Is that better than celebrity?
I mean, there are so many Bono obsessives out there.
Mmh . . .hmm . . .
Isn’t there a secret part of you that wonders: “Sure, I’m proud of what U2 and I have achieved. But what the hell do they see in me?” or “No, they got it all wrong. I never wanted to be a cult figure”?
I understand the mechanism . . . They say the worst fans, the most obsessive fans of magic . . . are magicians. They know they put the rabbit in the hat earlier but are still amazed when they pull it out later. [laughs] I have no illusions at all about myself as to why people care about me. I know why they care about me. I’m in a great band that has stuck together. I’m being open and vulnerable in my music, and I’ve gotten away with it. End of story. That explains it all, OK? So I swear to God I do not even consider it. These days, I sometimes forget that I’m in a band. That’s the strangest thing. I’ve gotten used to the extra leg. I don’t see it anymore. Actually, I’ve got to the stage now where I’m almost a civilian again.
So you’re saying that whether you’re a cult figure or not, it’s all the same to you.
Somebody said: “Do not judge your fans by the people you meet.” I think it was me. [laughs] I don’t know, because it’s not true in my case, because U2 fans are kind of easygoing. Generally we have very good relationships with our fans, but sometimes they go too far. I know the fringe people who deny you your privacy and are sort of rooting through your dustbins—and we had somebody taking our dustbins just recently—are not our audience. I do not judge our audience by them.
Bob Dylan had a guy called A. J. Weberman, who hailed himself as a “Dylanologist.” He actually went through his dustbin once. May I reassure you? I’m not ready to screw a plaque reading “Bonologist” on my wall yet.
When I went to Los Angeles the first time, in 1980, I wanted to go to the house of Bob Dylan and Brian Wilson. Did I tell you that? The first thing I wanted to do. These two people’s music touched my life. I could not give them back what they gave me. I wanted to pay homage, to just go and say thanks. Then, of course, I caught myself and thought: “Maybe they don’t want me to say thanks.” And I stopped. So I have tolerance. When people arrive at my house, I explain to them: “I can’t talk to you now, because, if I do, I will be divorced.” The Italians go: “It’s Mamma!” And I say: “Yeah, that’s exactly right.” [articulating in kind of baby talk, putting on an Italian accent] Mamma will kill Bono! [laughs] It’s not like I look at them and go [imitates heavy sigh of exasperation]. I’m not fuming like some sulking movie star, you know.
And what’s your reaction to sycophants?
Sycophants? I’d like some. Thank you, please! [laughs] I am in a band. All my life, I’m surrounded by arguments. All my friends I’ve grown up with are brutally truthful. Sycophants? Where are they? Do I meet them? Of course. But not in my life as a general rule.
So what do you do?
When I meet them?
Yeah.
Yawn. [laughs] I mean, you will notice this. It hasn’t happened here because you keep me on my toes, but I have a very low concentration span. If it’s not the case, I go to sleep, because I usually haven’t slept very much. So I’m not likely to spend much time with people where there is not an equal relationship.
[looking at list] Err, this is a good one. An early nineteenth-century French woman writer, Mme. de Staël, said: “Fame is the shining bereavement of happiness.” Would you agree?
[pause, then low voice] Oooh, wow! Myself and Simon [his friend the screenwriter Simon Carmody], we’ve spent two hours on such semantics last night. You should talk with him. There’s a line in a song called “Mercy” that we left off this album: “Happiness is for those who don’t really need it.” So I can live without happiness. If that’s the price of fame, good riddance! Joy, on the other hand, is not up for sale. And my joy comes from a completely different place. But you’re not wrong, Michka. Somewhere there does seem a deal with the devil, concerning celebrity.
Which is?
Which is: you can have the seat at the table, but you can’t leave with your sense of humor. [laughs] And I’m not running with it. I’m just not. In U2, it was our sense of humor that’s negotiated our way through this whole jamboree. We nearly lost it in the eighties.
Really?
Yeah. We thought too much about it.
About what, exactly?
