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Before you bypass this because you’re not a fan:
A friend who is still reading this book pointed out to me that there are spoilers. Sorry!
So, if you know me at all, you know I’m a bit of a U2 fan. I did a diary about the possibly excessive number of books I have about the band. I’ve added to that. Yes of course I love it. But — this is honest, kind, funny, real and very revealing, frequently self-deprecating. I was so annoyed by the review on Kirkus (headlined: “Chatty and self-regarding but pleasantly free of outright narcissism.”) that I reviewed the review. Bono is the least narcissistic rock star…..not ever but damn close. He starts the book with a near-death experience. There was a blister on his aorta, it was caught before it burst but it was a near thing. Keep in mind that his mother literally dropped dead from an aneurysm in front of him when he was 14. And we find out in the book that 2 of her sisters also died the same way. He hadn’t talked about it, always downplayed it, saying that others had it worse. He opens his memoir with it, giving fans a different view of songs like Lights of Home he opens the book with the opening lines: “I shouldn’t be here cause I should be dead I can see the lights in front me”; and The Little Things That Give You Away. He talks about his friends, family, the beginning of his relationship with Ali — who is really funny btw, in an interview for CBS This Morning, the interview asks her: “you call him Bono?” She replies: “I call him a lot of things….” And even the family dog is part of the effort to keep Mr. Rock Star grounded:
I don’t read a lot of biographies or memoirs, I usually find the childhood part unrelatable. We moved a lot when I was growing up. Like a lot. From 7th grade through 11th, I was the fat, glasses-wearing new girl every year. So, reading about people’s childhood home (singular), lifelong friends, “old neighborhood” — again with the singular — is uncomfortable for me. But this book has me thinking a different way — almost like reading science fiction. Yes, thinking of Bono as an alien and his Dublin neighborhood as a different planet made his story more relatable.
He talks about his family and childhood; respectable working class suburbs. His dad didn’t want his mother working when her friends got jobs at the airport (he talks about how he loved seeing them at the airport in later years), so instead she became a part-time dressmaker. She died suddenly when he was 14, and Bono says his home became 3 angry men, yelling at each other; that they never spoke of Iris again. His stories of them trying to cope with the practical things like groceries and cooking are funny and sad. Shocking that sometimes the angry/sad 15 year old spent the grocery money on records.
He was…..not really a good kid. Got asked to leave one school because he organized a group to throw dog shit at the Spanish teacher as she was eating her lunch one day. He doesn’t mention apologizing to her later, but I really hope he did. Anyway, it turned out well because the school he went to after that was Mount Temple, where he saw the notice on the bulletin board: “Drummer seeks musicians to form a band”. He knew the other three, in that way that you know people at your school, but when he went to Larry Mullen’s house after school that Wednesday… He describes it as: “How casually our destiny arrives. Quite a few wannabes had responded to Larry’s invitation on the school notice board...” The Mullens’ kitchen was crowded with boys and guitars and Larry’s drum set. The stories about the early days of the band — bluffing a TV producer by playing a Ramones song for their audition, going to London to hand-deliver demo tapes to record companies and all the other things they did to get the band off the ground had me laughing out loud and loving these dear boys just a bit more.
The story of the friend who witnessed a bombing as a child — the blood and bodies, his dad left him in the car as he tried to help…. In the ‘70s people didn’t understand about witnesses to traumatic events needing counseling and therapy; he had some difficult years and became addicted to heroin. (What is that aphorism about heroin that it’s a great pain killer until it kills you?) Bono wrote 3 songs about Andy: Raised By Wolves — which paints a very vivid picture of the aftermath of the bombing, Running to Stand Still, and Bad. (It has always struck me how he doesn’t present the lyrics for this one as poetry, neatly spaced out as all the others are; this one is squashed together with almost no punctuation. Presented as he probably wrote it, in desperate fear for his friend, homeless and addicted, trying to exorcise demons)
Of course he talks a lot about the band. They formed when they were teenagers, and here they are in their 60s, all four still together. From an interview:
“It has been very difficult at times to stay together. There’s always a moment when somebody is about to fall out of the boat and we managed to get them in. But at some point somebody might just say: I just want out, or they are being thrown out of the boat because it’s too hard to deal with them. It would be almost impossible for that to happen because we just go after each other. We never give up on each other,” he says.
The story about playing in Arizona when there was controversy there about the MLK Holiday, and how Adam stood in front of him when there had been a death threat against him — always been one of my favorites about them, and Bono tells it very well here. He loves and admires his bandmates, and the producers and other musicians they’ve worked with.
