Star with staying power

Surrender

★★★★

Bono

Hutchinson

Heinemann, £25

Most memoirs by ageing rockers wallow in the sex, drugs and violence of their glory years, with the music something of an afterthought.

That’s far from the case with this autobiography by Bono, frontman of U2 and a man so saintly he makes Cliff Richard look like Keith Richards.

It begins with Bono describing how he and his U2 bandmates pray together before every gig.

Nobody is likely to muddle up this book with, say, Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt.

Not content with selling 170 million records, Bono has led anti-poverty campaigns that have made a difference to millions of lives. He also enjoys what seems to be an idyllic domestic life with Ali, the childhood sweetheart who has been his wife for 40 years.

Still, he has not had an easy ride. The early chapters in this book detail how young Paul Hewson struggled to cope, along with his father and brother, after his mother died suddenly when he was 14.

Although he tried not to acknowledge his grief for several decades, it has fed into his songs – as have The Troubles, the backdrop to his adolescence in Dublin in the 1970s.

While still at school – where a pal nicknamed him Bono Vox (meaning “Strong Voice”) after a local hearing aid shop – he formed a band with Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen and David Evans, aka The Edge. His partnership with his three bandmates has lasted as long as his marriage, although his entertaining descriptions of their various feuds and bust-ups reveal that it has not been as harmonious.

Slightly too much space is taken up in this book by the author’s reflections on politics. He largely talks good sense, but there’s not much here that hasn’t been expressed more cogently by others.

It’s when he abandons abstractions and talks about the people he’s met – from fellow popsters to presidents – that his writing comes alive. He also writes well about making music. So well in fact that I sought out songs I had dismissed.

At times, Bono waffles for Ireland, and sometimes his sense of humour retires defeated from the battle with his self-importance, but for the most part he leavens this heartfelt account of his life with an appealingly self-deprecating wit.

I expected a remarkable story but I didn’t expect to be so charmed by the storyteller.