Interview with Ali in Irish Times (2000)

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oliveu2cm

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Hi! I just found this on the website BoomCha! Maybe some of you have seen it before, but I never had so I figured I'd share
smile.gif


*****************************************
The Sweetest Thing


Married to fame and fortune, with a new baby to care for, and committed to relieving -
hands on - the suffering caused by the Chernobyl disaster, Ali Hewson's life couldn't
be less ordinary. Yet what she really wanted to be was a nurse, she tells Kathy
Sheridan. Photographs: Frank Miller

From The Irish Times Magazine cover story, November 4th, 2000

A huge thank you to Kim for sending the article and pictures!
Transcribed by Mary Eve S.


Here's a teaser for the resident malcontent. Guess what
kind of car Ali Hewson drives? Well obviously something
so wickedly hip, so stratospherically beyond the reach of
dull plods like ourselves that it's just embarrassing. So
what is it? OK. It's a Volkswagon Golf. 1991. Diesel. And,
eh... it's white.

"I've always driven Golfs; this one runs really well,"
Hewson explains brightly. Well, sure, but... "I know there
are people who see their car as an extention of themselves;
they need a car that says a lot about them. But I don't need
a car to confirm my personality. I think this one says a lot
about me.

Still, some people just don't get Ali Hewson. Her arrival at
a recent premiere is aid of the Chernobyl Children's
Project was described by one paper as "true Hollywood
style", because "she sneaked in after the lights had gone
down and the film had started".

Wrong, twice. One, she was settled into her cinema seat
well before everyone else because she had been
photographed there. And two, Hewson is no more
"Hollywood style" than your most self-effacing neighbour.

She arrives into the Clarence enveloped in a great black
comfort blanket of a coat, minimally made-up, under-eye
shadows induced by an all-night stint with the baby, so
quietly spoken that the resulting tape is virtually inaudible.
The one give-away sign of her status as the very famous
wife of a very famous rock star is that she can abandon the
Golf outside and hand the keys to reception.

She goes back to order tea while explaining why (well,
money's no object) she hasn't hired a night nanny for the
youngest Hewson, now 14 months old. "We have a nanny
coming in five days a week. But the night shifts are mine.
I've always believed that they need a parent there if they
wake in the night. With the two girls it worked beautifully,
but this little blighter has other notions."

The little blighter may be suffering from residual colic, she
thinks, but she can't mention his name without a misty
grin. She talks of the girls (now nine and 11) with a similar
expression, about their foibles and wisecracks, their
different temperaments, how their father's occupation
affects their lives.

She could be any mother discussing the problems of
keeping three children sane and healthy - until one
considers the double-decker tour bus that slowly trundles
past their gates at 3 p.m. every day, its occupants craning to
see in; the fans on eternal vigil outside; the crowds that
mob the family in parts of Europe and the US.

But Hewson has somehow managed to hold on to her
roots, to the need to make a lasting contribution, to being
plain nice. Hardly an obvious candidate for typical rock
star spouse? She thiks about this: "Maybe the fact that I'm
not a typical rock star wife is more a reflection on Bono
than on me."

They started dating when they were 15 and 16 at Mount
Temple school in north Dublin. Later she worked in motor
insurance ("glamorous, eh?") and with her father in his
electrical business, before hitting the road with Bono and
marrying him at 21.

What she really wanted to be was a nurse. "That's still my
biggest regret. I wanted that personal contact with people,
the one-to-one, the medical expertise. I still do." Even at
26, Hewson was still thinking about it. "But Bono's life had
taken off in one direction and I realised that if I went into
nursing, I was going to have to live-in for four very
intensive years. It would have been too much on the
relationship."

The next best thing was a social science degree, centered
on politics and sociology. "I wanted to do something that
would give me an understanding of social policy and help
me effect change in that area, something that was akin to
nursing." Her first baby's arrival two weeks before her
finals didn't break her stride. She got her degree and set
her sights on a masters in moral and political ethics.

Pause for a laugh: "And then I had another baby." For all
that, she still talks of nursing as her lost vocation. In many
way, that probably sums up Ali Hewson.

