Bono

by Michka Assayas

  But how was he trying to put you off?

  “Why would you want to go to university?” I mean, he was confused, but in the end he said: “Yeah . . . go to college. Sure, I’ll help you . . .” He’d eventually pay for guitar lessons, but it didn’t come easily to him. And yet the thing he regretted the most in his life is that he hadn’t become a musician and a singer. I mean, that’s very hard to figure out. I am now the father of four children, and I cannot imagine thinking like that. But his way of guarding you from being disillusioned was by not letting you have illusions in the first place. At some point he stopped reaching outside of himself. I think he maybe had to cut off something, and he didn’t want his kids to go through that. Either that or he was just perverse. I can’t figure it out. I mean, what else? What other explanation is there?

  So what did he think would become of you?

  Hmm . . . I think . . . either join the civil service, like he did, which was a safe job, which you couldn’t be fired from . . . or a traveling salesman. A lot of our family were traveling salesmen. And of course that is what I have become!

  In a way, possibly.

  Oh no, in more than just a way. I am sure of it. I am very much a traveling salesman. And that, if you really want to know, is how I see myself. I sell songs from door to door, from town to town. I sell melodies and words. And for me, in my political work, I sell ideas. In the commercial world that I’m entering into, I’m also selling ideas. So I see myself in a long line of family sales people. I really do. Thank God for my Uncle Jack!

  So there were success stories in your family, on your mother’s side.

  One of her eldest brothers was very successful in the insurance business. He went away to London, and then all over the world. They all did very well, but he did extremely well. I think that was another thing they thought I could become—an insurance salesman. For a circus performer who never looked for a net, that’s pretty funny, isn’t it? Anyway, it’s a wonderful thing—I have to tell you—to come out of an environment where you really didn’t have to achieve anything, isn’t it? It’s usually the opposite from that. But, God bless them, I was a very unruly kid. And when my mother died, that turned into rebellion. So I can’t really blame my father for not seeing my future as being bright, because he saw me setting fire to myself. I wasn’t interested in school, though I was pretty good at it. It’s really funny, you know, my grades were at the top of the class, until this period. Also, most of the people I was hanging around with weren’t interested in school. So I don’t want to hold him to too much blame.

  Because you were trouble.

  Yeah, that was really it.

  Eventually you went to university, though.

  Yeah, I did. Because my school friends were going. I was even interested in ideas then—I’ve always been interested in ideas. I mean, I was in university for two weeks, doing an arts degree in English and history. I would have loved that.

  How do you mean “two weeks”?

  I had falsely matriculated, they told me. In the National University, you are supposed to speak the national language, and I didn’t. I had flunked Irish, and they found that out. They threw me out of college, even though they had accepted me on my other results.

  How did your relationship with your father evolve after your mother died? I guess you’ve gone through various stages until his recent death.

  After my mother died, I think I tortured my brother and my father. There were three men living alone in a house. There were some awful times that we shared, really, about as low as you can get for three men. I remember, physically, my father trying to knock me out. I never returned fire, but it was hard. Mostly, they were comical moments. He worked out some of his own anxieties by so-called “worrying about me.” I’d be seventeen, and I’d be going out to punk rock gigs, and coming back. He’d be waiting for me at the top of the stairs, with some heavy artillery. [laughs] It was like an obstacle course for me and my gang of friends: how to get back in the house without waking him up.

  I guess you gave the poor man many a sleepless night. Do you remember a particular episode?

  I used to climb up the two floors on the drainpipe, and then I would reach over to the bathroom window, cross to the window—quite a tricky maneuver—put my hand in the window, open and get in, and go down, and let my friends in, so we can hang out some more. I remember, like, four in the morning, just as I’m making the most difficult part of the maneuver, my father wakes up and goes [impersonating]: “Is that you? Is that you?” And I’m outside his bedroom window, hanging out over the housing estate. I’m going [mutters, putting his hand over his mouth]: “Mmmmh. Yeah, it’s me, yeah.”—“Hurry up! And go to bed”—“Mmmh. Yeah, OK . . .” And he doesn’t know I’m actually hanging outside his window like, fuck, I’m about to fall off and break every bone of my body. [laughs]

  You make it sound like he frightened you a lot.

