U2Fanatic4ever
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Hi all...
I wanted to share this great interview with bono with y'all..
PART I: (Its a long guys..so pull up a chair and enjoy!)
Matter of Life and Death - Part 1
Hot Press Annual 2002, December 01, 2001
At the end of an exciting, painful and earthshaking year, Bono reflects on the political and the personal -- from Drop the Debt, September 11, Afghanistan and Genoa to the death of his father Bob, the birth of his son John and the enduring friendship which underpins U2's music and career. Interview: Niall Stokes
"Niall Stokes -- this is your conscience speaking." The voice at the other end of the line has a distinctive rasp to it -- a lived-in quality that's suggestive of last night's indulgence, of smoke and strong whiskey and whatever you're havin' yourself -- and just a little bit more besides. But it's more than distinctive; it's got a familiarity that penetrates right away, the baroque, theatrical, playful introduction notwithstanding.
You know the voice as well as I do. It belongs to Bono, lead singer with the Irish rock band U2, and he's calling from the South of France, where the outfit are currently ensconced in coming-down mode, following the culmination of the final leg of their U.S. tour, promoting their global No. 1 album, the magnificent All That You Can't Leave Behind.
It's been a huge year for U2, battling their way back to pre-eminence in rock, and taking the Elevation tour across the U.S. and Europe to widespread acclaim -- racking up the sales and picking up gongs-a-go-go en route. But it's been an even bigger one for Bono. In June, there was the birth of his fourth child, John. In August, after a long and difficult illness, his father Bob died.
Throughout, he was involved in the Drop the Debt campaign -- a commitment that involved hard labour, significant achievements and rattling controversy in almost equal measure. And then there was Slane. And September 11th. It was a year that shook not just his world -- but ours.
Two days ago, we'd spoken for two hours, maybe a little more. In the meantime, some stuff that we discussed has been bothering Bono, and he wants to make sure that we get the record straight. As it happens, I've been prey to the same nagging feeling. We'd covered a lot of ground, but there were some things that had been left unasked -- and others that had been left unsaid. He wants to tell me about the church around the corner. I want to ask him about Mazar-I-Sharif. We agree to talk in an hour, by which time I should be at the Editor's desk, bug-mike at the ready, thoughts collected and red biro in hand.
He's good at this -- he has been for a long time. He's smart and charming and erudite. Ask almost anyone who has grilled him and they'll tell you -- he's one of the best interviewees in the business. He knows his stuff, hitting me with precise statistics on the % of GDP that is -- and that should be -- devoted to aid for developing countries. He knows where each of a dozen of the wealthiest nations, including Ireland, stands in relation to this. He quotes the most appalling figures in relation to the incidence of AIDS in Botswana, and you can feel the extent to which the studied indifference of the West in the face of this escalating catastrophe appalls him.
Careful and considered, mostly he weighs his words with great exactitude. There are times when you just have to let the conversation dangle while he finds the nuance that he wants to convey. "...Aaaaaah...inappropriate," he says at one point, having taken a full half-minute to get to the point, but when he says it, you know that it was exactly the shade he wanted to paint for you -- and for anyone else who might become privy to the exchange.
But he is also funny and exuberant -- especially where it comes to talking about U2's music. Right now, that is at the top of the agenda, once more. With the touring over, for the moment at least, the band have plunged straight back into recording. Their engineer Richard Rainey found a run-down, defunct club that he figured they'd get a good sound in -- and so it's proved.
"Do you remember a club in O'Connell Street called Slack Alice?" Bono asks. "Well, that's what this place is like! But we're getting some amazing sounds out of it -- real punk rock, some really great guitar sounds and some beautiful melodies. The band is so tight, coming straight off the tour. We've hit form. We're in, ostensibly, to write a ballad -- but we keep knockin' out these hard rock tunes."
They're working on a song for the upcoming Martin Scorsese movie, The Gangs of New York, about the Irish and the Italians in the Small-But-Growing Apple in the 19th century -- about the gangs that built the city, and how violent they were. "Very little is known about the origins of the city," Bono says. "But this is about how it was like Nairobi, back then."
U2 don't know how to do things by half -- they never did. And so they have gone way beyond the brief that they went into the studio with. "We've started our album," he confides. "We've got a tune called 'Electrical Storm,' that's going to blow your mind."
"Have you a chorus you can sing for me there?" I ask. There's laughter at the other end of the line. "No," he chuckles.
He knows that the tape is rolling.
NIALL STOKES: Tell me, what was the mood in the States through the last leg of the tour, since September 11th in particular?
BONO: Well, you know, music changes shape to fit the predicament that it finds itself in, often. And ours is no exception. Songs that meant one thing before September 11th, for most bands I think, meant another thing after September 11th. But oddly enough our music meant the same thing. It's just that the events brought the subject matter closer into focus. And a lot of the themes and the moods of All That You Can't Leave Behind seemed to just make more sense. I don't think they changed. The obvious stuff like "New York," or a song about depression like "Stuck in a Moment," "Kite" -- songs about letting go of people you don't want to let go of, all of that seemed to really connect.
You re-wrote the lyrics of New York?
Not much, but it went: "In New York freedom feels like too many choices/In New York I found some friends to drown out the other voices/Voices on the cellphone, voices from home/Are you OK, baby, don't stay in alone/New York, I love New York." And then it went: "In New York summers get hot/Well into the hundreds, you can't walk around the block/Without a change of clothing/Come September a lot can change/Summer's love turns to winter's rain/New York -- even New Jersey loves New York" (laughs), and that went down in the Garden. And then I went on: "In New York you can forget how to sit still/And you can forget how strong is the city's will." And then: "In New York I had a problem/Call it a mid-life crisis/That's not really a problem/Just too many choices/I hit an iceberg in my life/But you know I'm still afloat/I lost my balance/You lost your wife/In the queue for the lifeboat/You were putting the women and children first/I just had an unquenchable thirst for New York." So that was when the firemen and all were in the audience and that went off.