Fame, that is. What it was to be stared at, what it was to be photographed, what it was to be muttered about in a restaurant. We thought a lot about it.
And what did these thoughts bring you to?
Self-consciousness. These thoughts can bend you out of shape. You walk differently. You carry yourself differently. Ask any photographer. Ask Anton [Corbijn]. You see, a photographer understands that a face once beautiful can become ugly because of self-consciousness. The great gifts of models are not that they’re more beautiful than the next person, it’s that they’re able to be photographed and not be self-conscious. And so the distorting lens that is fame makes people ugly and self-conscious. The lips drain of blood, the face is suddenly harrowed. The photograph is being taken, but the reason why you wanted to take the photograph has gone. In the eighties, I was that. I thought about it too much.
I would see you occasionally in the early eighties. I didn’t think you were then the person that you are describing.
I wasn’t like that with you, because I felt a kindred spirit, I felt relaxed, there were things we had in common. But I would feel, when I was going out, that I didn’t want to let people down who looked up to me. I was trying to live up to their expectations. [puts on angry, self-righteous voice] “I’m not a rock star, I’m a real person!” Now, I just go: “I’m a fucking rock star. Get over it.” [laughs] It took me a long time, but I eventually got there. If rock ’n’ roll means anything: it’s liberation, it’s freedom.
You weren’t feeling that freedom in the eighties.
The eighties were a prison of self-consciousness. “Oh, my Lord, I’m making money!” [caricaturing cry of terror, then adopting voice of a person followed by a vampire in a horror film] “Oh, I must be selling out. But hold on a second, I haven’t screwed anyone over today. Oh, I must have!” [laughs] Now, I don’t feel I have to prove myself to anyone. It’s like: Are your songs any good? Is your band any good? That’s it, mate. I can’t live up to the songs. These songs are better than me. Don’t fence me in as a good person, because I’m going to let you down. Hey, I’m complex, I’m an artist! I can be a jerk. I’m over it. Now I’m very happy to let people down. Now, if somebody sees me crawling out of a nightclub on all fours, they can’t go [caricaturing cry of a shocked person]: “But YOU said!!!”—“WHAT did I say? I want you to take your fucking flashbulb out of my face, pal. [putting on drunken voice] And by the way, this is a friend of my wife.” [laughs] Now I’m over it. Our family doesn’t live by the media. We don’t read those newspapers. Occasionally, they get under our door. Everyone’s got to get their teeth filled, you know.
So how did you get your sense of humor back? What happened?
Interestingly enough, in terms of this discussion that you started out, it began in 1986, when I made up the ground I had lost in my relationship with my friends Guggi and Gavin, and we started to paint together. We used to go out on Thursday nights, painting and playacting. I found the beginnings of freedom there, that later kicked in.
Funny. You make celebrity sound like a disease you had to recover from.
The people who really revere the cult of celebrity are the ones who spend all their energy trying to avoid it. People who . . . [suspends sentence, caricaturing sigh of someone who’s tired of it all]. Somebody told me of this character, I won’t tell you who he is. He once was a completely regarded and respected figure in music. It’s twenty years later. He still leaves his house [imitates gaze of a Cold War spy in a Hitchcock film] and shuffles into the taxi, lest the fans spot him. No one’s there, no one’s interested! Look, no one is a star by
accident. To reach that place and cry foul is churlish. The ones that hide do that so they can be discovered. They give it too much energy.
Who or what helped you chill out?
Chrissie Hynde was a real gift to me at a time when I was thinking about it too much. She had humor and attitude: grace for the right people, and abuse for the ones who put her on too high a pedestal. Here’s a mad tangent for you, Michka. I heard a story about a church, and in the congregation, there are demons, devils. The preacher keeps trying to cast out devils, but he keeps being thrown on the ground. They keep making a fool of him. So they bring on another priest. He speaks to the congregation: “You must rid your life of these devils. Who is it here?” He calls them out. They knock him down. They run amok, the organ starts playing, and all the ladies end up with their dresses over their heads. Eventually, after three or four or five exorcists, the Big Cahuna arrives. And he speaks to the devil. He says: “In the name of Jesus, I command you to identify yourself.” And they all identify themselves. They’re afraid. He goes: “Why are you terrorizing this place?” And the answer comes back [putting on shy voice], “Because we get so much attention.” [laughs] You know what I’m getting at? The people who run away from stardom, like me in the eighties, must be the ones who are thinking too much about it. Who do the paparazzi chase? The ones who avoid them or punch them.