The book is roughly chronological and roughly thematic, but his spiritual life permeates his whole life, so instead of trying to tell you about it, here’s a couple of quotes.
“I do read scriptures and I do try to follow a path. I fall off it mostly, but it is okay for people to be angry with the church. It’s okay for people to be angry if they’re believers in a God that can allow an aggressive takeover of the church by a dark patriarchy.”
In a world where it’s impossible to avoid advertising, I don’t want the person next to me hard selling their take on the Big Questions. Live your love is the right answer.
His story about meeting Bill Clinton is exactly the funny, messy, awkward one you’d expect from an Irish rock band and an American presidential campaign. How he found a way to talk to George W’s admin after being seen as a friend of the Clintons (advice from Martin Luther King by way of Harry Belafonte — find one positive thing, find one thing where there is common ground); then took Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neil to Africa, where O’Neil was moved to tears because there was funding for medicine to prevent pregnant women from passing the AIDS virus to their babies but none for meds to keep the mother alive… wow. And speaking of tears: the story about Bono moving Jesse Helms to tears about AIDS funding…. he found that one thing: an analogy between AIDS and leprosy, talking about Jesus’ healing the untouchables of his time — that’s what found Helms’ heart and he not only voted for AIDS funding, he made sure it was there in future budgets. Chapter 30, where he talks about visiting a hospital in Malawi where there is no treatment available at all, will break your heart, it broke mine. As did the chapter about Michael Hutchence. It was hard to watch his friend disintegrate and not be able to stop him. He and Ali tried, when Michael and Paula asked them to be Tiger Lily’s godparents, but it went wrong as things with addicts often do. (I should probably add here that Michael has always been on my “if I ever get my hands on a time machine” list). I appreciated the way he handled the stories of Michael Hutchence and about Adam’s addiction problems. He tells enough of the story to tell it, but not enough to be lurid or intrusive. And when he talks about how well Adam has done, how happy and healthy he is now, I could really feel the love there.
Besides the chapter about Bill Clinton, most here will love the one about Barack Obama. He talks about the work America still needs to do to live up to its promise — calling us “the greatest song the world has not yet heard.”
And for someone who found a heart in Jesse freaking Helms, who got money for debt relief and AIDS medications out of Dubya — his take on Trump and trumpism is as harsh as anyone here. He is the storyteller where every one is a Grimm’s fairy tale where the monster is under your bed/at your door/ at the border.“He’s the symptom of the problem. He’s not the virus. He’s the super-spreader. The virus is populism and it’s as deadly as the plague.”
And for sure people will argue with him about capitalism. He does say it needs a reboot, though. He talks about the business of debt relief, getting AIDS medications where they need to go, the business of the band — there’s an interesting conversation with Prince during the time he wouldn’t use his name.
He talks about the challenges of marriage in a way that makes me wonder: if that’s what’s in the book, what did Ali make him take out? (He said in an interview that she made him take out things that were too revealing, just as she did in Song For Someone, another piece of his writing that had me wonder how revealing was the verse/s taken out). He also really admires Ali, talking about her work both in charities — she drove trucks with relief supplies to refugees after the Chernobyl disaster, is still involved in the Chernobyl Children charity — and in raising their kids.
He talks about the two terrorist attacks that he was very near — the Paris shooting and the truck attack in Nice. About others in Ireland — the murder of a band traveling back to Dublin after a show in Ulster, the bombing that didn’t physically hurt his friend Andy Rowen but still ruined his life. (earlier in the book he talks about how really smart Andy was, leaving me to wonder what he could have accomplished if he hadn’t been derailed — how much brilliance has the world lost because of terrorists?) He wraps up the book talking about his family — another line of many that made me laugh is that his youngest son, at 6 feet tall is a giant in their house. He talks about his love for Ali, and wraps up with a meditation (memory?) about being born. I knew I’d love this book when it was announced, I didn’t know how much I’d laugh and cry. I’ve always been as Adam girl, but Bono has expanded my heart to include him.
He’s coming to Austin tomorrow on his book tour, and no I did not buy a ticket. I’m thinking about standing outside the stage door at the Paramount, with something for him to autograph. But probably not — friends who’ve waited outside other shows have said he just waves, maybe shakes a few hands, but no autographs. Don’t know if the small chance of a handshake is worth the pain, my feet swell alarmingly and get very painful when I stand for too long. I have a cane from some hip trouble I had a couple of years ago, but I don’t think that’s enough support.
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