Bono Would people prefer I died broke?
U2 singer on his tax battle and health scare
We may not be getting out of here,” says Bono, grinning in the hangar-like exit to an arena, whilst rain batters down and sheet lightning cracks the night sky. A tornado warning has just been issued in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Inside the venue, another kind of storm had been raging, with U2 playing the opening night of their EXPERIENCE + INNOCENCE tour, a bold, politically charged sequel to 2015’s INNOCENCE + EXPERIENCE.
It is a dazzling show, featuring three stages, a giant floating screen and startling visuals. “It’s getting dangerous out there in America, and I’m not just talking about the weather,” Bono roared through a megaphone decorated in the Stars and Stripes, in front of a visual barrage of KKK rallies, cartoon demons and provocative slogans. The Irish rock band’s passionate anthems were the raw, human heart of the most hi-tech production of their career. “I believe my best days are ahead of me,” the 57-year-old sang on Lights of Home, and his performance was bold enough to suggest he could actually be right.
“I came up with that line flat out on a hospital bed,” Bono tells me, drenched in sweat, towel wrapped around his neck, as we ride to the airport in the back of a blacked-out vehicle, police escort ahead. “I hope people get the humour in it.” Drawing heavily on their most recent albums, Songs of Innocence (2014) and Songs of Experience (2017), the new U2 show is constructed to tell the story of a band’s journey from passionate naivety to adult maturity. But many of the songs on Experience were shaped by a serious health scare in late 2016, which Bono refers to as “an extinction event”.
He declines to be more explicit. “No one needs to know the soap opera of it all. I mean, most people my age have gone through moments when they realise they can’t take their existence for granted.” Bono has recovered from several major health problems over the years, including emergency spinal surgery in 2010 and five hours of surgery after a bicycle accident in New York in 2014. He admits that this latest scare hit him a great deal harder. “I had a few bruising encounters and then one I just couldn’t walk away from. It was a dark reckoning. Mortality can be a bit of a buzz wreck, to say the least.”
As long as I have known him, since our teenage school days when he was plain Paul Hewson, Bono has held on to a seemingly unshakeable Christian faith. But he admits even that took a bit of a battering. “My faith was something I never had to explain to myself. I was at home with its incoherence and contradictory patterns. It did take some bumps and scratches this time, if I’m honest. But I’ve emerged with gratitude for being alive.”
He seems in very good spirits. “The first thing that happens to anybody who has such a fright is you start to notice things all around you, the people you are friendly with, your family, your kids, and you turn into Louis Armstrong.” He bursts into a blast of It’s a Wonderful World: “I see trees of green, red roses too! All of that.” The singer and wife Ali have been together since school days, and have four
‘We absorb the criticism and use it to make what we do better. We want to prove the naysayers wrong’
children. Bono says Songs of Experience was created in a state of “enjoyable panic, where you think, ‘Wow, better squeeze every drop of life out of this’.”
There is an aspect of Bono’s character that is not much discussed, a bullish determination to overcome obstacles. “My first response to a problem is usually anger,” he says. “It’s worked well for me as an activist. But there’s one battle you just can’t win and anger doesn’t help.” Much more important to his recovery, he says, was maintaining a sense of humour. “Comedy is a proper response to weighty issues. It’s deadly funny and deadly serious. That’s life.”
Bono attracts a huge amount of criticism for his twin roles as humanitarian activist and rock superstar. “To be fair, I do have an annoying gene,” he laughs. “I annoy myself sometimes.” Particular criticism has been focused recently on his financial affairs, with the Guardian describing him as “the Samaritan who avoids the taxman”.
“You know I’ve been writing about my own hypocrisy for 20 years. But the hypocrisy of the human heart is so much more interesting than a rock ’n’ roll band trying to take its financial affairs seriously. I mean, come on, would people prefer I die broke? They try to say, ‘You’re not idealists really’ to a band who have shared everything, committed our lives to each other and various campaigns of social justice. It won’t wash. I think a lot of people might just not like us and try to find reasons to explain it.”
Guitarist the Edge (aka David Evans) is even more relaxed about the criticism. “We absorb it and use it to make what we do better,” he says. He believes the greatest danger for a successful band is complacency. “The kind of hunger and determination of the band early on, when it was a desperate search to be heard, that’s all over. We’re here, we’ve done it. So part of what drives us is to try and disprove the naysayers. You suck it up, get back to work and make sure that what you’re doing is the best you can. In my view, people don’t hate U2 enough.”
It was a deliberate choice to open their tour in a Republican state where Donald Trump won 65.3per cent of the vote in 2016, to see if they could carry their progressive messages into the American heartland.
Disturbing images of Swastikas at a white nationalist rally (filmed in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017) sent a ripple of unease through sections of the crowd. But they were brought together for the anthem American Soul performed in front of a huge transparent US flag, while Bono made a rousing speech on “praying for the safety of the American dream”.
Privately, the band are no fans of Trump but refrain from attacking him directly. “If your view of the world is that it’s survival of the fittest, and that bullies run the world, then I guess it’s somewhat understandable that people might want to find a bully of their own to stand up for them,” says Bono, who has had close relationships with many Democrat and Republican presidents. Last month he collected the inaugural George W Bush Medal for his work on HIV/AIDS and poverty in Africa.
“Bono has worked successfully with a lot of Republican politicians who we might not agree with on everything,” says the Edge, diplomatically.
“You don’t have to agree on everything, if you can just agree on one thing,” adds Bono. U2 still believe that rock music can be a positive force for political change. “I’m always encouraged when I tune into Fox News and see the crap music they have on,” says the Edge. “Because it reminds me that the devil doesn’t have the best tunes. The best music is something that’s about freedom of thought and freedom of expression.”
“Every bit of freedom and equality and justice for all had to be fought for. In tiny increments, we move forward,” says Bono. The Edge lays a hand on his bandmate’s shoulder. “I sympathise with Bono,” he jokes. “No matter how many times he saves the world, it always manages to unsave itself.”
In the Tulsa rain, a private jet waits to take the band to their next date. Lightning flashes overhead. Bono is exhausted but happy to have got the first show over. “I enjoyed it. I really could feel my body, I could feel the breath when I was singing, I could feel the songs,” he smiles. “It was great to be onstage again. I just felt so pleased to be alive.”
U2 tour the USA until July, Europe from August, and the UK and Ireland in October/november. Details: U2.com