Were there moments when fame made your friendships more difficult?
In the very early eighties—’82, ’83.
Did you ever regain them?
Yeah, I had to go after them. I don’t let go of people very easily. I still have all the people I love in my life—and some of the people I don’t. [laughs] I’m very stubborn about people.
Do you ever wake up and forget completely about being Bono and in U2?
It’s true. Most mornings, now, I really don’t think about being in a band. I think about being a father, I think about being a husband, I think about being a friend.
But what else do you think about when you open your eyes in the morning and you’re still lying in your bed?
Err . . . I do think about what I have, not usually in the mornings, but in the night. I do take time out to thank God. I think to myself sometimes: “What if this was gone?” I’m working as a journalist—I have a smaller house. Nothing else would have changed, because the people who are sleeping in the house or in the garden from the night before would be the same people. The newer ones, because I have developed several new friends over the years, maybe we would not have met up. But should my world change shape, all of the ones that I hold close would still be there. So I do think about it, occasionally, because it’s an incredible lifestyle, not to have to worry about the things most people have to worry about, but usually in the nights. In the mornings, I’m just thinking about how I’m going to fit my life into the day, which is tricky.
Do you have what they call recurring dreams? I have one. I’m always passing an exam, and I’m failing.
Wow! Do you understand what it’s about?
I think there is a word: illegitimacy. It’s like I bluffed my way into my life.
Very good. You feel a fraud . . .
Yeah. A usurper.
I have a recurring dream. I’ve had it for all my life. It concerns two houses. One of them is boarded up, and one of them is not. They’re both on the water. Not unlike these two houses in France. I’ve had this dream years and years before Edge and I bought this place. And oddly, for the first ten years, this house we’re sitting outside now was boarded up, and that house over there was not. And we lived there. They didn’t look like this in the dream, but they must have something to do with this place.
It’s amazing. And what do you make of it?
I have no idea, because when we bought them, they were both boarded up. But then very quickly one wasn’t.
So it’s a premonition.
But they didn’t look like this. They would change locations. I could even draw them. But it’s the same concept. And I’ve had the dream recently.
Do you have a clue?
No. One is a ruin and one is a nice house.
Hard to divine that one. The forked stick doesn’t seem to be going in any direction. [laughs] But I guess the interesting thing is that we’re actually here.
This place has brought me the closest to . . . feeling free. When it was even just two ruins and we were kind of camping here, it really did teach me a way to live that I didn’t know before. How do you call it in French? Savoir-vivre?
Savoir-vivre means how to behave, being polite and civilized.
OK, no. That is the opposite. [laughs]
But in a way, you’re right. In the broader sense, it means the art of directing one’s life. So maybe you mean you’ve learned to taste the good things in life and savor them in style.
This is more in an unstylish, uncivilized way; but certainly how to taste them. And I’ve learnt it here, listening to music with my friends. The big thaw happened for me here. The ice age came to an end in 1992.
You are a different person here.
Yeah.
You have so many different personas. The one I meet in Dublin, the one who speaks on the phone, who’s much looser.
On the phone? Much more. On the phone, it’s about as intimate as it can get. The person’s right in your ear. You got to be careful on the phone. You can leave yourself wide open.
There are a few other Bonos: the one who writes in the morning, the one who performs in front of crowds.
[low voice] Hmm . . . hmm . . .
The one who addresses U.S. congressmen, and of course the one who now sits on the board of Elevation Partners.
Hmm . . . hmm . . .
Of course the same person shelters all those different roles. But don’t you ever feel like a comedian?