Obviously people are looking for solace or whatever -- but are they capable of enjoying themselves in the same way as before?
Well, I have a lot of friends in New York, who, let's say, have seen a lot of the world and might have dealt with some spectres in their time and these people didn't leave their apartment for two or three weeks -- which shocks me because these people are so unshockable. So it's very hard to describe to a European, but the American mindset has forever changed. It's like Mike Tyson getting knocked down...you know, he can get up, he can go into training again, he can regain his title, but he'll never be the same again. A certain self-confidence has gone. They are penetrable. They were confident acting like an island. Now they're part of the world and the world is not such a friendly place. I mean a lot of Americans had no idea that there was this kind of anger out there, directed at them. I don't mean the cells of terror, more the people demonstrating in the streets in Indonesia and Pakistan. I think that really left them marked.
But is that going to change their sense of the role they should in the world? If you look at what's going on now in Afghanistan, you wouldn't interpret that as being the case.
Aside from the fact that the media has had very little access, and that's unnerving, I don't think historically the way this campaign has been waged against terror will be seen as anything other than a success in terms of the least loss of human life and a certain measuredness, which most of the world weren't expecting from the United States. And reading the New York Times report of the fall of Kabul and journalists walking around, there's hardly any civilian targets hit. That was kind of miraculous. Any civilian target hit is unacceptable. But I used to be a pacifist. I'm no longer a pacifist -- and not because I don't want to be, but because I can't live up to it in my own life. It's a source of deep sadness to me that I can't. If somebody was threatening my wife and my kids I would not turn the other cheek and it's patently clear to anyone living in New York or London or Los Angeles or Chicago that in a matter of months, and certainly years, whole corners of their cities were about to be taken out...whether it's chemicals or dirty nuclear devices, whatever they're calling them. So I don't see any alternative to what they've done.
Is that not a bit of a shift from where U2 have come in the past on issues like this?
Having bitten the arse of American foreign policy for the first ten years of my life in U2, I think you have to give them credit where credit is due.
Does that mean that what happened in Mazar-I-Sharif -- where U.S. agents and British agents were involved, alongside Northern Alliance troops, in a gun battle in which dozens of Taliban soldiers were shot with their hands tied behind their backs -- is OK?
Of course not. I think it's important to support the Americans in Afghanistan -- but without supporting any heinous acts that occur during the war, whether by accident or design. If there are grotesque acts of war contrary to the Geneva Convention, they should be investigated. But there's a lazy-mindedness about people sitting on the fence in this. It's actually not acceptable, especially people who are living across the road from Sellafield, which surely would be one of the prime targets had the conflict escalated. I think there's a certain emergency aspect to going after these people. So I'm not full of criticism for the way the Americans have behaved. I'm with them.
Is that not just a case of saying, "I'm with them because I'm one of them and I'm not with the other guys because I'm not of them?" What happened in New York was clearly an outrage on a scale that no one...
But it's not what happened even in New York, it's what was about to happen! We've been writing songs about suitcase bombs since 1983. I felt like...Martin Amis, you know, writes in Einstein's Monster about a certain sickness in the pit of his stomach as he put his child to bed at night and went to write on this subject, of what is available in the world's nuclear arsenal. And just even thinking about it and realising how close to the abyss we're all staring. And that was in the '80s, before such capabilities had slipped out from under any kind of formal policing and gone underground. I mean, these people have no regard for anything that you and I hold dear and sacred, least of all women. And these people were about to take hold of the capability to take out South County Dublin, if not the entire city. They'd never get the fucking Northside, mind you! (Laughs) We could withstand anything! But they'd get you lot!
People are driven to extremes because of what they perceive to be the injustices in their own position and, in relation to Palestine, the extent to which they are the victims of violence and oppression.
I don't think it is comparable. Everyone knew that there is deep and grave injustice in the Middle East, everybody knew that. But nobody knew that somebody might be prepared to take what could have been 50,000 lives, innocent civilian lives, as part of that conflict. In the Book of Terror that chapter had never even been written. No one in their wildest dreams, none of the architects of modern terrorism -- which is how to grab a hold of the headlines for a few days by sacrificing civilian lives -- no one had ever imagined that kind of scale.
Is this not just an inevitable response to the malign role the U.S. role has occupied in the region for years now?
I have a completely different set of opinions on how Afghanistan got to the state it was in, in the first place. I've a completely different set of opinions on how the United States and Russia left the country in ruins. I'm prepared to criticise there -- but I'm not prepared to criticise this campaign because I think they've actually done as well as can be expected. I'm amazed. I thought they would go in in a knee-jerk way and set off a much greater conflict, which surely was Osama bin Laden's intention. He wasn't expecting them to behave in a measured way. His real goal, surely, is nothing to do with America. He's trying to reclaim Islam from the moderates and follow the Shiite traditions, back to the Middle Ages. He was expecting America to overreact, and in that sense he was sacrificing Afghanistan, as well as the people of New York and Washington; he was expecting overwhelming force and actually he got a much more tactical game. That's my fucking rant on it.
What's your assessment of the role of religion in all of it? You could say that the three great religions have come from a place that's now effectively the cockpit of hate in the world.
Yes, you could.
But is that not genuinely the case?
I think the roots of the present conflict are clearly the lack of conflict resolution in the area of the Middle East and the abject poverty of Africa. I didn't say that, the President of the World Bank said it on September 13th. He said it on CNN. He was pulled off faster than -- you could actually see the hook coming out! But it's the truth. And aside from the way this present thing has been conducted, if you want to get into the real issues, they're the real issues -- conflict resolution. The squalor of Palestinian lives that has been their forced condition for so long. But in the wider sense, the lack of commitment to the developing world and their sense of abandonment. And when you have nothing, and you have no hope, you're easy prey to the likes of Al Quaida.
