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Pure Bono
Mother Jones magazine, May 01, 1989
Adam Block
"It's funny, but I feel this shifting mood. If U2 were part of something, if our subject matter and the turns we've taken were central, well, they're becoming less so."
It is January 1989, early evening at A&M studios in Hollywood, where Bono Hewson has been remixing singles. His band has just swept their categories in the Rolling Stone Readers Poll, including Band and Artist of the Year for the second year running. Their double LP, Rattle and Hum, ruled the charts over the holidays. Judging from the numbers, U2 continues its reign as "band of the decade," and even, as Time magazine and others have anointed them, the conscience of rock. Yet here is Bono, voice and lyricist of U2, saying only a bit wryly, "I think we're on the outside again."
U2's star ascended with rock's rediscovery of its conscience. They played remarkable live sets at the 1983 US Festival and the 1985 Live Aid telecast, and spearheaded the first Amnesty International rock tour. While other bands partied, they eulogized Martin Luther King, Jr., "in the name of love." And by 1987, when their fifth LP, The Joshua Tree, sold over 14 million copies, U2 had become the most popular rock 'n' roll band in the world.
But last fall's release of Rattle and Hum -- the film, the book, the double LP, and the T-shirts -- found critics sharpening their knives. The documentary of their U.S. tour chronicles the Irish rockers collaborating with B.B. King and Bob Dylan, cutting a tribute to Billie Holiday in the same Memphis studio that Elvis Presley first used, joining a Harlem gospel choir to remodel their hit "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Bono starts off U2's cover of "Helter Skelter" by announcing that the band are "taking it back" from Charles Manson.
"The megalomania churning at the heart of this band is beginning to show," reacted Musician magazine. The New York Times review was headlined, "When Self-Importance Interferes with the Music." And the Village Voice's Tom Carson wrote off U2 as "the priggish, thin-skinned egoist and the three dullards." Savage stuff for last year's heroes.
At the center of the storm is Bono. "I don't have an ironic persona like David Byrne or David Bowie to stand behind," he worried while the film was being edited. "It's me up there on the screen and it makes me cringe." If he can appear arrogant, he can also be anything but. In 1981, after a brief interview with Bono, I was told by a representative of his record company that the gay press couldn't expect anymore interviews with U2. I wrote Bono a letter in protest. He called me up on his next visit, asked me to join him for a drink, and talked for hours.
Then, as now, in conversation Bono is an intoxicating raconteur, erupting with enthusiasm, playful and engaged. He grows fervent when speaking of his beliefs, and one of his strongest is that U2 truly are, as he jokes, "on a mission." Bono and his songs take on some very big issues: violence and redemption, God and politics, love and death. That makes him prime game for skeptics, critics, and acolytes. And it gave us plenty of ground to cover.
MJ: Let me read you a recent quote from Randy Newman: "I used to be against world peace until U2 came out for it. Then the scales just fell from my eyes...And when they're singing with those black people? Do you know that black people just love their music? Bono's conducting those black people and they're doing just what he says!..."
BONO: I had heard that. Randy Newman is a very funny man, though I think he's written far funnier lines than those.
MJ: Are you interested that criticisms like his have been leveled a lot lately, particularly at Rattle and Hum?
BONO: I suppose. What's uninteresting about that is that we are such an easy target, from the word go, because we perform from our own point of view. I sing about the way I see things. Some people write songs about the way characters see things. Some artists perform with a wink. That's just not the way with U2. When people perform from their gut -- when John Lennon sang a song called "Mother" -- that was not a hip thing to do. He was exposing himself. It's performers like that I admire...If you're going to spend your whole life worrying about dropping your guard and exposing yourself, worrying that working with a gospel choir might look like imperialism, that would be dumb.
MJ: But the criticisms I read of the film are that it was too guarded. Let me read, if I could, another criticism...
BONO: Well, I'm really not interested.
MJ: I just want to give you the opportunity to respond...
