Bono memoir explores his childhood in Dublin
U2 FRONTMAN Bono is to publish a memoir documenting the ‘people, places and possibilities’ which have featured throughout his life and career.
Titled Surrender, the book will explore the singer’s childhood in Dublin, the death of his mother when he was 14, U2’s rise to global success and his work in the fight against Aids and poverty.
The announcement of the memoir, to be published on November 1 by Penguin Random House, came on the star’s 62nd birthday yesterday. Bono said: ‘When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the Seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept.’
The memoir’s subtitle, 40 Songs, One Story, references the fact that the book’s 40 chapters are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created 40 drawings for the memoir and an animated video, narrated by himself.
The video illustrates an extract from a chapter in the book in which Bono describes writing U2’s first single, Out Of Control, on May 10 1978 – his 18th birthday.