A few years ago, while unpacking gallons of bottled water
and Marks & Spencer pasta sauce in a grimy apartment in
Belarus, Hewson reflected on the irony that the two people
she is most identified with - her husband and her great
friend Adi Roche, the former presidential candidate -
both thrive on public contact, on the roar of the crowd.
"One on either side of me." she laughs. "Do you think
there's a pattern there?"

It isn't a rueful laugh; the supporting role is one that fits
her comfortably. "That's definitely how I would see myself.
I wouldn't stand up and make passionate speeches but I
have an ability to be supporitve and it seems to work. I've
no desire to be a star. I see how hard it is, how cruel it is;
how to be in that place you have to expose yourself, and
how relentlessly cruel that can be to a person. What Adi
had to deal with as a person when the presidential
campaign here was all over was huge, and terribly hard."

So why take on causes like the CCP that she knows will
expose her? "Well, if it means the project has gained some
degree of awareness, then I think, why not?"

Why not? Well, watching Hewson huddle behind a curtain
at Dublin's Point Depot, during the supermodel-studded
charity fashion shows she and her priceless contacts book
helped organise, smiling beside Adi at fundraisers, eating
contaminated food in the high-rise Minsk apartment of a
destitute family, cradling a cruelly deformed child for
hours in a foul-smelling orphanage, the same question
recurs: Couldn't she simply write the occasional fat cheque
and hang on to her privacy and considerable comfort?

The notion horrifies her.

"Oh I couldn't do that, I really couldn't. I couldn't be that
removed. I was always going to end up doing something. I
suppose I'd prefer to be wandering up and down some
hospital ward handing out medicine, feeling that I was
contributing, but I don't have the experience, I don't have
the training. I always wanted to be hands-on; it's about
showing solidarity, about physically being with the people
in some way, spending time with them - almost the same
as you'd do as a nurse. And whatever comfort that brings
them, then that's what it's about for me. It's the way I
operate."

But doing it Hewson's way has meant raising her head
above the parapet, emerging from the private cocoon she
prizes so highly.

Was she fearful when approached by Roche to present
Black Wind, White Land, the 1993 Chernobyl
documentary? "Oh yes. Very fearful. As our lives have
becme more and more public, I have become more and
more private. It honestly wasn't until I got out to Belarus
and saw the children that I realised I wouldn't be able to go
home and just forget it. And I have to say that as a person
I've benefited probably far more that anybody else from
that experience. I often think that you get a lot more from
giving than you do from receiving; many people don't
realise that.

"I certainly learnt a lot, value-wise, from seeing those
children. And when I went to Ethiopia with Bono in 1985
at the height of the famine, I certainly didn't expect to
come home enriched by that experience. But I really was.
The children out there had nothing, nothing, yet they
seemed to be really alive spiritually.

For me, the culture shock was in coming home, back to
supermarkets full of food and children who seemed
spoiled, who had everything, and yet were so starved of
spirituality and any understanding of what life was about.
Those people... maybe it's because they had come so close
to death, but their eyes seemed so alive"

That "culture shock" has shaped the rearing of Hewson's
own children. "I had great fears for them. But through the
project, they've met a lot of the Chernobyl children. They
can clearly see that many of them don't have two arms of
two eyes but they appreciate that they're still full human
beings, and it's taught then to appreciate what they
themselves have physically. So they do have that
awareness.

"It's not perfect, of course. Our children are like any other;
they see something, they want it. But they also travel and
see things that maybe other kids wouldn't, which I think
gives them more of a sense of the world as a bigger place."

The challenge of keeping the Chernobyl cause alive is a
daunting one, ranged alongside so many others, cooler,
newer, more heart-rendingly at their peak. "Fundraising
can be very, very difficult when you're working around a
14-year-old disaster that everyone thinks is well and truly
over - or certainly not as it's peak. But the truth is that we
have not seen Chernobyl's peak yet. Those who were
children in 1986 are having their own children now; it it
believed that only in the next 10 years will we see the worst
effects."

But there are plans at least to close down the entire
Chernobyl complex? "Yes, they're supposed to be closing it
down. The problem is what they're going to do with it.
They poured so much concrete on top of it that it's sinking
into the ground and once it hits the water table, it will
poison all the rivers. They just don't know what to do.
Adi's famous saying is that the next Chernobyl will be
Chernobyl."