There's a Hunter Thompson line -- "Entire civilisations have been done in by vengeful monsters claiming a special relationship with God." Isn't that what's going on here?
Entire civilisations have been done in by vengeful monsters full stop! What about the Soviet empire? What about what's gone on in China? That's how human beings are, whether they claim a close relationship with God or not. I would say that religion is often the obstacle in the way of God. In fact I'd go further and say that religion is often what you'd get when God has left the building, like Elvis. One of my favourite descriptions of God is that the Spirit moves like a wind, no one knows where it comes from or where it goes to. I think the Spirit of God in essence, has more akin to the anarchist than it has to cold religion.
And yet you haven't abandoned formal religion?
While I do think religion is often an obstacle to God, I do also find comfort in it on occasions -- whether it's a mass around the corner from where we live, or a Protestant Gospel Hall I might find on the road.
So God has no part in our downfall?
I've never believed that this is God's world anyway. I always thought that this was our world, and that we are the ones to hold to account, not religion. There's enough food to go around, but it's too expensive. We could turn every desert into fertile land, but we don't. It is human beings that need to be held to account, not God. When it comes down to Christianity, we're left with something that was made pretty simple, in order so we couldn't fuck it up -- but we still fucked it up. I love the bit when Christ asked for his greatest hits and he says, "OK, love God, and love your neighbours as yourself." Christianity is not complicated, that's what it is. And love is at the centre of it. God is love. And Islam is perverted as much as Christianity and Judaism, and I'd say all three religions blow smoke up God's nose most of the time.
You could say that all religions spring from the same basic impulse, but actually in practice they are very sharply in conflict.
Christianity is built around the concept of respect, not just respect for the people you disagree with, but love. There ought not to be any aggression in Christianity towards others. The whole point of Christ's teachings was to love your enemy. I presume that includes people you disagree with, not just your enemy. And I think the heart of the Koran is respect for difference. And though there is an intense celebration of difference in the Talmud, there's still tolerance preached, and neighbourliness as I understand it. Abraham is the father of all of these three families, and that's an interesting study. The best book I've ever read on the Middle East is called The Blood of Abraham, and it's written by Jimmy Carter, who was a real expert on the subject. It is deeply disturbing to see what can happen out of a family row. It is shocking. But they are the worst kind. You see it a local level, after funerals, or at weddings. Family fights are the most bitter.
You touched on the Drop the Debt campaign; what's happening there now?
I think post-September 11th, it has become ever more crucial that this relationship between the developed world and the developing world which has been so wrong for so long is put right. It is the least we can do at the start of the 21st century for ourselves, and for those people who are most affected. But it's also the only fitting memorial to the lives that were lost on September 11th. That some light could be drawn from such a black period in history, that it might shake us up, and wake us up, to what's going on in the world. I'm speaking to politicians every week, if not every day, every second day, in either letter or on the phone, arguing the point that a historic initiative on Africa would be something worthy of those people who lost their lives.
What are you looking for precisely?
There's a plan, which we're calling the New African Initiative. It's a demand for a new deal. It's a demand for trade and access, because an even bigger scandal than the debt issue, is the trade issue. These people are not allowed to sell their groundnuts. Some of the poorest countries in the world are not allowed to sell to us in Europe and America -- the great purveyors of free trade don't like it both ways sometimes. That's noxious. So that's been part of it. There's also an increase in aid needed. So Drop the Debt is across three levels -- further debt cancellation, deeper foreign aid and wider trade agreements.
Was there any concern on your part that you ended up on the wrong side of the police lines in Genoa?
I think I stumbled into a photograph that was regrettable and shows my lack of political nous, but I was also outside the red zone, and a lot of the people marching were Drop the Debt campaigners, we were marching with them. But as part of the negotiation you have to meet the leaders. There are people who prefer only to make the argument, and not attempt to resolve it. Those people are called cranks. I'm not one of them. Our job is to try and interface when we can. If a Tony Blair or a Gerhard Schroeder would take a meeting with us, of course we're going to say yes. It would be ignorant as well as dumb tactically not to.
Either yourself or Bob Geldof was quoted at the time condemning the violence, and it seemed to be the violence on the street and not the violence of the police?
Both were completely out of order. The police deserve more criticism because they're supposed to be controlled. There were factions in the crowd that have no interest in the developing world or a lot of the issues that they're throwing rocks at, and those people put the lives and well-being of the majority of peaceful demonstrators at risk. There are some people who are disturbing the peace in mindful ways, and civil disobedience has a noble history. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about neo-fascist groups, who want to see blood spilt -- that's a different thing to civil disobedience.
In a context where you are negotiation at that kind of level, do you have to effectively stay on the right side of politicians -- for example, of the Bush administration?
I think I have to be myself, and I have to be true to myself. I could never be a politician because I think I'm too selfish, and I think I like to have fun: the right to be irresponsible is a right I hold dear. I think most people who I'm dealing with accept that the way I look, dress or act, doesn't take away from the rigours of the arguments I'm making. There are amusing incidents like Paul Volcker, who was the Alan Greenspan of his day, arrived at Madison Square Gardens, a giant of American economics literally and metaphorically -- he's six foot seven -- and who had been a great opponent of debt cancellation, but he came with us. He was sharing a dressing room briefly with the Fun Lovin' Criminals and later, in a speech, he remarked that he'd been to a U2 show, how great work was being done -- and there were some colourful smells coming from the dressing room. I don't smoke but I thought that was funny.
