Bono: An Unlikely Hero

The synergy of celebrity and passion are there, but is it enough for this unassuming Irishman to make a real difference? asks Nathan Brown.

Earlier this year, the European edition of Time magazine conducted a poll, asking readers to nominate the person they saw as their greatest living hero. Nominations included politicians, religious leaders, entertainers, activists and sports stars. However, more than one-in-three people voted for a rock musician by the name of Bono.

Of late, such recognition is becoming more common, with Bono collecting a string of humanitarian awards for work well outside his profession. There are even rumours of the possibility of a Nobel Peace Prize. For the energetic and earnest front man, it has been an incredible 25-year journey.

behind “Bono”
Bono was born Paul Hewson, of a Catholic father and Protestant mother, in an Ireland deeply divided along religious lines at the time. His was as ordinary a family as any in Dublin, with his father a postal worker. However, when he was 14, Bono’s mother collapsed suddenly and died four days later. With the disintegration of his family, Bono was a young person adrift.

Without any obvious musical talent, Bono responded to a note pinned on a noticeboard in his Mount Temple High School seeking people interested in forming a band. There was an almost instant energy and friendship between the five who responded to the advertisement and the band Feedback began to make music—badly. Around this time, Bono adopted the name “Bono Vox,” which he adapted from an ad for a local hearing-aid manufacturer. In 1978, the band—now with four members, including Bono, guitarist David Evans (“The Edge”), bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr—entered a Dublin talent contest as “The Hype” and won.
Although still in high school, it was the first break for the emerging band, who soon after changed their name to U2.

But another significant event occurred in 1978: Bono met Alison Stewart, who he pursued with determination and married in 1982. They celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in 2002, and now have four children. Bono’s family remains an important but largely private part of his life, art and strength.

biggest band in the world!
As any fan will tell you, U2 is something special. Bono cites the collective personality as a significant component of their success. “With U2, our ambitions were always way out of kilter with our talent,” he comments. “We had a kind of chemistry between us that was much more interesting than the music we first made. I’d like to think that it has caught up.”

For more than 20 years, they’ve been the biggest band in the world. They’ve sold more than 100 million albums, with nine studio recordings and a number of live albums, “Best of . . .” compilations and other projects. Their most recent release—All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000)—sold more than five million copies in its first few weeks after release, and went to number one in 32 countries.

Despite the band members having all turned 40, they continue to create music with both contemporary credibility and an intriguing spiritual consciousness.

“The idea that there’s a force of love and logic behind the universe is overwhelming to start with,” Bono reflects. “But the idea that that same love and logic would choose to describe itself as a baby [Christ] born in [muck] and straw and poverty is genius, and brings me to my knees, literally. To me, as a poet, I’m just in awe of that. It makes some sort of poetic sense. It’s the thing that makes me a believer, though it didn’t dawn on me for many years.”

According to Steve Stockman, this may well be the secret of their success and musical longevity. “The God-dimension to U2 maybe the reason why these guys stand unique in their chosen, or thrust-upon-them-like-a-gift-from-above, vocation,” he writes in Walk On, a book documenting rock history, analysing “the spiritual journey of U2.”

With a distrust of formal religion and born out of the religious violence of their native Ireland, U2’s spiritual journey has had its ups and downs. But, according to Stockman, the Christianity of Bono, The Edge and Larry has been the guiding focus of the band from its earliest days: “On the first listen to U2 albums, people are always concerned that they have lost their faith, and then as they listen and allow the songs to play around in their minds and heart and soul, they wish they were as Christian as U2.”

Yet it is a faith that has—at times—looked somewhat unconventional. “I’m not a very good advertisement for God,” Bono muses. “I generally don’t wear that badge on my lapel. But it certainly is written on the inside, somewhere.”

a cause
However, the band’s faith has often found expression in more practical ways. Throughout their career, U2—and Bono in particular—have lent their weight to many worthwhile causes. They have been long-time supporters of organisations such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace, using their concerts, albums and celebrity status to raise awareness and funds for charity and human rights work around the world.