  Not really. I guess it was just a combative relationship. We were very unusual, our community. Not every father has two kids calling for their son, wearing Doc Martens, sporting a Mohawk and an occasional dress. Or sometimes Guggi would call to the door on a horse. Because we were surrealists from a very early age, we thought this was very funny. Once, when we fell out, in my twenties, my mates came to wrap my car in tissue paper—the entire car—with dozens and dozens of eggs, turned it into papier-mâché, to seal it like in a cocoon of tissue and eggs. And when I woke up, they were firing eggs at me. Only problem was my father woke up, and he slept with a weapon under his pillow.

  You mean a gun?

  No. It was like an iron bar. So the two of us, myself and my father, were running down the road after my mates, both of us armed to the teeth. I mean, it was comical! And he was [impersonating his father running out of breath], “I’m having a heart attack . . . I’m having a heart attack . . . Those fucking bastards! I’ll get them . . .”

  Why did you keep living with him, then?

  He gave me a year at home, bed and board, free of charge. He said: “You got one year. If at the end of this year, things aren’t happening for your band, you gotta go and get a job.” Pretty generous when you think about it. He started to mellow. There was one extraordinary moment I remember when he really helped me out. This big shot came over to see the band, and offered us a publishing deal. It was a big moment for us, because we were really flat broke. And with the money that he was offering, we booked a tour of the U.K. We still hadn’t got a record deal. We said: “On that tour, we’ll get a record deal.” But, on the eve of that tour, the publisher rang up and halved the money, knowing that we had to take it, because we’d already hired the van, the lights, the whole thing. The stories you hear—right?—about the music business as full of bottom-feeders are of course true. But we told this man to shove it up his own arse. We went to our families, and asked them for five hundred pounds each. My father gave it, Edge’s father gave it, and I think Larry’s father gave it. So the mood of the relationship, as you’re asking me about, starts to improve.

  Did your father eventually tell you he was proud of your success?

  Uh . . . Yeah, I think he was proud, in some ways. I took him to the United States for the first time in the mid-eighties. He’d never been there, and he came in to see a U2 show in Texas. And I thought this would be amazing for him to see this. I got Willie Williams, our lighting designer, to have a Super Trooper focused on the sound platform, and at the right moment, I told the audience: “You know, there’s somebody here tonight that’s never been to Texas”—they scream and hoot—“that’s never been to the U.S.”—more screaming—“that’s never been to a U2 show in the U.S.”—they’re going bananas—“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE LONE STAR STATE, I WANT TO INTRODUCE YOU TO MY FATHER, BOB HEWSON. THAT’S HIM THERE!” The light comes on, and my dad stands up. What does he do? He starts waving his fist at me. It was a great moment, really. Then, after the show, after coming offstage, he came back. I’m usually a bit dizzy and walking into walls for ten minu
tes. Normally no one would talk to me—I just need some moments to climb down a few gears. I heard footsteps. I turned round. It was my father, and he looked . . . almost emotional. [laughs] I said to myself, “God, he’s actually going to say something. This is the moment I’ve waited all my life for . . .” I think there’s tears in his eyes. He’s putting his hand out to me, I put my hand out to him, and he looked at me with those red eyes. He said: “Son . . . [big pause] you’re very professional . . .” [laughs]

  Professional?! That’s not quite the impression you made on me then.

  That’s fantastic, isn’t it? I mean, especially if you came from punk rock, the last thing that’s on your mind is being professional. But no, he was proud. I think he always probably found me very pretentious, which is probably right. I think he still found me a little preposterous, which I think is probably right. I think, like a lot of fathers with their sons, like no one else they know where to finger you. And he had a very, very wicked sense of humor.