There was that line from Damon Albarn, going back a bit, that you were wrecking his buzz. Does that kind of cynicism rankle?
Well, he's apologised for that. We've argued that one out, and I'm sure we'll argue a lot more out. I accept that with these occasions, like the Brits, and pouring cold water into Damon's warm beer, can irritate, but that was the beginning of a campaign, that ended up ridding the world of a hundred billion dollars of debt, and we were deeply serious. Muhammed Ali had come in and the kind of cynicism that that was met with could have, if we had less resolve, derailed us. If you're not going to contribute to the struggle, at least don't get in the way of it, is all I would say.
I know you're not looking for people's appreciation or praise, but do you feel that your efforts in relation to this whole thing are under-appreciated, say in Ireland?
Look, in Ireland, as Bill Graham was always reminding me, it's a problem of scale. U2 are most popular when they keep their heads down, and that's what we try to do most of the time. Even I would have been angry at myself around the time of Slane. Jaysus, how interesting can four people be? Somebody said to me a while back, "You won the World Cup, and then you did it again, and now you're doing it again. We love music, we love football, you won the World Cup." But we didn't really. It is not a good analogy, and we're writers and musicians, and celebrity is an oppressive thing in these times. Ireland is the only country where we are celebrities. We fly below the radar pretty much everywhere else. And that would be our desire for Ireland. We would just like to get on with our lives.
Both Kevin Myers and Vincent Browne, in the Irish Times have poured scorn on your efforts in relation to Drop the Debt.
Something like Slane comes up and you're in the news and people want to have a go, and honestly I don't blame them. It's absolutely fine. But I'm sure that both Kevin Myers and Vincent Browne know that they're being naughty boys. You just have to do the research: even a cursory glance at our schedule would show that I'm not just turning up for the photograph. There's a lot of hard work involved; it's taking a lot of my time and energy away from my family, and I hope it ends soon. I would like not to be in this position, and I appreciate how absurd it is. To have a wealthy pop star in the corridors of power talking about poor people, I understand what that looks like, and I don't like it either. And I think they're just stirring it up, saying, "look, fuck off." I see my picture in the paper and I feel the same sometimes. "Fuck off!" But the ball kind of fell at my feet, and the goal looked kind of open. So I just had to run with it.
Did you see John Waters' comment "U2 are too old and bored with each other to say or do anything of relevance anymore"?
File under the same thing...I love John but it's not us who's lost contact with the music. And I don't think we've ever been as close as a band. Perhaps he just doesn't like the album. With bands, if they make an album you don't like, it's all over. Whereas if your favourite director makes a movie you don't like, you wait for the next one. It's a strange thing. Sean Penn said to me once, on a night out when I was a bit depressed about PopMart in America, and we were sitting there in a hotel room and he said, "You know, they just didn't like the movie." And I realised it's not that they don't like you, they just didn't like this movie!
Slane was obviously a huge moment in different ways. So three months on how do you recall the week of the show?
Whatever it was, it wasn't a concert. It was some sort of sociological event, a sort of gathering of the tribe. But from our point of view, it was like a big wedding, with aunties and uncles, fights in the corner, tears at every turn, too much drink taken, and after that then it became a wake. A wedding, and a wake. I was just holding on for dear life.
Did you think of cancelling, knowing the advanced stage of your father's illness?
I held on to those songs because they were getting me through it, and singing them kept me together. All the keening and wailing you could ever need are in some of those U2 songs. I was ridding myself of a lot of anguish and despair, on a nightly basis. I was certainly doing the right thing by me. I don't know if I was doing the right thing by everybody else. We're probably a better rock 'n' roll band than the one that turned up at Slane, especially the first night because that was a different thing. That was more opera, and I'm just left with an incredible sense of being carried by the crowd. I feel it was a very special day for anyone who was there, especially for the band. But it wasn't just about the music.
There must have been moments when you felt close to succumbing emotionally?
But it had been happening anyway. We were on tour in the U.K. and I was taking a small plane after each concert -- straight off the stage, straight to Dublin, to his bedside, and to his silence, with the crowd still ringing in my ears. These were really difficult times for him and I wanted to be there. My brother Norman covered for me incredibly, and I was reminded that he was really my big brother. He was in control, knew what to do, and I was his passenger. But I did the night shifts. And also some of my dad's brothers and this family called the Lloyds, which he kinda lived with. It was very bizarre. I was disappointed in a way that I couldn't have the conversations with him that I would like to. He was too sick. He had Parkinson's Diseases, so he was whispering a lot of the time. Occasionally, clear as a bell, he would get it out. I remember the nurses saying -- "Great, Bob. Visitors, Bob." He goes, "Yeah, great, great when they leave." All his energy was directed into humour. That was how he kept his dignity. My one prayer was he would keep his dignity. He was a very dignified man, a charming man. But I didn't get that prayer. 'Cause cancer is a cruel and slow process that finally just takes away all dignity, in the last stages, despite the advances in medicine, and the palliative nursing. It was a little epiphany. You know, birth is a messy business too, for mother and child, and I've started to wonder if maybe dignity isn't so important after all. Maybe it's a human construct -- people put it beside things like righteousness and courage, but I don't think it is. I think humility might be much more important to face your maker, and dignity might be a next door neighbour to pride, or worse, to vanity.
Did he find waiting hard, knowing what was coming?
He got irritated at one point. His last words were "Are you all fucking mad?" which is wild. He woke me up in the middle of the night. I went to him and he was whispering. I got the nurse. We both had our ears to his mouth. And then (laughs) as clear as a bell, "Are you all fucking mad?" I jumped. I'm looking for a smile, but he had no smile. He said, "Look, this is a prison. I wanna go home." And he did.
------------------
If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go
Surrender
Dislocate
I wanted to share this great interview with bono with y'all..