One of the earliest examples of this interest was their involvement in the Live Aid fund-raising concerts. After Live-Aid in 1985, Bono and his wife went and worked in an orphanage in Ethiopia for six weeks. It was a life-changing experience. “You wake up in the morning and the mist would be lifting,” he recalls.

“You’d walk out of your tent and you’d count bodies of dead or abandoned children. Or worse, the father of a child would walk up to you and try to give you his living child and say, ‘You take it, because if this is your child, it won’t die.’”
It was the beginning of a mission that may well become more important and more enduring than Bono’s music.

In the late 1990s, Bono became involved with the campaign to cancel the foreign debt of developing countries in the lead-up to 2000. His mission took him to visit some of the poorest people on earth and to meetings with the richest and most powerful. Bono initially thought his celebrity status would be sufficient to sway the powerful to help the poorest, but he was mistaken and he realised his need to be able to communicate with these politicians and power brokers in the language they understood. He studied the intricacies and terminology of global economics, eventually gaining acceptance as a credible voice, even by conservative politicians often unfavourable to his cause.

“I’ve always tried to appeal to people’s convictions that they may have had once and lost,” Bono says. “A lot of these people have come into public service for good reasons, and maybe they’ve lost some of their fire. I think you can rekindle that.”

an unlikely heroism
Bono isn’t one to take himself too seriously: “There’s nothing worse than a rock star with a cause,” he comments with good humour. “But celebrity is currency, and we want to spend it this way. It’s preposterous and absurd that you have to listen to it from us. But that’s how the news media works.”

Absurd as it may be, Bono’s activism has earned respect in high places. “I have great admiration for Bono, both personally, and for his dedication to campaigning to end the crushing burden of Third World debt,” says UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. “He has made a real difference to the lives of the world’s poor.”

Fellow campaigner and Christian musician Michael W Smith is optimistic Bono’s work for the people of Africa will make a difference: “He’s been preaching this for a long time, but to know that we might actually be able to pull this thing off does wonders for his soul and for his heart. I think he would probably love to have that as his legacy, rather than being one of the biggest rock stars of all time.”

Sources: www.u2.com, www.datadata.org, Time, New York Times, Christianity Today, NME; Walk On (Steve Stockman), Bono: The Biography (Laura Jackson), Burning Desire: The Complete U2 Story (Sam Goodman).

the DATA project

The fight for the cancellation of Third World debt continues. To Bono and his fellow campaigners, it is an issue more pressing than sending more aid. While the countries of Africa receive $US12.7 billion in aid, they spend $US14.5 billion annually simply repaying debt owed to the Western world. And Bono is strident in his categorisation of this campaign. “Never argue it as a charity issue,” he demands. “Argue it as a justice issue. That’s really important.”

As he became more involved in this issue, Bono also recognised the related issues of AIDS and restrictions on trade and the impact caused by the combination of these three factors on many African countries.

But still more urgent is the AIDS disaster. An estimated 28 million Africans are HIV-positive. According to the UN, 2.3 million people died of AIDS in the past year, which translates to more than 6500 people every day. Many of these people could be helped with drug treatments in common use in Western countries.

As Bono summarises the situation, “People are dying for the stupidest of reasons: money. Two and a half million Africans are going to die next year because they can’t get a hold of drugs that we take for granted. That’s not a cause. That’s an emergency.”

According to Bono, the challenge is simple. “This generation will be remembered for three things,” he maintains. “The Internet, the war on terror, and how we let an entire continent go up in flames while we stood around with watering cans. Or not!”

Together with other celebrities—most notably Bill Gates—Bono has established a humanitarian organisation to further this campaign: DATA—Debt, AIDS and Trade in Africa. Perhaps uniquely among such groups, DATA are not soliciting donations. “We’re not asking for money here,” Bono explains. “We feel we’ve already given the money.” Instead the focus is on raising public awareness and pressuring governments and other economic institutions to devote the necessary resources to this crisis.

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