morning singing and dancing. Bono was amused by the preacher's dissertation on how his wife's hot flushes during their lovemaking kept the whole house warm and saved on the heating bills.
"Cultural experiment!" Bono suddenly piped up. He then asked the waitress for one glass of root beer and four straws. The waitress looked slightly bemused; rock stars with an estimated £40m in the bank apiece are supposed to be able to afford their own sodas and not have to share them with friends. We each took a slug, nonetheless.
"Ugh! It's like the stuff you get for soccer injuries at school!" I said.
Bono's bloodshot eyeballs lit up. "Wintergreen! You're exactly right!"
He sat in the window booth and held a friend's sleeping baby girl in his ample arms; eventually admitting that he's had some practice at it.
"Don't let me breathe me on her," Bono laughed, "or it might kill her!" Later that night, Bono's good mood had not lessened. Sighting the area's famous boozer, Tosca, in the middle distance, he dragged me across the road. Then he was off, into his own world, quoting Tom Waits: "The teach's dead on the street and the horses go down Violin Row and steam comes through the open grille like the whole town's gonna blow."
So why does anyone still care what U2 have to say any more at this stage of the game?
Ask me in Croker during the summer because that's when the whole town is gonna blow . . .
Barry Egan