PART I: (Its a long guys..so pull up a chair and enjoy!)
Matter of Life and Death - Part 1
Hot Press Annual 2002, December 01, 2001
At the end of an exciting, painful and earthshaking year, Bono reflects on the political and the personal -- from Drop the Debt, September 11, Afghanistan and Genoa to the death of his father Bob, the birth of his son John and the enduring friendship which underpins U2's music and career. Interview: Niall Stokes
"Niall Stokes -- this is your conscience speaking." The voice at the other end of the line has a distinctive rasp to it -- a lived-in quality that's suggestive of last night's indulgence, of smoke and strong whiskey and whatever you're havin' yourself -- and just a little bit more besides. But it's more than distinctive; it's got a familiarity that penetrates right away, the baroque, theatrical, playful introduction notwithstanding.
You know the voice as well as I do. It belongs to Bono, lead singer with the Irish rock band U2, and he's calling from the South of France, where the outfit are currently ensconced in coming-down mode, following the culmination of the final leg of their U.S. tour, promoting their global No. 1 album, the magnificent All That You Can't Leave Behind.
It's been a huge year for U2, battling their way back to pre-eminence in rock, and taking the Elevation tour across the U.S. and Europe to widespread acclaim -- racking up the sales and picking up gongs-a-go-go en route. But it's been an even bigger one for Bono. In June, there was the birth of his fourth child, John. In August, after a long and difficult illness, his father Bob died.
Throughout, he was involved in the Drop the Debt campaign -- a commitment that involved hard labour, significant achievements and rattling controversy in almost equal measure. And then there was Slane. And September 11th. It was a year that shook not just his world -- but ours.
Two days ago, we'd spoken for two hours, maybe a little more. In the meantime, some stuff that we discussed has been bothering Bono, and he wants to make sure that we get the record straight. As it happens, I've been prey to the same nagging feeling. We'd covered a lot of ground, but there were some things that had been left unasked -- and others that had been left unsaid. He wants to tell me about the church around the corner. I want to ask him about Mazar-I-Sharif. We agree to talk in an hour, by which time I should be at the Editor's desk, bug-mike at the ready, thoughts collected and red biro in hand.
He's good at this -- he has been for a long time. He's smart and charming and erudite. Ask almost anyone who has grilled him and they'll tell you -- he's one of the best interviewees in the business. He knows his stuff, hitting me with precise statistics on the % of GDP that is -- and that should be -- devoted to aid for developing countries. He knows where each of a dozen of the wealthiest nations, including Ireland, stands in relation to this. He quotes the most appalling figures in relation to the incidence of AIDS in Botswana, and you can feel the extent to which the studied indifference of the West in the face of this escalating catastrophe appalls him.
Careful and considered, mostly he weighs his words with great exactitude. There are times when you just have to let the conversation dangle while he finds the nuance that he wants to convey. "...Aaaaaah...inappropriate," he says at one point, having taken a full half-minute to get to the point, but when he says it, you know that it was exactly the shade he wanted to paint for you -- and for anyone else who might become privy to the exchange.
But he is also funny and exuberant -- especially where it comes to talking about U2's music. Right now, that is at the top of the agenda, once more. With the touring over, for the moment at least, the band have plunged straight back into recording. Their engineer Richard Rainey found a run-down, defunct club that he figured they'd get a good sound in -- and so it's proved.
"Do you remember a club in O'Connell Street called Slack Alice?" Bono asks. "Well, that's what this place is like! But we're getting some amazing sounds out of it -- real punk rock, some really great guitar sounds and some beautiful melodies. The band is so tight, coming straight off the tour. We've hit form. We're in, ostensibly, to write a ballad -- but we keep knockin' out these hard rock tunes."
They're working on a song for the upcoming Martin Scorsese movie, The Gangs of New York, about the Irish and the Italians in the Small-But-Growing Apple in the 19th century -- about the gangs that built the city, and how violent they were. "Very little is known about the origins of the city," Bono says. "But this is about how it was like Nairobi, back then."
U2 don't know how to do things by half -- they never did. And so they have gone way beyond the brief that they went into the studio with. "We've started our album," he confides. "We've got a tune called 'Electrical Storm,' that's going to blow your mind."
"Have you a chorus you can sing for me there?" I ask. There's laughter at the other end of the line. "No," he chuckles.
He knows that the tape is rolling.
NIALL STOKES: Tell me, what was the mood in the States through the last leg of the tour, since September 11th in particular?
BONO: Well, you know, music changes shape to fit the predicament that it finds itself in, often. And ours is no exception. Songs that meant one thing before September 11th, for most bands I think, meant another thing after September 11th. But oddly enough our music meant the same thing. It's just that the events brought the subject matter closer into focus. And a lot of the themes and the moods of All That You Can't Leave Behind seemed to just make more sense. I don't think they changed. The obvious stuff like "New York," or a song about depression like "Stuck in a Moment," "Kite" -- songs about letting go of people you don't want to let go of, all of that seemed to really connect.
You re-wrote the lyrics of New York?
Not much, but it went: "In New York freedom feels like too many choices/In New York I found some friends to drown out the other voices/Voices on the cellphone, voices from home/Are you OK, baby, don't stay in alone/New York, I love New York." And then it went: "In New York summers get hot/Well into the hundreds, you can't walk around the block/Without a change of clothing/Come September a lot can change/Summer's love turns to winter's rain/New York -- even New Jersey loves New York" (laughs), and that went down in the Garden. And then I went on: "In New York you can forget how to sit still/And you can forget how strong is the city's will." And then: "In New York I had a problem/Call it a mid-life crisis/That's not really a problem/Just too many choices/I hit an iceberg in my life/But you know I'm still afloat/I lost my balance/You lost your wife/In the queue for the lifeboat/You were putting the women and children first/I just had an unquenchable thirst for New York." So that was when the firemen and all were in the audience and that went off.
