Bono reveals all... even on the mullet!
Bono
Hutchinson Heinemann £25 ★★★★★
For those who think there is nothing the U2 singer likes more than the sound of his own voice, his memoir offers almost 600 pages of affirmation. He goes on a bit, it’s true, but the results are honest, thoughtful, human and often very funny.
The Dubliner (right) writes well – no ghost here – from a dual perspective, evoking the key moments of his 62 years in and out of music, while interrogating his motives and actions from a more reflective distance. An intense composite of ego and insecurity, faith and doubt, Bono has examined himself from every angle. You sense part of him agrees with every brickbat ever thrown his way.
Like Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run, Surrender tears down the rock star edifice to reveal the bare brickwork beneath. ‘Almost as much as honesty, deceit is a key component of being a performer, and the greatest deceit of all is authenticity,’ Bono writes.
This thesis is backed up via close encounters with several A-listers. He writes with palpable pain of his inability to steer his friend Michael Hutchence from the path of self-destruction, and has a poignant ringside seat as Frank Sinatra begins to fade. When Bob Dylan invites Bono on stage to sing Blowin’ In The Wind, the Irishman doesn’t know the words and so begins making up his own.
These dispatches from the world of high celebrity are fun, but the emphasis is on his interior life. There are health scares, IRA death threats to his children, substance-abuse issues within the band and a complex family dynamic.
Born Paul Hewson in Dublin in 1960, he is 14 when his mother dies suddenly. The loss cuts deep. Factor in a fractious relationship with his father and the later discovery of a half-brother, and it makes for rich emotional terrain.
Little wonder that Bono is a man defined by his long-term relationships. Childhood friends are held close. His bandmates appear as rounded personalities, central to his life rather than professional add-ons. The core of the book is his 40-year marriage to childhood sweetheart Ali, mother to their four children. He is good on the hard yards of their relationship, and refreshingly selfdeprecating about U2’s big moments. ‘When I am forced to look at footage of U2 play [sic] Live Aid, there is only one thing that I can see,’ he writes. ‘The mullet.’
Accounts of his political activism often feel like extended depositions aimed at his detractors. Yet despite the odd bum note, Surrender amounts to a fascinating song of experience.