The other reason Hewson became involved in
anti-nuclear campaigning was to ensure that such a
disaster could never recur. Clearly, she believes that we
have become rather blase.

"Belarus, like Ireland, had no nuclear power plants within
it's borders. People have to grasp this: that if there's a
foul-up in Sellafield and the wind blows in the "wrong"
direction, that's the end of Drogheda, Dundalk, Dublin.
They're gone. Nothing. Plutonium-239 has a half life of
24,400 years." After seven years of campaigning, one
might expect something practiced in Hewson's tone. There
isn't. Her trips to Belarus keep her sharp and focused. It is
partly why she is no pushover when it comes to other
charity work and is emphatically not driven by "guilt" or
the need for applause.

"When I became involved, I felt that I was in a situation
where I could be doing what so many other people wanted
to be able to do but couldn't because of time or financial
restictions. At the time, I was lucky enough to have
neither. But people do make assumptions; there's a sense
of 'how could you say no?'. But you know how much you
can give. If you spread yourself too thinly, you just end up
frustrated and those who end up most frustrated are the
very people who need the help"

Hewson has taken on a new cause: a Children's Museum
for Ireland. "It's the other end of the scale. From the
children in Chernobyl who have nothing, not even clean
air, to here, where our children have all that but need the
next step, which is to realise their own potential.

"I had been to a few museums in America with the
children and saw that they could be such educational,
interactive, fun places for children and parents to spend
the day together and explore all aspects od science,
information and technology. A small museum in Dallas,
for example, had a huge set of teeth in the middle of the
room which you could lift out of it's gums; in others you
could play with soundwaves or step into a bubble and even
tackle issues like recycling or racism.

"But it's also about the whole family having a good day
together. You can bring a child to a playground but you
can't get on the climbing frame with him. Anyway, we
don't even have proper playgrounds here. When you look
at how children are welcomed and included in France or
Europe generally..." she trails off in exasperation. "I
suppose it will happen here eventually but it's all so slow.
We tap into the French health system a bit because we
spend time there and it's just amazing - no queue for the
A&E room and never more than 200 francs in a bill for an
X-ray or something.

"Come to think of it, where does all the money go from
the Lotto? I'm all up for the arts or hurling or whatever,
but a decent standard of health and education should be
any goverment's priority. Why can't we look after old
people properly, give them really good, well-paid nursing
care in comfortable, well-renovated homes? Why can't
we build a children's hospital wing that is generously
staffed and equipped?"

Hewson comes from what she calls a "very ordinary
background". Her questioning nature was probably
inherited from her father, a man she describes as
"self-educated, strong, liberated, forward-looking,
world-conscious, argumentative, constantly questioning".
He and her mother ("still beautiful, always baking, never
stops") have retired to the south-east and are big into DIY
work around the house; his birthday gift to her mother this
year was a cement mixer.

She and Bono, she acknowledges, have "a very nice life,
but it's also a very fast life. It's very demanding on both us
and on the children. Every day is full, between the
children's routine and his plans changing every couple of
minutes. I'm forced into the children's routine, which is
great for our normality as a family. He's now on a
promotional tour involving 10 or 11 transatlantic flights in
eight weeks."

They survive as a couple, she says, because they never take
each other for granted. "You can't, you're not allowed to
take each other for granted. Sure, it can lead to a lot of
frustration, but it really does make you stronger. We're
very committed to each other, to the children, to the
relationship. And anyways, he's been home for a good
while now - about two years - working on the new album,
and that's great."

At home, Hewson says, they try to find time to read; stuff
of a serious bent by all accounts, with Bono
"speed-reading" his way through volumes on philosophy
and economics (reports suggest he recently reduced the
chairman of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee
to tears with his advocacy of the reduction of Third World
debt); her own most recent reading has included How the
Irish Saved Civilisation and The Gifts of the Jews, both by
Thomas Cahill.