Obviously people are looking for solace or whatever -- but are they capable of enjoying themselves in the same way as before?
Well, I have a lot of friends in New York, who, let's say, have seen a lot of the world and might have dealt with some spectres in their time and these people didn't leave their apartment for two or three weeks -- which shocks me because these people are so unshockable. So it's very hard to describe to a European, but the American mindset has forever changed. It's like Mike Tyson getting knocked down...you know, he can get up, he can go into training again, he can regain his title, but he'll never be the same again. A certain self-confidence has gone. They are penetrable. They were confident acting like an island. Now they're part of the world and the world is not such a friendly place. I mean a lot of Americans had no idea that there was this kind of anger out there, directed at them. I don't mean the cells of terror, more the people demonstrating in the streets in Indonesia and Pakistan. I think that really left them marked.
But is that going to change their sense of the role they should in the world? If you look at what's going on now in Afghanistan, you wouldn't interpret that as being the case.
Aside from the fact that the media has had very little access, and that's unnerving, I don't think historically the way this campaign has been waged against terror will be seen as anything other than a success in terms of the least loss of human life and a certain measuredness, which most of the world weren't expecting from the United States. And reading the New York Times report of the fall of Kabul and journalists walking around, there's hardly any civilian targets hit. That was kind of miraculous. Any civilian target hit is unacceptable. But I used to be a pacifist. I'm no longer a pacifist -- and not because I don't want to be, but because I can't live up to it in my own life. It's a source of deep sadness to me that I can't. If somebody was threatening my wife and my kids I would not turn the other cheek and it's patently clear to anyone living in New York or London or Los Angeles or Chicago that in a matter of months, and certainly years, whole corners of their cities were about to be taken out...whether it's chemicals or dirty nuclear devices, whatever they're calling them. So I don't see any alternative to what they've done.
Is that not a bit of a shift from where U2 have come in the past on issues like this?
Having bitten the arse of American foreign policy for the first ten years of my life in U2, I think you have to give them credit where credit is due.
Does that mean that what happened in Mazar-I-Sharif -- where U.S. agents and British agents were involved, alongside Northern Alliance troops, in a gun battle in which dozens of Taliban soldiers were shot with their hands tied behind their backs -- is OK?
Of course not. I think it's important to support the Americans in Afghanistan -- but without supporting any heinous acts that occur during the war, whether by accident or design. If there are grotesque acts of war contrary to the Geneva Convention, they should be investigated. But there's a lazy-mindedness about people sitting on the fence in this. It's actually not acceptable, especially people who are living across the road from Sellafield, which surely would be one of the prime targets had the conflict escalated. I think there's a certain emergency aspect to going after these people. So I'm not full of criticism for the way the Americans have behaved. I'm with them.
Is that not just a case of saying, "I'm with them because I'm one of them and I'm not with the other guys because I'm not of them?" What happened in New York was clearly an outrage on a scale that no one...
But it's not what happened even in New York, it's what was about to happen! We've been writing songs about suitcase bombs since 1983. I felt like...Martin Amis, you know, writes in Einstein's Monster about a certain sickness in the pit of his stomach as he put his child to bed at night and went to write on this subject, of what is available in the world's nuclear arsenal. And just even thinking about it and realising how close to the abyss we're all staring. And that was in the '80s, before such capabilities had slipped out from under any kind of formal policing and gone underground. I mean, these people have no regard for anything that you and I hold dear and sacred, least of all women. And these people were about to take hold of the capability to take out South County Dublin, if not the entire city. They'd never get the fucking Northside, mind you! (Laughs) We could withstand anything! But they'd get you lot!
People are driven to extremes because of what they perceive to be the injustices in their own position and, in relation to Palestine, the extent to which they are the victims of violence and oppression.
I don't think it is comparable. Everyone knew that there is deep and grave injustice in the Middle East, everybody knew that. But nobody knew that somebody might be prepared to take what could have been 50,000 lives, innocent civilian lives, as part of that conflict. In the Book of Terror that chapter had never even been written. No one in their wildest dreams, none of the architects of modern terrorism -- which is how to grab a hold of the headlines for a few days by sacrificing civilian lives -- no one had ever imagined that kind of scale.
Is this not just an inevitable response to the malign role the U.S. role has occupied in the region for years now?
I have a completely different set of opinions on how Afghanistan got to the state it was in, in the first place. I've a completely different set of opinions on how the United States and Russia left the country in ruins. I'm prepared to criticise there -- but I'm not prepared to criticise this campaign because I think they've actually done as well as can be expected. I'm amazed. I thought they would go in in a knee-jerk way and set off a much greater conflict, which surely was Osama bin Laden's intention. He wasn't expecting them to behave in a measured way. His real goal, surely, is nothing to do with America. He's trying to reclaim Islam from the moderates and follow the Shiite traditions, back to the Middle Ages. He was expecting America to overreact, and in that sense he was sacrificing Afghanistan, as well as the people of New York and Washington; he was expecting overwhelming force and actually he got a much more tactical game. That's my fucking rant on it.
What's your assessment of the role of religion in all of it? You could say that the three great religions have come from a place that's now effectively the cockpit of hate in the world.
Yes, you could.
But is that not genuinely the case?
I think the roots of the present conflict are clearly the lack of conflict resolution in the area of the Middle East and the abject poverty of Africa. I didn't say that, the President of the World Bank said it on September 13th. He said it on CNN. He was pulled off faster than -- you could actually see the hook coming out! But it's the truth. And aside from the way this present thing has been conducted, if you want to get into the real issues, they're the real issues -- conflict resolution. The squalor of Palestinian lives that has been their forced condition for so long. But in the wider sense, the lack of commitment to the developing world and their sense of abandonment. And when you have nothing, and you have no hope, you're easy prey to the likes of Al Quaida.
