Once again, Bono found a way to bring up the subject of Africa as he was answering my third question. But I guess I found a deft way too to maneuver that devil.
I think I’m going to address the businessperson today.
Sure. Have you seen the Wall Street Journal piece this week?
Yes, I’ll be getting to that. But I was wondering how I should address you now that you are a co-chairman of that board: “Mister President,” maybe? That reminds me of a silly yet funny story that my father used to tell me. He was raised in Milan. You’re aware that Italians love grand-sounding titles, to such a degree that calling someone “Sir”—“Signore”—may be close to insulting him. There is a man crossing some street in Milan, quite absentmindedly, and a car is just ten seconds away from hitting him. Someone is desperately trying to call for his attention: “Attenzione, dottore!” No reaction. Then he calls out louder: “Avvocato, attenzione!” Still no reaction. Then, he goes at the top of his voice, wringing his hands: “Commendatore! Attenzione!” But the man wouldn’t turn round. And nobody in that street dares to say Signore! So bang, the car crashes into the unfortunate man, and he’s lying dead on the road, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers with their mouths wide open. So after I read about this Wall Street Journal thing, I was thinking: Now, how shall I address Bono in his new capacity? I mean, it might be dangerous for you if people dare not address you as Bono anymore. How about: “You dirty capitalist pig”? Will that do the trick? [Bono laughs heartily]
Guilty, your honor! Yeah, that’s a high compliment, pretty good for me. Pigs are useful. They’re the cleanest animal in the farmyard, and they bring home the bacon.
I’d like to get into the details of your glorious life as a pig. Did you really want to be that pig in the first place? In U2, are you the born businessman of the group?
Well, the first time we went to get a record deal, I went as the band’s manager [laughs], which was interesting, because Paul [McGuinness] had, rather wisely perhaps, said: “You’re not ready for a record deal.” He didn’t want to go around the record labels until we had better songs. But I thought our songs had something. So I went to London with Ali. We were eighteen and seventeen years old in 1978. I’d never been before. It was a very special trip for us. We stayed in a guesthouse. I brought the demo tape around to record companies, and then to the NME, Sounds, and The Record Mirror. So I remember I would drop in with the tape, I’d give it to a journalist I had read and wanted to meet, and ask them to listen. Usually they would say: “Look, if I like it, I’ll give you a call back.” And I would interrupt:
“Well, then I’ll call you in an hour.” [laughs] And they were going: “What?”
It’s true. That’s the way it happened, in those days. You’d push the door open into the editorial office of a rock mag. It wasn’t guarded, or anything, and you’d propose your stuff, be it a tape or an article.
They were all so very kind to me, those writers. After hawking the music around, two record companies were interested in offering us a deal. Now this was before we’d had a management contract with Paul. So he got a bit of a fright when I came home. We had two record companies wanting to make a deal, and he wasn’t even signed up as a manager. He quickly signed us up. Look, we never did close those deals. But the point is I always felt that with the gift comes the urge to bodyguard it. I never bought into the cliché “I’m the artist. Keep me away from the filthy lucre and the tawdry music-business world.” It’s just complete horseshit. It’s horseshit! It’s been going on for years. I just want to say: “Stop that!” Because I know I’ve grown up with a lot of these bands. Some of them are the most awful, selfish, darkest individuals you could find. And some of the people in the record company who go home to their wives at night might be people you’d rather go on vacation with. I know some incredibly inspired business people, and ethical, and I know some real assholes with a golden voice. So I just don’t have that picture of the world.
So what was the first important business decision that you made?
Within our band, we started a kind of cooperative where we published everything equally amongst us. That quickly got all those arguments that normally happen in bands about whose song is going on the album and whose song isn’t. This was at the behest of Paul, and established a pattern of extraordinarily smart advice over the years. It was Paul who felt that it would be a great thing if we could keep ownership of our songs and our copyrights, and even our master tapes. So at one point, I think it was, like, 1985, we renegotiated our deal with Island Records, took lower royalties, but at the end of the day, meaning after the contracts concluded, as I think I already told you, all the master tapes and the copyright would return to us. Another thing I will be forever grateful to Chris Blackwell for.
So very soon, U2 was tainted by the filthy lucre and the tawdry music-business world.
U2 were never dumb in business. We just had a strong sense of survival in us. We essentially became our own record company, living in Dublin, not in London, or New York, or Los Angeles. We don’t sit around wondering about world peace all day long. We’re not sitting around like a bunch of hippies. We’re from punk rock, and we’re on top of it. I wish we were more on top of it, but that’s an important part of that story. I’ve just been out, speaking to various people in business. They are completely bewildered when I tell them my story. I mean, they have no idea. They think that the record company came up with the name U2! Or they think that our manager was the person who planned our pathway to success. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Paul McGuinness mentored us in principles that proved to be the best there were, and the record company helped us in our journey. But we are very much in charge of our own destiny, and have been always. I think that’s really important.