BONO: What this suggests is that the music is not enough. That is my expression -- the music -- and within that music I can take my clothes off. Not for the press, not for the TV shows, not for the film. That film was about music, and in that music was everything that we have to say and offer. Now people want it made easy for them. They want it spelled out. Why can't people just accept the music? You know the real reason? It's that people don't listen to the music anymore, and a lot of critics don't...I think our fans know all the songs on our albums, and I don't think many critics do. I really don't.
MJ: Were there any criticisms that did sting, that hit home, that taught you anything?
BONO: No. I must say I was generally very disappointed in the community of critics. It's funny. I would've thought that what people would have expected us to do would've been to put out a double live LP, and cash in on The Joshua Tree, and make a lot of money for very little work. That is what big rock bands do. When we didn't do that, I expected people to recognize that. When we put the records out at low price, stripped away the U2 sound, then just went with our instincts as fans, and just lost ourselves in this [American R&B] music, in a very un-self-conscious way...
MJ: But if the LP has been unfairly and stupidly criticized by people who aren't listening carefully...
BONO: No. It's not even that. It's that the spirit of it has been completely and utterly missed. The spirit of it is unlike any record of a major group, for a long time. That spirit is the very essence of why people get into bands and make music. And it's not about being careful. And it's not about watching your ass...
MJ: Is there an artist or a band whose career you'd like to emulate? Who you look at and say, "They did it right?"
BONO: They did it right? My heroes are the ones who survived doing it wrong, who made mistakes, but recovered from them...You see, we are unlike all the great rock'n'roll bands in that their records generally get worse, whereas our records are getting better. Most people would agree. We are on the ascendance. We started at scratch, writing a song with two chords on two strings. We are desperate men, struggling with very limited abilities. Though I think U2 are at the peak of their form in terms of our own music, when I look at American music, I mean the Memphis Horns and B.B. King, on that scale, we're at the bottom of the ladder. OK, so you want to design a great rock'n'roll group? So, you're gonna choose guys from Ireland, right? (laughs) No, you're not. You're gonna choose people who talk about religion and politics? No, you're not. I mean, we're a fluke. Rock 'n' roll bands are about giving people what they want. And what they want often is "Wow! Yahoo! Let's dance!" and "Do you think I'm sexy, do you want my body," that type of thing. And that's not what U2 are about. And I don't know how we've gotten here. All I can say is, I haven't figured it out. No wonder the critics haven't. (laughs)
In U2's early days, three members -- Bono, guitarist The Edge, and drummer Larry Mullins -- joined Shalom, a nonsectarian charismatic Christian group. "They were devoted to the idea of Christ as a commitment to social justice, and having no possessions," Bono explains. The band members have since parted with Shalom, but not with their faith. "I believe that Jesus is the son of God," Bono says. "I do believe that, odd as it sounds."
MJ: Do you still believe that Jesus is the way? Doesn't that biblical injunction deny that followers of other religions can enter paradise?
BONO: I don't accept that. I don't accept that fundamentalist concept. I believe, what is it? "The way is as narrow as the eye of the needle," and all that. But I think that's just to keep the fundamentalists out...(laughs) I never really accepted the whole "born again" tag. It's a great term, had it not been so abused. I accepted it on one level, in that I loved the idea of being reborn...I think people should be reborn every day, man! You know, every day again and again and again! At 20 years old, this idea of "surrender every day," this idea of "dying to oneself"...was so exciting! Then I came to America in 1981, the land of milk and the .357 Magnum. It blew my mind that this word reborn meant nothing.
MJ: It meant something very different; it meant a moral agenda.
BONO: Yeah, it had been raped of its real meaning, of its spiritual significance, and instead a political significance was left.
MJ: In November of 1982 you, The Edge, and Larry Mullins announced to your manager that you didn't want to tour in support of your second LP, that the rock world was at odds with your Christianity. What happened?
