Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

by Bono

“Aren’t tenors supposed to stand with two legs apart, firmly rooted in the ground, before even considering a top C?” “Yes,” I say, without opening my mouth and before the drugs wear off. “A tenor has to turn his head into a sound box and his body into a bellows to make those glasses smash.” I, on the other hand, have been racing around arenas and sprinting through stadiums for thirty years singing “Pride (In the Name of Love),” the high A or B depending on the year.

In the 1980s the stylish English songster Robert Palmer stopped Adam Clayton to plead with him. “Will you ever get your singer to sing a few steps lower. He’ll make it easier on himself, and all of us who have to listen.”

Silence. Followed by another silence. Followed by “FUCK OFF!” There is something perfectly imperfect about my da’s exit from this world. I don’t believe he was telling me or the very vigilant night nurse to fuck off. I’d like to believe he was addressing the monkey that had been on his back for a large part of his life.

To be useful is a curious prayer. Unromantic. A little dull even, but it’s at the heart of who we are and why we’re still here as a band.

My father, Bob, from the inner city of Dublin, had taken her, and her sister Ruth, to the ballet, only to have her embarrass him with her muted howls of laughter at the protruding genitalia boxes worn by the male dancers under their leotards.

Gavin Friday, my mate from the top of Cedarwood, used to say, “Roman Catholicism is the glam rock of religion” with its candles and psychedelic colors—cardinal blues, scarlets, and purples—its smoke bombs of incense, and the ring of the little bell. The Prods were better at the bigger bells, because, as Gavin said, “They could afford them!”

My quality of work had improved when I’d first arrived at Mount Temple, and I’d done better in class than at St. Patrick’s, but when Iris died, I lost all concentration. Teachers lamented my scrawly handwriting when my father’s letters to them about me were such beautiful calligraphy. They asked why I hadn’t noticed leaving complete sections out of essays or why I could do higher maths but not lower. I wasn’t able to explain myself.

I stopped playing chess, not because I wasn’t loving it, but because I began to think of it as “uncool” and I had no mother to tell me that nothing cool was “cool.”

If the door is open it isn’t theft You cannot return to where you’ve never left Blossoms falling from a tree, they cover you and cover me Symbols clashing, bibles smashing You paint the world you need to see Sometimes fear is the only place we can call home Cedarwood Road.

Guggi not only gave me the name Bono; he gave everyone in his family new and surreal names. Like Clive Whistling Fellow, his older brother.

Bono was short for Bono Vox of O’Connell Street, but the boy Guggi was no Latin scholar. “Strong Voice” was an accidental translation. Bonavox was a hearing aid shop in Dublin. He just loved the noise the name made in his mouth. Gradually, Bono Vox of O’Connell Street got shortened to Bonmarie and then to Bono. Previously I had been Steinvich von Heischen, and I was grateful when that phase passed.

Doing my homework one day, in the little box room in Cedarwood Road, I looked out the window as Guck Pants went by on a unicycle. Playing the trumpet.

“Is Dik really in the band?” Larry wasn’t sure what to make of Dik. “I mean Dik is a nice guy and everything, but is Dik really in the band?” Eventually, it became clear that Dik was going to university and wouldn’t be able to rehearse with us, so the question was answered without Edge having to explain to his brother that Larry wasn’t sure Dik should be in the band. Shortly after Dik left, Larry sidled up and asked, “Is Edge really in the band?”

Iris wouldn’t notice the long train journey out to Howth, she said. It meant so much to bathe there and lie in the sun, on the odd occasion when it would lie with her.