Despite the publicity suggesting that their home (with the
waves lapping beyond the hedge, the wonderful pool, the
exquisitely simple, stone-built guest lodge) is airport
central for a slew of supermodels and the likes of Salman
Rushdie, Hewson says that most of their friends are not
famous. "But the famous ones you tend to have something
in common with to begine with. It's not like you go out
looking for famous friends. There's no training for being
famous - unless you're royalty - and that creates a bond, I
think, because you're all trying to cope with the same
bizarre situations that you've been catapulted into.

"The people we're drawn to are of similar mind, trying to
hold on to all the things they valued in the past,
differentiating between their famous personas and their
real personalities. That can be very hard if you come from
a difficult family background."

Why? "Most famous people are insecure," Hewson says.
"After all, what gives then their drive and ambition and
even heightens their talent is the desire to be recognised as
a real person. But then the irony is that what the fans see is
not the real person; what they see is a kind of icon, and if
the stars themselves end up confusing the two, that can't
be healthy. And you have to have something else. I see it in
people. You get to a place where you have everything and
realise how empty it is. The unhappy ones tend to be those
who have no causes."

But all that dosh surely makes a difference? "Money has
huge advantages, but it does bring responsibilities with it.
It is not the answer. It can give great freedom - if you need
to get away, you can just go. You can afford things others
struggle for. If you have a friend of family member in
trouble, you're able to help. But it can cause more
problems. People who win the Lotto come to understand
that. When it's new, people around you can feel very
threatened; it can separate you from your friends and your
family.

"And minding it is a huge responsibility. You always have
people trying to take advantage. The attitude is 'think of a
number and multiply it by tow, sure they'll never notice'.
You get that a lot. That side is nasty because you feel you
can never trust anybody."

Of course, Hewson knows this will elicit damn-all
sympathy. "The thing people hate more that anything is
anyone who has money going on about how tough it is. You
certainly won't get away with that in Ireland and they're
right not to let you get away with it. But I think money and
fame are very complicated.

"For us, becoming famous, we realised you have to have
the money because you couldn't protect yourselves from
fans. It's a strange thing. For example, you have to travel
business class because Bono wouldn't get a minute's peace
otherwise. You do have to protect your privacy - and that
takes cash."

Then again, there is that new apartment in Manhattan:
"Now there's an upside," Hewson agrees happily. "I've
grown to love New York." And there is that villa in the
south of France (co-owned with The Edge). "We spend
about six weeks there in the summer because we can," she
says with a chortle. "It's very easy down there because the
French just don't care."

So Ali Hewson's not denying the good times. But her
desire to do good - when she could easily defend doing
nothing - is utterly convincing. "The whole point of your
life, I think, is to give some chance to even one person. I
don't want to end my life feeling I've only looked after
myself, that everything I did was to protect myself. I want
when I die to believe that I've achieved what I was
supposed to achieve - that is, to help other people in
whatever way I could."

? The Irish Times Magazine
*****************************************************
(pics coming in a second...)

------------------
Give me one more chance
And you'll be satisfied
Give me two more chances
You won't be denied


* U2 Take Me Higher *
 
This was done before the tour, right? And that's Eli when he was younger in the pics? Thanks for posting this, I had never seen an interview with Ali before. She is TOO lucky, she has Bono and she's rich, she need not worry about anything else, but she does. I have to say, I would just sit back and enjoy the ride. So many of us wish we could!
 
glad you guys liked it! Ali is amazing! I could never do what she does, that's for sure- I'd want Bono all to myself! She definitely wins for Best Supporting Woman, in my book!

U2kitten- yes this was right after the album came out in oct 31st, last year- or maybe the interview was done right before it was on sale. And that cutie pie is Elijah! I love that pic of her talking to him. anyway boomcha has a real nice Ali section:

http://members.tripod.com/~trampledindust/


------------------
Give me one more chance
And you'll be satisfied
Give me two more chances
You won't be denied


* U2 Take Me Higher *
 
Ali is such an amazing woman ... Bono is luck to have her.

------------------
Jessica

"Rock and roll doggie"
--Bono

"I'm very secure with the fact that I'm not black. I'm white, pink and rosy. But I've got soul."
--Bono

?We make music you can have sex to.?
--Bono

?Never trust a man who tells you it's from the heart, never trust a man smoking a cigar, never trust a cowboy or a man who wears shades.?
--Bono
 
ali rocks my socks. she's one cool chick.