BONO: We were just being pulled in two different directions. A lot of it was based on the idea of the ego. We'd been reading a lot of Watchman Nee, a Chinese Christian mystic. His idea was: "Unless the seed shall die and be crushed into the earth, it cannot bear fruit." Rock'n'roll had this idea: "It's me!" You know, "Look at me, 'cause I'm looking at you, motherfucker!" Like, "Out of my way, looking for number one, 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction!' " Watchman Nee's attitude to that would be: "So what? What's so important about you anyway?" (laughs) So it was like we were being torn in two. We felt almost subconscious pressure being applied to us by a lot of people we looked up to within that spiritual community that we were in and out of. In the end, I realized it was bullshit, that what these people were getting close to with this idea was denial, rather than willful surrender. It was denial, which is the next-door neighbor to self-flagellation, and that awful idea that "through pain is gain." Yes, there is pain. Yes, you may gain from it. But you don't get into your car looking for a traffic jam. (laughs)
MJ: Do you see the world of rock 'n' roll and the Church as at odds, in the way that Jerry Lee Lewis said that he had thrown his lot in with the devil when he became a rock 'n' roller?
BONO: I don't. I don't because I think the most important thing, the most important element in painting a picture, writing a song, making a movie, whatever, is that it be truthful. A version of the truth as you see it. Rock 'n' roll, and the blues, they're truthful. It says in the Scriptures, "Know the truth, and the truth will set you free." So, there is this feeling of liberation in the blues for me. There is salvation in the blues.
MJ: There is salvation more in gospel music, no?
BONO: The truth. The truth shall set you free. Gospel music is about a step of faith, which is a whole different concept. The idea is that you step into a world where, if you like, the kingdom has come. You step into it, and you affirm that. You step into that and you sing! You know, people singing gospel music, they crowded into the churches from the ghettos, to make that "Joshua fit the battle of Jericho/And the walls came tumbling down" step of faith. In their real life, they were living in leaky, rainy conditions, they were living in a sewer. So that's not the truth of their own experience. The blues is the truth of their own experience, therefore closer to this idea of "knowing the truth and the truth shall set you free." In the Psalms of David, there is this powerful wailing against God. You know, "You call yourself God!" and "Where are you when I need you?" The Psalms of David are the blues, and I get great comfort from that.
MJ: What do you think of Prince's brand of salacious Christianity, which says that brilliant sex lights the way to paradise?
BONO: I just believe that Prince believes the same thing I do: that God is sex as well as love.
MJ: So you feel, when you listen to a Prince album, that you guys are singing the same gospel?
BONO: I feel very close to Prince, closer than you might think.
MJ: Closer than I would think, in that he's considered sex-crazed, while the critics regularly describe U2 as nearly sexless.
BONO: I'm deeply insulted to hear you say that, and shocked, and mesmerized. I don't think they could have been to too many U2 shows. You'd have to ask our audience. This may be one of those clichés from the critical community who generally themselves are completely sexless. You can't fuck people with your head, or maybe you can...
MJ: Now, come on. You honestly think that the kind of really erotic sounds that you hear in "Sexual Healing" or "Little Red Corvette", that there are U2 songs that have that kind of carnal energy?
BONO: No. Yes, I think there is a sexuality to U2. I don't think it's dressed up in leather, or high-heel boots, or that type of thing. I don't think it's the sort of peek-a-boo type sexuality. So, some people, who have to have a neon sign that says SEX before they see sex, may not see it in our music. But sex is a much subtler thing than that. Today you'll find the exact same girl in the Coca-Cola ads and the rock videos. That's not rebellious anymore. It sells products. And it is a product. That kind of overt or camped-up sexuality is no longer rebellious in the way that it was in the '50s and '60s, when people weren't owning up that they even had a sex life. People needed that shoved in their face and rock'n'roll was a great medium to do it. But that doesn't apply now...See, most things that a lot of people find sexy, I find incredibly funny! I don't find the things I see out on the Strip, say, latex trousers, turn me on. They just don't.
MJ: What do you find really sexy?
BONO: I'm not telling you.
MJ: Why not?
BONO: Just not.
MJ: Why should that be something you're not willing to share?
BONO: I don't know many people that would want the world to know. I might tell you, but I'm not telling them.