There's a Hunter Thompson line -- "Entire civilisations have been done in by vengeful monsters claiming a special relationship with God." Isn't that what's going on here?
Entire civilisations have been done in by vengeful monsters full stop! What about the Soviet empire? What about what's gone on in China? That's how human beings are, whether they claim a close relationship with God or not. I would say that religion is often the obstacle in the way of God. In fact I'd go further and say that religion is often what you'd get when God has left the building, like Elvis. One of my favourite descriptions of God is that the Spirit moves like a wind, no one knows where it comes from or where it goes to. I think the Spirit of God in essence, has more akin to the anarchist than it has to cold religion.
And yet you haven't abandoned formal religion?
While I do think religion is often an obstacle to God, I do also find comfort in it on occasions -- whether it's a mass around the corner from where we live, or a Protestant Gospel Hall I might find on the road.
So God has no part in our downfall?
I've never believed that this is God's world anyway. I always thought that this was our world, and that we are the ones to hold to account, not religion. There's enough food to go around, but it's too expensive. We could turn every desert into fertile land, but we don't. It is human beings that need to be held to account, not God. When it comes down to Christianity, we're left with something that was made pretty simple, in order so we couldn't fuck it up -- but we still fucked it up. I love the bit when Christ asked for his greatest hits and he says, "OK, love God, and love your neighbours as yourself." Christianity is not complicated, that's what it is. And love is at the centre of it. God is love. And Islam is perverted as much as Christianity and Judaism, and I'd say all three religions blow smoke up God's nose most of the time.
You could say that all religions spring from the same basic impulse, but actually in practice they are very sharply in conflict.
Christianity is built around the concept of respect, not just respect for the people you disagree with, but love. There ought not to be any aggression in Christianity towards others. The whole point of Christ's teachings was to love your enemy. I presume that includes people you disagree with, not just your enemy. And I think the heart of the Koran is respect for difference. And though there is an intense celebration of difference in the Talmud, there's still tolerance preached, and neighbourliness as I understand it. Abraham is the father of all of these three families, and that's an interesting study. The best book I've ever read on the Middle East is called The Blood of Abraham, and it's written by Jimmy Carter, who was a real expert on the subject. It is deeply disturbing to see what can happen out of a family row. It is shocking. But they are the worst kind. You see it a local level, after funerals, or at weddings. Family fights are the most bitter.
You touched on the Drop the Debt campaign; what's happening there now?
I think post-September 11th, it has become ever more crucial that this relationship between the developed world and the developing world which has been so wrong for so long is put right. It is the least we can do at the start of the 21st century for ourselves, and for those people who are most affected. But it's also the only fitting memorial to the lives that were lost on September 11th. That some light could be drawn from such a black period in history, that it might shake us up, and wake us up, to what's going on in the world. I'm speaking to politicians every week, if not every day, every second day, in either letter or on the phone, arguing the point that a historic initiative on Africa would be something worthy of those people who lost their lives.
What are you looking for precisely?
There's a plan, which we're calling the New African Initiative. It's a demand for a new deal. It's a demand for trade and access, because an even bigger scandal than the debt issue, is the trade issue. These people are not allowed to sell their groundnuts. Some of the poorest countries in the world are not allowed to sell to us in Europe and America -- the great purveyors of free trade don't like it both ways sometimes. That's noxious. So that's been part of it. There's also an increase in aid needed. So Drop the Debt is across three levels -- further debt cancellation, deeper foreign aid and wider trade agreements.
Was there any concern on your part that you ended up on the wrong side of the police lines in Genoa?
I think I stumbled into a photograph that was regrettable and shows my lack of political nous, but I was also outside the red zone, and a lot of the people marching were Drop the Debt campaigners, we were marching with them. But as part of the negotiation you have to meet the leaders. There are people who prefer only to make the argument, and not attempt to resolve it. Those people are called cranks. I'm not one of them. Our job is to try and interface when we can. If a Tony Blair or a Gerhard Schroeder would take a meeting with us, of course we're going to say yes. It would be ignorant as well as dumb tactically not to.
Either yourself or Bob Geldof was quoted at the time condemning the violence, and it seemed to be the violence on the street and not the violence of the police?
Both were completely out of order. The police deserve more criticism because they're supposed to be controlled. There were factions in the crowd that have no interest in the developing world or a lot of the issues that they're throwing rocks at, and those people put the lives and well-being of the majority of peaceful demonstrators at risk. There are some people who are disturbing the peace in mindful ways, and civil disobedience has a noble history. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about neo-fascist groups, who want to see blood spilt -- that's a different thing to civil disobedience.
In a context where you are negotiation at that kind of level, do you have to effectively stay on the right side of politicians -- for example, of the Bush administration?
I think I have to be myself, and I have to be true to myself. I could never be a politician because I think I'm too selfish, and I think I like to have fun: the right to be irresponsible is a right I hold dear. I think most people who I'm dealing with accept that the way I look, dress or act, doesn't take away from the rigours of the arguments I'm making. There are amusing incidents like Paul Volcker, who was the Alan Greenspan of his day, arrived at Madison Square Gardens, a giant of American economics literally and metaphorically -- he's six foot seven -- and who had been a great opponent of debt cancellation, but he came with us. He was sharing a dressing room briefly with the Fun Lovin' Criminals and later, in a speech, he remarked that he'd been to a U2 show, how great work was being done -- and there were some colourful smells coming from the dressing room. I don't smoke but I thought that was funny.