(thanks, olive!)

------------------
"You can download an atmosphere and dial up a groove, but there's a certain magic when three musicians and a dyslexic get together and play in a room." -Bono

Love,
Emily

The city's desire to take me for more and more...
 
what a beautiful person! she seems so grounded and loving and normal. i would love to meet her. bono truly is a lucky man- women like ali are few and far between.

thank you for posting that, olive.
smile.gif
 
Thank you for posting this article. I knew that she was a great woman, but I did not realize how wonderful she truly is. Yes, Bono is very lucky to have her. It is nice to see people in her position are grounded and not filled with expectations just because they are married to someone famous. I love the fact that she is such a compassionate woman and devoted wife and mother. This article just confirms my love for U2.
 
I think this sums it all up:

"After introducing these beautiful women to my wife, they all lost interest in me! They're her friends now." Bono, in Bill Flanagan's book

------------------
Give me one more chance
And you'll be satisfied
Give me two more chances
You won't be denied


* U2 Take Me Higher *
 
Originally posted by oliveu2cm:
Hardly an obvious candidate for typical rock
star spouse? She thiks about this: "Maybe the fact that I'm
not a typical rock star wife is more a reflection on Bono
than on me."


AWWWWWWW!! Gotta love how they both think th
ey got lucky!
biggrin.gif
What a beautiful couple!

Thanks for this! Ali, you inspire me!

SD
 
OMG bless her little cotton sox!! Ali and Bono are both wonderful ppl!!!!!!! now I'm in love with both of them. Rackem frackem...
biggrin.gif


------------------
~*Mona*~
a little girl With Spanish eyes

Love me, Give me Soul

Magic Magic Magic Joe Houdini
 
Originally posted by Sherry Darling:
Oh, hey, and yeah...Ali? Kidding about that Bonoporn thing....

icon41.gif


SD
lol heheh and ix-nay on the elevation-ay read-thray.....*nervous chuckle*


------------------
~*Mona*~
a little girl With Spanish eyes
97% compatible with Bono

Love me, Give me Soul

Magic Magic Magic Joe Houdini
 
Thanks for posting that, olive- it was really interesting. Ali is definitely an amazing woman. Bono is certainly lucky to have her (and she's lucky to have him).
 
Ooohhhh Olive!!! Thank you for posting that article and THOSE AMAZING PICTURES!!! (which actually surprised me because I thought Ali really tried to stay out of the media).

WOW. *pushes Bono aside* Ali SO rocks. She really is one of my heroes, seriously. All that she has, with Bono as her husband, a beautiful home, money galore...and she drives a 1991 VW Golf. How I admire that woman!!
biggrin.gif
If she were one of my friends, I would consider myself very blessed indeed.

I know he already knows, but Bono is a very, very lucky man. He really wouldn't be who he is without Ali beside him!!
wink.gif


Disco
 
Ali is so cool
smile.gif
She's just so likeable!

It's kind of funny how she and myself accomplished each others' dreams - She wanted to be a nurse (like I am), and I wanted to marry Bono...lol
biggrin.gif


------------------
How do you keep a moron busy for an hour? Two words... Extreme Paddleball

"wow...look at those two birds... they look just like airplanes, the way they're flying..."

" because they are airplanes..."
 
Originally posted by She ls Raging:
It's kind of funny how she and myself accomplished each others' dreams - She wanted to be a nurse (like I am), and I wanted to marry Bono...lol
biggrin.gif

lol!!!! funny how things work out

------------------
~*Mona*~
a little girl With Spanish eyes
97% compatible with Bono

Love me, Give me Soul

Magic Magic Magic Joe Houdini
 
Thanks olive!!!

I've always wanted to read about Ali!!!

Funny thing, after almost twenty years with my "own personal Bono" and I also find the hardest thing is not to take each other for granted...

I'd love to talk to the lady for marital advice. I definitely admire her!!!

------------------
If your glass house should crack....POE
 
What a great article. That's the first time I've read anything in depth about Ali. She seems like such an understanding, kind person, you can see why Bono is so attracted. To think that with all she has, she still wishes she could be a nurse! Very admirable person, as we've said! Thanks olive for posting it
smile.gif
.
 
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