MJ: You've seen Prince live. How do you feel about that sexual playacting he does onstage?
BONO: I find it funny, very funny. I get off on it. (laughs)
MJ: Are you tempted to do anything like that? I mean, that kind of sexual humor is the kind of thing people would never expect from U2.
BONO: No. I always go back to the image of filmmakers. I find that makes things clearer. Some people make movies, and there is a certain kind of movie they make, because that's them, whether it's Altman or Scorsese or Coppola...We've been trying to get people to dance to Apocalypse Now.
MJ: You see U2 as more like Coppola, or Scorsese...
BONO: Yeah, and I think Prince would be more like, ummm, Busby Berkeley?
MJ: Or Ken Russell?
BONO: Ken Russell! That is what I mean. Prince is the Ken Russell of music. Absolutely!
MJ: The '60s generation celebrated both sex and drugs as liberating. Nowadays there has been a lot of bashing of both as evil. You present a fairly chaste image...
BONO: We don't.
MJ: In the movie we never even see you take a drink. We never see you doing drugs...
BONO: The idea that we would hide the drink from the camera is idiotic beyond belief. It's another cliché that redundant minds throw at U2. "You present a chaste image." Oh god!
MJ: Do you like being intoxicated?
BONO: (Raises a finger) 'Tis better to be drunk on the spirit; however, a bottle of Jack Daniel's is sometimes handier.
MJ: Do you ever find intoxicants, including psychedelics, creatively useful?
BONO: I am already on drugs. I am the sort of person who needs to take drugs to make me normal. (laughs) I have experimented. No, I don't think that it is something that everybody has to do, one, just to be alive, or two, to write great songs.
MJ: I don't mean "have to." But do you have a positive attitude towards drugs?
BONO: I'm not going to tell you that I have a positive attitude towards people who are hurting themselves. Drug abuse is a very negative thing.
MJ: Do you believe there is such a thing as drug use as opposed to abuse?
BONO: I do believe there could be.
MJ: In your own life, have you experienced...
BONO: I don't want to talk about that. I'll give you just one example of why it would be irresponsible for me to answer your question in a certain way: I've written so many songs using heroin as an image, it might be interesting for me to tell you that, say, "I've had experiences with the drug heroin." It might be interesting for me to do it, and to own up to it. If it were misconstrued, somebody who, for whatever reason, respects me, that might lead them to get into it. OK. If I become addicted to heroin, I can afford the trappings. I can afford the Betty Ford clinic. I can afford to have my blood changed. I can afford the trappings of being an addict. But there is some guy who lives in a room in Dublin who can't. And nobody gives a shit about his addiction! So it is highly irresponsible for rock 'n' roll people to perpetuate the myth of drug addiction. One of the things that I get a good feeling that U2 has done is to break open the mythology of rock 'n' roll. The mythology that wearing a safety pin in your nose means you're a rebel. Shaving your head does not mean you're a rebel.
MJ: You're saying those trappings have nothing to do with the true rebellious soul of rock 'n' roll...
BONO: Yeah, the rebellious soul. The mythology of "live-fast-die-young" sickens me. I just want to throw up on these bastards! That's because in our city, Dublin City, I've seen the place truly ravaged by drug addiction. People seriously fucked up, and people inspired by this idea of "living close to the edge."
U2's 1983 album, War, included "Sunday Bloody Sunday", a thunderous anthem against Ireland's sectarian violence, and "New Year's Day", the celebration of Poland's Solidarity. It was U2's first LP to go gold in the United States Bono and the band intended the record as a stark declaration for militant pacifism, and against nationalism. But it sometimes seemed to exploit the very passions it was decrying. On tour, Bono took to trotting around the stage waving a massive white flag to a martial beat. One early U2 booster wrote that the "great personal fury" of their first LPs had given way to "literal but sincere sloganeering...hapless, dated, agit-pop." He wasn't alone. Yet in Bono's eyes, the band was just ahead of its time, voicing the spirit of Live Aid before Bob Geldof had seen its glimmer.
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