I remember you described yourself as a “traveling salesman.” [Bono laughs] I mean, many artists would rather hide their business-savvy side.
Yeah. No! Particularly, I’ve had an epiphany in recent years about commerce, for my work in Africa. It has upended everything for me. You start to see that Africans are looking for a commercial way out. One of Africa’s big problems is trying to foster an entrepreneurial culture. And so you start to see that they get the thin end of the capitalist wedge. But there is a wide end. Globalization has become a pejorative term, but it’s meaningless. Globalization is like saying communication. Globalization has happened formally since deregulating international flow of money, going back to the eighties. But before that, you could say that globalization started with the sail and trade. And it turns out that the sail has done more good . . .
. . .than evil . . .
. . . than evil. Africa needs more globalization now than less. I think it’s really funny. “Globalization! What’s it doing to Africa?” And Africans are saying: “What do you mean? We can’t get any!” What critics mean is the abuse of globalization.
I think that you’re dodging the topic.
What I’m saying is: I’ve started to set up a few companies. I started to see commerce—conscious commerce—as the way forward for Africa. As an example, I’ve set up a company with my wife and the designer Rogun, called Edun. It’s a clothing line. We’re launching this in the spring of this year [2005]. We’ve invested a lot of time, energy, and capital in it. It’s an amazing thing. I want it to work as a business, I want it to make profit, but I also want it to contribute something to all the people in the chain. We have this concept of “four respects” at the heart of our company: One, respect for where the clothes are made. We want them eventually to be all made in Africa, but certainly the developing world. Two, respect for who makes them. Three, respect for the materials that they are made of. We’re trying to use organic cotton when we can. Four, respect for the people who are going to buy them—the consumer. We want to do business with Africa, because that’s what they want. I want to facilitate that. And I want to say: you can make profit without ripping people off, consumer or manufacturer. We want our clothes to tell their story, and the sto
ry to be a great one. Because when you buy a pair of jeans, the story of those jeans, where the cotton was grown, who grew it, how the sewers in the factory were treated, those stories are all woven into your jeans, like it or not. If there is a happy beginning, middle, and end, I mean if everyone in the process was treated fairly, well, then [laughs] when you put on those clothes, you’re going to feel better about them and yourself. There’s going to be some good Karma. But not if they were made by children. Ali said to me: “I want to buy children’s clothes that aren’t made by children.” So I am getting very excited by these ideas of commerce now.
Is Edun anything like your other company, Nude?
“Edun” is “Nude” in reverse. Nude, my brother and I started as a good-for-you fast-food chain. At the moment, it’s turning into a line of body-conscious products that will be made, like chocolate and coffee, in Africa, and makeup products from India. It’s just exciting, creating a product range, where again, the story of the products, and how they got there, is something you want to buy into as well as the product itself.
But, Bono, you are a performer in a band. That’s your first job. You’ve turned into a part-time humanitarian crusader. And now you’re on the verge of becoming an almost full-time businessman. Aren’t you afraid that this is all going to carry you farther away from the U2 mystique? Or, to quote a word that you used in Bologna, from the “sexiness” of being in a rock band?
But it’s never gonna be. I do all my business one day a week. And if I can’t do it in one day, I don’t want to do it. That’s it. I’m doing this with my wife. So Ali does this. And the same with the Elevation Partners fund. I told them I’ve got one day a week for this.
Sorry for the cliché, but it’s not very rock ’n’ roll, is it?
I think there’s a lot of baggage carried over from the sixties, that says a musician shouldn’t be a businessman, because—hey, man!—you’re supposed to be out there, man, just smoking the weed, putting your toes in the river, surrounded by a bunch of beautiful girls combing your hair as you watch the sun come up.
Don’t tell me that stuff never happened to you.
I have to say it sounds better and better now that I think about it . . .
[laughs]
You’re describing that with lots of gusto.
I did a lot of things when the sun came up in the mid-nineties. I can’t think of anything better right now than having my hair washed. I loved the sixties. It was the renaissance of pop. But these are different times demanding different strategies. Look at hip-hop culture, those old biases against commerce just don’t apply. It’s sexy that Jay-Z has his clothing line, or Sean “P. Diddy” Combs. People like it. People want to see an entrepreneurial spirit. They don’t want their stars to be out of it.
It seems like there’s a kind of unconscious apartheid in music. On one side, you have urban black music, which tackles materialistic concerns head-on, and on the other, white music, which is not supposed to address money and business.
That’s right. There are unwritten rules about what a rock band can do. And the rules, I am breaking them. We started dismantling them from Zoo TV, right away on. We want to take some of the good ideas of the sixties, but hopefully, we’re gonna leave out some of the less rigorous ones. We’re just saying: “No, not taking it.” What’s wrong with wanting to play arenas instead of clubs? What’s wrong with selling records? What’s wrong with wanting to make music that communicates on a grand scale? What’s wrong with writing operas? Operas were popular . . . At the time, they were looked down upon by serious musicians. The scene of the time was: “This is just a piece of fun. Let’s not take it seriously. This is not real music.” So we’ve thrown out a lot of these ideas. They’re antiquated. We can move into business, and let’s bring our idealism into whatever piece of the world we happen to be standing in.