There was that line from Damon Albarn, going back a bit, that you were wrecking his buzz. Does that kind of cynicism rankle?
Well, he's apologised for that. We've argued that one out, and I'm sure we'll argue a lot more out. I accept that with these occasions, like the Brits, and pouring cold water into Damon's warm beer, can irritate, but that was the beginning of a campaign, that ended up ridding the world of a hundred billion dollars of debt, and we were deeply serious. Muhammed Ali had come in and the kind of cynicism that that was met with could have, if we had less resolve, derailed us. If you're not going to contribute to the struggle, at least don't get in the way of it, is all I would say.
I know you're not looking for people's appreciation or praise, but do you feel that your efforts in relation to this whole thing are under-appreciated, say in Ireland?
Look, in Ireland, as Bill Graham was always reminding me, it's a problem of scale. U2 are most popular when they keep their heads down, and that's what we try to do most of the time. Even I would have been angry at myself around the time of Slane. Jaysus, how interesting can four people be? Somebody said to me a while back, "You won the World Cup, and then you did it again, and now you're doing it again. We love music, we love football, you won the World Cup." But we didn't really. It is not a good analogy, and we're writers and musicians, and celebrity is an oppressive thing in these times. Ireland is the only country where we are celebrities. We fly below the radar pretty much everywhere else. And that would be our desire for Ireland. We would just like to get on with our lives.
Both Kevin Myers and Vincent Browne, in the Irish Times have poured scorn on your efforts in relation to Drop the Debt.
Something like Slane comes up and you're in the news and people want to have a go, and honestly I don't blame them. It's absolutely fine. But I'm sure that both Kevin Myers and Vincent Browne know that they're being naughty boys. You just have to do the research: even a cursory glance at our schedule would show that I'm not just turning up for the photograph. There's a lot of hard work involved; it's taking a lot of my time and energy away from my family, and I hope it ends soon. I would like not to be in this position, and I appreciate how absurd it is. To have a wealthy pop star in the corridors of power talking about poor people, I understand what that looks like, and I don't like it either. And I think they're just stirring it up, saying, "look, fuck off." I see my picture in the paper and I feel the same sometimes. "Fuck off!" But the ball kind of fell at my feet, and the goal looked kind of open. So I just had to run with it.
Did you see John Waters' comment "U2 are too old and bored with each other to say or do anything of relevance anymore"?
File under the same thing...I love John but it's not us who's lost contact with the music. And I don't think we've ever been as close as a band. Perhaps he just doesn't like the album. With bands, if they make an album you don't like, it's all over. Whereas if your favourite director makes a movie you don't like, you wait for the next one. It's a strange thing. Sean Penn said to me once, on a night out when I was a bit depressed about PopMart in America, and we were sitting there in a hotel room and he said, "You know, they just didn't like the movie." And I realised it's not that they don't like you, they just didn't like this movie!
Slane was obviously a huge moment in different ways. So three months on how do you recall the week of the show?
Whatever it was, it wasn't a concert. It was some sort of sociological event, a sort of gathering of the tribe. But from our point of view, it was like a big wedding, with aunties and uncles, fights in the corner, tears at every turn, too much drink taken, and after that then it became a wake. A wedding, and a wake. I was just holding on for dear life.
Did you think of cancelling, knowing the advanced stage of your father's illness?
I held on to those songs because they were getting me through it, and singing them kept me together. All the keening and wailing you could ever need are in some of those U2 songs. I was ridding myself of a lot of anguish and despair, on a nightly basis. I was certainly doing the right thing by me. I don't know if I was doing the right thing by everybody else. We're probably a better rock 'n' roll band than the one that turned up at Slane, especially the first night because that was a different thing. That was more opera, and I'm just left with an incredible sense of being carried by the crowd. I feel it was a very special day for anyone who was there, especially for the band. But it wasn't just about the music.
There must have been moments when you felt close to succumbing emotionally?
But it had been happening anyway. We were on tour in the U.K. and I was taking a small plane after each concert -- straight off the stage, straight to Dublin, to his bedside, and to his silence, with the crowd still ringing in my ears. These were really difficult times for him and I wanted to be there. My brother Norman covered for me incredibly, and I was reminded that he was really my big brother. He was in control, knew what to do, and I was his passenger. But I did the night shifts. And also some of my dad's brothers and this family called the Lloyds, which he kinda lived with. It was very bizarre. I was disappointed in a way that I couldn't have the conversations with him that I would like to. He was too sick. He had Parkinson's Diseases, so he was whispering a lot of the time. Occasionally, clear as a bell, he would get it out. I remember the nurses saying -- "Great, Bob. Visitors, Bob." He goes, "Yeah, great, great when they leave." All his energy was directed into humour. That was how he kept his dignity. My one prayer was he would keep his dignity. He was a very dignified man, a charming man. But I didn't get that prayer. 'Cause cancer is a cruel and slow process that finally just takes away all dignity, in the last stages, despite the advances in medicine, and the palliative nursing. It was a little epiphany. You know, birth is a messy business too, for mother and child, and I've started to wonder if maybe dignity isn't so important after all. Maybe it's a human construct -- people put it beside things like righteousness and courage, but I don't think it is. I think humility might be much more important to face your maker, and dignity might be a next door neighbour to pride, or worse, to vanity.
Did he find waiting hard, knowing what was coming?
He got irritated at one point. His last words were "Are you all fucking mad?" which is wild. He woke me up in the middle of the night. I went to him and he was whispering. I got the nurse. We both had our ears to his mouth. And then (laughs) as clear as a bell, "Are you all fucking mad?" I jumped. I'm looking for a smile, but he had no smile. He said, "Look, this is a prison. I wanna go home." And he did.
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If you twist and turn away
If you tear yourself in two again
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would
Let it go
Surrender
Dislocate
