Bono, as the frontman of the celebrated rock band U2 for almost 40 years, where do you think your music fits in in 2025?
We always saw ourselves as slipstream rather than mainstream. Even if you think about our biggest songs, they have very, very unusual constructions, so they’re not exactly mainstream. The problem now is trying to get into any stream! You know, there used to be a sea, there used to be rivers, now it's just an abundance of streams. The chord changes and the aggressive guitar and the drums we use, people who are attracted those sounds, they now find them, and they don't care what generation they came out of. So I do have hope that people will find U2 that way. I love when people hold on to a song, but these days, it’s unlikely U2 will get on the radio the way we used to.
Do you think part of that has to do with your social and political commitment? Has that kept you from the mainstream?
Oh, yeah, but that's okay. That's the job. You know, I've pushed the band and I've pushed our audience to the Atlantic limit but what I will say is: rock stars are good at posturing. And my posturing has been some of the most uncool posturing, you know, hanging out with George W Bush as he was about to invade Iraq? That was not a good look for me or our band, and it cost us. It was also not a good look for him with his audience, but together we were working on what turned out to be, at the time, one of the largest health interventions in the history of medicine to fight HIV AIDS. I spoke honestly about it off-stage, but I did not criticize him outright because he was about to save, as it turned out, 26 million lives to date.
“I realized that even when I was trying to change the world, that comes back to trying to impress my father...”
Have you been reflecting on your past a lot lately?
Well, I think at some point, if you're going to develop the necessary armor, the shield, the sword to get through becoming famous, you have a duty to eventually take it off. That’s what I had to do for my one-man stage show that I performed at the Beacon Theatre, and which has now become a documentary called Stories of Surrender. I realized that even when I was trying to change the world, that comes back to trying to impress my father. We like to think that we're charged by the books we read, whether they're sacred texts or political manifestos — and we are. But if you ask me, “Why are you a singer?” I have to answer that I'm filling this hole left by my mother abandoning me. Now I know that she didn’t abandon me, she just died, but when you're a kid, you don't read it like that.
Were there a lot of moments of self-discovery like that through the journey of making the documentary?
Well, I’ve realized that deep down, I'm a very shallow person. (Laughs) No, I mean, I think the heart is deceitful above all things. And I don't know who wrote that, but I do think the performer is particularly deceitful, and that's why as the credits roll, you have our song “The Showman” playing: The showman gives you front row to his heart / The showman prays his heartache will chart / Making a spectacle of falling apart / Is just the start of the show. And then the best line, I wish it was mine but I got it from Jimmy Iovine in a conversation. He said, “I got just enough low self esteem to get me where I want to go.” And I think that's what I discovered, is that it's an engine, that it's okay. Insecurity is your best security for a performer. And I think in working on something like this, you also start to realize that the biggest opponent you're going to meet in life will be your own hypocrisy.
What do you mean?
When I was 22 I wrote, “I can't change the world, but I can change the world in me,” and now, as an older person, I wrote, “Maybe I can change the world, but I cannot change the world in me.” And that's the humiliation of this writing! You realize, “Oh, God, you go through all of this, you get to 64 years old, and you're still overwhelmed by your own ego?”
Do you think this film will help audiences to see a different side of you, to understand your music differently?
That's the reason for doing it. Our songs have changed. They become new songs. We chose to feature them in the film, not just because they're well known, but because we needed to tell a particular part of the story. “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” “Where the Streets Have No Name,” we kind of uncovered other songs inside them. “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” I've sung that a lot. I've sung it a thousand times. And I don't know what happened in a moment where I performed it during one of my 2023 shows at the Beacon Theatre — and this will sound disrespectful to this most untouchable of singers — but I felt like Nina Simone. I felt her influence on “Sunday, Bloody Sunday.” (Laughs) Drink up! I felt like I was getting myself back, my person back, some of the songs came back. The intimacy of those performances felt more revealing.
“John Lennon was prepared to look ridiculous for peace, and I will follow his example.”
Was it challenging to do those kinds of intimate performances in your one-man stage show, after years spent performing in sold out stadiums?
Being a bit famous, invariably, you become more of a caricature. Fame likes caricatures! We like quickly drawn characters, superheroes. But I wanted some penciling in, some shade, to get my person back from my family, from friends, from the fans, even. I wanted to find a language where I could get to this conversation where art lives and music lives and longevity and relationships live — and then turn it all into a love song for my wife and maybe be let back in the house!
It’s also a project about hope and non-violence, right? It seems like we need that more than ever right now.
Well, the word surrender, it sounds preposterous in a moment when it seems like the planet is determined to set fire to itself. We're closer to world war than at any other time in my life and yet, here we are talking about non-violence. That white flag, it can look ridiculous. It looked ridiculous when we first lifted it during “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” when Ireland was close to civil war. But I knew then, perhaps instinctively and a bit naively, that non-violence was the way to go. We have to evolve past violence, that's my position, and I held it when I was 23 and I was laughed and mocked. That's okay. But as I say, John Lennon was prepared to look ridiculous for peace, and I will follow his example.