You mean a chameleon . . .
Well, both do the same job, don’t they? I think that maybe Bono is just a trademark, and no one actually knows the person behind it, starting with you.
[laughs up his sleeve] You’re a tough guy. [long pause] All art is an attempt to identify yourself. You try out many characters on the way to finding the one that most fits you, and therefore is you. I mean, all children do. In adolescence, you see them trying out different sides of their personality. So I’m just exploring and trying to find out what I’m capable of. What’s useful for me to contribute to my family, my friends, and . . . the world.
You mean you’re too busy doing things to understand who you really are.
I will say this: there’s a noise that you see on the surface, a kind of certain frenetic hyperactive person doing lots of things, with lots of interests and ideas that I’m chasing. But below that, really, at the very bottom of that, there is . . . peace. I feel, when I’m on my own, a peace that’s hard to describe, a peace that passes all understanding. Some people look really calm on the outside and serene, but deep down, they are cauldrons. They’re boiling with nervous energy. All my nervous energy’s on the outside. On the inside, there is a calm. If I’m left on my own, I’m not panicking to find those different people that you’ve described. Whoever that person is, that’s the closest to who I am.
But does that calm you’re describing get close to indifference sometimes?
No. It has a lot of concern for my friends. It’s a very warm feeling. And it’s where I go, actually. When things are really upside-down in my life, I do go there. And I’m always restored, and I’m always refreshed. That person is the closest, I suppose, I’m going to find, to who I am, what I’d like to be.
How do you find that person? Reading, praying?
Reading, praying, meditating. It might just be walking around. People often say to me: “How do you do all that stuff? You’re doing this, you’re doing that.” I guess that’s probably how. It doesn’t take me very long to go there. You can call it a Sabbath moment, if you want, because the Sabbath Day was a day of rest. Human beings are not just what they do, but who they are. A lot of my life is about what I
’m doing.
Perhaps you don’t have much time to be who you really are.
That’s why I really do need that seventh day. But I don’t necessarily have that Sabbath on the seventh day or on a Sunday, or on a Saturday, or whatever. I just take it in moments. In those moments, I’m incredibly still, and I’m incredibly myself. [laughs] I can’t describe it, but I don’t seem to need to describe it when I’m in that moment. Negotiating a route through the world can be difficult for me. But when you take the world out of the picture and you just leave me on my own, I don’t seem to feel the same need to prove myself. In the outside world, it might be as simple as: I don’t like losing. I don’t like wasting opportunities. There are so many! I get excited. I don’t even mind the obstacle course. It’s fun to run it, jumping, leaping as fast as I can. What’s that? Don’t wanna miss that. Can I help here? I can fix that. Gosh, I’ll take that. What does that taste like? Hmmmm! What is that? Oooh, that’s beautiful. What year is that? Thank you!
There are very few questions left. Who’d you give the first call to when you feel down? Or would you rather keep it to yourself?
I think it would be . . . my family . . .
You mean your wife?
“E. T. phone home!” [laughs]
And what do you fear the most inside yourself?
[long pause] Hmmm . . . Losing perspective . . .
Has that ever happened to you before?
I think.
How would you define losing perspective?
Well, the first signs are depression . . .
Have you ever gone through that?
Yes. It just means I’m losing perspective. I’m not seeing things in their proper shape.
Would it last for weeks? Months?
No. It might take a day out of my life, it might take a couple of days. [pause] It’s the only real lesson I remember from my mother, which is: you stood on a piece of glass, and you were complaining too much about the cut and the blood. And she would say: “I’ll take you up to Cappagh hospital—which was close by—and I’ll show you people who’ll never walk again.” So, in a very folksy way, perspective’s very important. I also think it’s one of the first casualties of stardom. You think that because you’re good at acting, at writing songs, at whatever, that you are a somehow more important person than somebody who, say, is a nurse, or a doctor or a fireman. This is simply not true. And in God’s order of things, people like me are . . . very spoiled. I still find it confounding that the world turns people like rock stars or movie stars, artists of any kind, into heroes.
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