“Do you remember youse used to get a lot of break-ins? Back in the early ’80s?” “Yes,” I answered, looking at Jon, his face suddenly a little paler. “What of it?” “It was just a few bob, tellies, a stereo, and I remember once a kettle. Oh yeah and a jeetar. Was it your jeetar?” “No, it was my brother’s.” “The leather jacket. Was that your brother’s?” “No, that was mine.” “Some reel-to-reel tapes, never listened, were they your songs?” “No.” My blood was starting to boil. I was doing the maths on the various outcomes of this conversation if the situation melted down, if I melted down. Then out of the blue a poetic thing emerged, something I’ve never understood but never forgotten. “You know, we never made a mess?” he asked, looking at me with dignity as well as defiance in his eyes. “You know, we never smashed up your da’s place, and on a point of fact on one occasion we made a cup o’ tea and we fuckin’ cleaned up. Washed and dried the fuckin’ cups.”

Finishing our bacon and eggs, we agreed with each other that Jesus was a kind of anarchist and the Holy Spirit “like a wind,” as the Bible had put it. “No one knows where it comes from or where it’s going.” I muse on how this must have been on Bob Dylan’s mind when he wrote, “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind.” Surely this was what Van Morrison was on about when he sang about sailing into the mystic? Ali tolerated this furtive thinking and listened when I explained that Van Morrison and Bob Dylan were the first singers to encourage me to believe in what you can’t see. We both got the idea that what you can’t see matters and that it matters to some people more than matter. (Or something like that.)

In Liverpool and heading straight to the hospital for treatment, Edge will not allow the doctor to bind his fingers or his thumb. “We’ve got these shows to play…” We played the Moonlight in West Hampstead the next night, the 100 Club a couple of days later, and then the Hope and Anchor. One night we were billed as V2, which at the time we felt was a lot more punk rock than U2.

Failure is a recurring nightmare where I’m back working in a petrol station in the middle of the oil crisis, Norman suggesting I consider a career as a “fuel injection technician.” My auntie Ruth had got me the job that past summer, at the Esso station on the airport road, and it had seemed perfect. I could write lyrics in the long gaps waiting for the cars to come in. But then came the oil crisis and long queues of cars lining up and no chance to write lyrics.

One morning we arrived at the venue to find the metallic knockout singer and bass player Lemmy, the Ace of Spades in the flush run that was the group Motörhead, helping our crew unload and set up our gear. He’d asked to be locked in through the night before to play Space Invaders, but he told us that the roadie work was a good way to get him down from the adrenaline of all those aliens he had to shoot up on-screen.

Sam Shepard’s Motel Chronicles or not notice, as you looked up,

We all shared faith. Faith in each other. Faith that our coming together as musicians might prove more than the sum of our parts. It was faith that nearly broke up the band because… A Chronicle of Our Holy Rollin’ Rock …religious faith can be a problem. Faith divides people. Faith divides people who have faith, and divides people with faith from those who don’t. Even within the band there could be division. Whether Adam and Paul were atheists or agnostics was immaterial, but Edge, Larry, and I became very conscious they were not interested in all the God-bothering stuff. Paul would point out his respect for the questions we were asking if not for our answers, and I see now it takes a certain generosity and tolerance to live and work in the company of these souls on fire. Paul and Adam were really patient with our fervor.

I hold to that line attributed to Francis of Assisi, who told his followers, “Go into the world to preach the gospel and, if necessary, use words.” We need less to be told how to live our lives and more to see people living inspirational lives. I’m also deeply conscious that I can’t live up to the badge I’ve pinned to my lapel. I’m a follower of Christ who can’t keep up. I can’t keep up with the ideas that have me on the pilgrimage in the first place.

“No need to worry, now we’ve antibomb filters on the windows. The windows have been blown out a few times…” Cool. Edge and I nod, like we’re on our daily commute. I’m always struck by how humans in ridiculously abnormal circumstances hold on to normal like it’s an old friend they’ve just spotted at a party where they know no one else.

Douglas Alexander, a former U.K. cabinet minister who’s been in a few war zones, offers some battle-weary foreign policy advice as we strap on the compulsory body armor. “Arriving into Kabul by helicopter they told us to sit on our body armor…more likely we’d get shot at from below.”