I’m still trying to see how it was born and fostered in your mind. Can you think of fellow musicians who did great things with their money?
Well, there are very few examples in music, that’s my point. But one of the people who’s had the most impact on my life is Bob Geldof. Firstly, just through Live Aid, I ended up in Africa. I have followed on his coattails through that journey. He encouraged me, being there for me all the way. But he also gave me confidence to be . . . who I am. You don’t have to be a politician to hang out with them. You don’t have to wear a suit to be a businessman. You can be yourself at all times. And you can be as bohemian as you want to be. It’s about the quality of ideas. That’s really what Bob’s all about. Bob’s great hero is Samuel Pepys, a seventeenth-century English naval administrator and businessman.* In the end, it’s ideas that turn us on, whether they are philosophical, commercial, or political. What I would call them is melodies. I think we talked about this. I need to hear a great melody even if it’s not in a song.
Lots of people come up with brilliant ideas. But life teaches you that most of the time many obstacles prevent those ideas from turning into
realities. I mean, we discussed the discrepancies between great ideas and not so great realities in Africa. Sometimes you can’t find your way around an obstacle.
Yeah, I do have a blind spot. I mean, I have a few blind spots. [laughs] But one of them is: I don’t sometimes see obstacles.
Sure, but you must bump into them at some point.
Yeah, I’ve had a few black eyes. I mean, I know I have to climb them all the time. But it’s usually been very fortunate for me. If I’d seen the obstacles, I might have just left the idea lie. But fortunately, U2 has usually been able to overcome those obstacles by finding brilliant people. We always knew that if we didn’t know, we’d find somebody who did. And so, in U2, we’ve surrounded ourselves with the best people in business. Lawyers and accountants, and record company, and people who run our companies are the best at their job, and I think that makes overcoming the obstacles a lot easier. Look, we’re gonna find out. I mean, this clothing line, Edun, this is a whole new way of doing business. I’m told that the rag trade makes the music business look like a church fête. [laughs] And the sharks will circle, and I’m about to become shark soup. So we’ll see. But I’ve found some people in the business at the top end who are guiding myself and Ali. I think that they’ll help us negotiate these dangerous waters.
Speaking of sharks, have you ever gotten bitten in your career as a businessman? And did it leave a scar?
Yeah, we’ve made mistakes in our business.
What was the biggest one?
We made a lot of money from the sale of Island Records, because we owned a piece of it. And we put it in the hands of some people whom we liked personally, but weren’t as expert as they thought in the areas that they were investing in. And we lost a lot of money.
What sort of business did they handle?
It was a portfolio of investments. There were some great ones, and some, they just were really not great ideas, and we gave them a lot of money. As this one particular ship started to sink, rather than us jumping out, the man in charge of the fund kept spending more of our money to keep it afloat. I know it’s with hindsight, but I think anyone would have known that the ship, actually, when we bought it, had a hole in it. [bursts out laughing] So we learnt a lot. I don’t want to be too flip here. Losing money was not a nice feeling, and you’ve got to be careful because nothing begins the love of money more than the loss of money. But on the positive side it made us take more charge and interest in our business. This was, I guess, very early nineties. We had to take our financial matters very seriously, which means, when you’re involved with dealing this kind of money, you do need to take extra care not just that the cash can warp the people around you, but that it can get to you too. [laughs] Because money is a big thing, especially if you don’t have it. You have to give it respect, but you don’t want to give it too much of your love. So it means we have to sit the band in rooms, when we’d rather be making music, going through boring shit. But if you do it right, it means you only have to
do that once a month, or, in my case, once a week.
But does plotting business strategy give you a thrill, the way it would to a chess player figuring out a couple of moves in advance?
Perhaps in some sort of odd way. I do love watching people work together, and build something together. When we’re making music, I’d say it’s like making a chair. Björk used to say that to me [impersonates accent]: “I’m a ploom-errrr . . . and we make ploo-ming.” [laughs] The idea that artists are different from everybody else is a dangerous idea, an arrogant one.
I also feel like you’re a manipulator sometimes. There’s a part of you that might be called . . . I don’t know, “perverse” might be going a little too far . . .
[interrupting] No, not a lot. [laughs]
But it’s something that I find really funny about you. Lots of people perceive you as very candid, full of Irish exaltation . . .
Irish whiskey, more like.
Probably. But, I feel, at the same time, you’re a gambler, or a chess player . . .
I really don’t feel like a gambler. And the reason I like the game of chess is because each move has countless repercussions, but you’re in charge of them. And it’s your ability to see into the future and the effects of the decisions you’ve made that makes you either a good or not a good chess player. It’s not luck. By the way, I’m no longer a good chess player, as it happens. But I think . . . gambling, you don’t know what’s going to happen. And I never want to be in that situation. I think in business, you have to rule out as much accident as possible.
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