  Are you implying that he taught you valuable lessons for your life as a rock star?

  He took the Dublin position of “My son, the fucking idiot.” That was the whole thing. So when he walked into that kitchen, you see, downstairs, where there were those presses [Irish and Scottish for cupboards]—they’re still there—he went: [shouting] “Ha! [claps hands] Did they see you coming, or what? You big eejit! Antiques . . . Ha! They’re rabbit hutches. You wouldn’t keep animals in them. You probably paid a fortune for them, haven’t you? You fool.” Any risk you were taking, he’d just look at you with his eye raised and would just shake his head in disbelief at your stupidity. “Oh dear, oh dear . . . You really didn’t see that one coming, did you?” So, after years and years of things not utterly falling apart as he was expecting, he became kind of bemused at his own bad weatherman. My brother was always very industrious, a very innovative kind of a fellow, very savvy in business, knew how to make a buck, and ambitious in that sense. But I never showed any of that interest in making money at all. So my father thought this was very funny that I started to accumulate some cash.

  He was right, I would say.

  He was right. He thought: “God must have a sense of humor; he has given my son who never had interest in cash far too much cash. Now let’s all have a bit of a laugh watching him flitter it away, because this boy obviously is going to blow it on all the wrong things.”

  What was he like with your kids?

  He loved kids, loved his grandchildren. His big thing, of course, was, when I would have children, I would find out what it was like to be a father. The pain, the torture, et cetera. So when I went and told him that Ali was pregnant, he burst out laughing. He couldn’t stop laughing. I said: “What are you laughing at?” He said [very low voice]: “Revenge.”

  So was he right? Has your experience of fatherhood been as difficult as his?

  No. There’s rarely a raised voice in our house. Ali’s mood prevails. It’s kind of serene in comparison.

  And how did your father get along with Ali?

  Oh, very well. Women loved him. He was completely charming and he was great company. And as long as you didn’t want to get too close, he was happy. I think he could reveal himself to women a lot easier than to men, which is something I probably have in common with him. I think he was a very great friend. He had a lot of woman friends. And I do too. So there must be something there.

  Did he give you any advice on how to handle your money?

  “Don’t trust anyone.”

  Did you follow him on that?

  I absolutely didn’t. Trust is very important to me. Let me digress. You know, in the supermarkets, they have a way of pricing. It’s a digital read-out: price-coding. So now, when you bring your food, you put it up and they just read it. Edge was telling me about this guy who recently did a study in MIT: ten percent of all accounting through this system is erroneous. Except the ten percent works both ways, which is to say . . .

  . . . that sometimes you win . . .

  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. And it’s completely even. So no one has really bothered about the system’s problems. Therein, in a way, is a lesson about trust. If you trust people, you are going to be burnt ten percent of the time. I’m quite a trusting person; however, ten percent of the time, you’re going to find yourself in situations that you wouldn’t have, had you been more cautious. I mean, you’re gonna find yourself in very good situations that you wouldn’t have, unless you took the risk. I think, that’s the difference between myself and my father.

  What are the things that you feel most guilty about now regarding your relationship with your father?

  Mainly, I just think he was dealing with a precocious child. Can’t have been easy, and especially when he found himself trying to do it all alone. I just feel . . . I’m angry about . . . there was a sort of father-son tension, that I probably just let go of in the last few weeks. Ali said to me that since his death, I haven’t been myself, and that I have been a lot more aggressive, and quicker to anger, and showing some of my father’s irascible side. The Italians take a long time to grieve. You see them wear black for a year. When my father died, I went on a short vacation, which turned into a euphemism for “drinks outing.” I don’t like to abuse alcohol—anything you abuse will abuse you back. But it’s fair to say I went to Bali for a drink. With my friend Simon [Carmody, screen-writer], we just headed off. I wanted to blow it out a bit, get the monkey off my back. But when I returned, funnily enough, it was still there. I think it’s been around with me a lot. And so just on Easter, I went up to the church in a little village where we live in France, and I just felt this was the moment that I had to let it go. An emotional volcano had gone off during the week before Easter, and I just wanted to find out. I wanted to deal with the source of whatever it was. In this little church, on Easter morning, I just got down on my knees, and I let go of whatever anger I had against my father. And I thanked God for him being my father, and for the gifts that I have been given through him. And I let go of that. I wept, and I felt rid of it.

  Once and for all?

  I think How to Dismantle . . . also allowed me to vent all that stuff. The atomic bomb, it’s obviously him in me. Yeah, “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own” is my swan song for him. I sang it at his funeral [recites, but does not sing]: Tough, you think you got the stuff / You’re telling me and everyone you’re hard enough/ Well, you don’t have to put up a fight/ You don’t have to always be right/Let me take some of the punches for you tonight/Listen to me now: I need to let you know you don’t have to go it alone/Sometimes you can’t make it on your own. It’s like a Phil Spector kind of a deal, very fifties. There’s a verse I left out of the recording: When I was a young boy in the suburbs of Cedarwood / I wanted to be great because good would not be good enough / Now that I’m older, I don’t see things any clearer/ We’re closer now but still a long way off/I need you to know you don’t have to go it alone/Sometimes you can’t make it on your own. And then it goes into this middle eight which is amazing. I scream and it goes: Sing, you’re the reason I sing/ You’re the reason the opera is in me/Still I need you to know a house don’t make a home/Don’t leave me here alone / Sometimes you can’t make it on your own. So it turns around at the end. It’s a sort of simple song, but it’s, I hope, the last song I will be writing about him.

  So what did your father really see in your work, do you think?

  I’ll tell you what I think. The spiritual journey was interesting to him. Because he wasn’t a believer; he didn’t believe in God towards the end. He was a Catholic, but he lost his faith along the way.

  Was there a specific event that led him to lose his faith?

  I don’t know what it was. I think the Church wore him down, all the scandals, and all that stuff. I would give him a Bible, or I would offer up, if he was interested, any kind of insights I might have had to some of the Gospels, or the way they were written, or the context of a particular passage. But finally he didn’
t buy into it. Yet he seemed to think this was the most important thing I had to offer. In fact, it was what he liked best about the band: our faith. He didn’t understand some of the work of the nineties, because he felt it was irreligious.

  Some of your fans had a hard time with the records you made in the nineties as well.

  That’s right. They didn’t see it. On Pop, I thought it was a tough relationship with God that was described there: Looking for to save my, save my soul/Looking in the places where no flowers grow/Looking for to fill that God-shaped hole. That’s quite an interesting lyric, because that’s the real blues—that comes from Robert Johnson, it happens through the machine age, through this techno din, but there it is: the same yearning. But he didn’t see it. A lot of people didn’t see it, because they wanted to feel it, not think it. That’s the difference. That was a thing that he seemed to think was important. My father used to say to me: “Have you lost your way?” I said: “Who’s asking? What about you? You didn’t have a way to lose!” We used to go down to the pub on Sundays and we would drink together. We drank whiskey, Irish whiskey, of course. Occasionally, he would ask a real question, meaning I had to give him a real answer. It was always about my belief in God: “There’s one thing I envy of you. I don’t envy anything else,” he said to me one time. But think about it: I was singing, doing all the things he would have loved to have done, had a creative life. He said: “You do seem to have a relationship with God.” And I said: “Didn’t you ever have one?” He said: “No.” And I said: “But you have been a Catholic for most of your life.”—“Yeah, lots of people are Catholic. It was a one-way conversation . . . You seem to hear something back from the silence!” I said: “That’s true, I do.” And he said: “How do you feel it?” I said: “I hear it in some sort of instinctive way, I feel a response to a prayer, or I feel led in a direction. Or if I’m studying the Scriptures, they become alive in an odd way, and they make sense to the moment I’m in, they’re no longer a historical document.” He was mind-blown by this.