When Bono goes on tour he usually brings something like 200 trucks, a 170 -ton stage, hundreds of workers and three schoolmates called Adam, Larry and Edge. At the beginning of 2023 he left to promote autobiography Surrender: 40 songs, a story And he brought with him a table, chairs, a mug of fake beer, a keyboard player, a cellor, a tear and little else.
In the shows, a hybrid between rock concert and Broadway style monologue, Bono makes homage affectionately to his wife Ali Hewson, the three bandmates and the missing father, Paul Hewson, as well as singing U2 classics such as Where the Streets Have No Name, With or with with you And I will follow with minimal arrangements.
The tour touched only a handful of cities around the world and never in larger places in a theater, so the vast majority of U2 fans did not see it. Things will change on May 30th when the film Bono: stories of surrenderpreviewed at the Cannes Film Festival at the beginning of the month, will arrive on Apple TV+.
In the middle of a very tight promotion day, in Cannes, we had 18 minutes face to face with Bono to talk about the realization of his first solo show, the documentary, the new U2 and Health album of Larry Mullen Jr., who has not participated in the recent residency of the band at the Sphere to recover from an injury.
Most promotional tours for books, even important ones, usually include interviews and reading. What convinced you to do such a different thing?
You hit the point. This theatrical show was born from the desire not to make the usual promotional tour and, at the same time, to keep the interest in the book alive. I didn't know if I would be able to do it, but impersonating other people was a kind of holiday for me. Even if interpreting my father, with his way of turning his head … even doing Luciano Pavarotti was a great challenge. I also transformed our rock'n'roll band into three chairs and a table.
You are used to decidedly large stages, to productions with important budgets, to special effects of all kinds. This time the stage was bare. These limitations must have forced you to be creative.
Real. But at that table and those chairs there is all U2 maximalism. If I were not Irish, it would be pretentious to bring up Krapp's last ribbon and Samuel Beckett. But there is a simplicity that I liked to learn, or rather to re -enter, so to speak, because when we started with U2 the special effects created your moods. The fireworks were the jumps in the middle of the public, with all the energy that derived from it. I started interested in gestures and understand how powerful they can be. A movement of the hand or head, fix a certain person of the public.
You had never done a whole concert without the other U2 and this from the times when you were teenage. Did you have any fear of the idea of going on stage alone?
I was terrified, but apparently I don't mind. My favorite drug is to get out in situations where I feel uncomfortable, because it is in those contexts that I learn more. And I study the artists who aim to break the fourth wall: Iggy Pop was a master of unpredictability, of spontaneity, a teacher in entering a song and becoming the song itself. Then there are actors like Mark Rylance. I went to see it in Jerusaleman incredible thing. Very provocative, it struck me very much. Think of Patti Smith: you can see that he does not feel comfortable on an too high stage. During a concert by the Patti Smith Group that I saw came from the audience, he made his way to the elbow among the people and rose on stage. What a way! When I was twenty, I tried to do the opposite. In short, I like artists who manage to break through the fourth wall, sit on your knees, bite you, rob you, rob you, make love with you, chase you on the street, break your heart. I wanted to see if I too could be an artist like that.
You saw Springsteen on Broadwayor some recent One Man Show, to inspire you in the realization of yours?
I saw Springsteen on Broadway. Every time I go to see Bruce my life somehow changes. Take the work. It is Irish-Italian and takes you to the work. Jungleland. I saw him twice at Broadway and I understood that I should have invented something different, because I couldn't compete with him. I tried to create these various characters and to interpret them.
Photo: Apple TV+
On stage with you are the keyboardist Jacknife Lee, the celloist Kate Ellis and the harm Gemma Doherty. How did they help you remodel the songs and approaching you to your own music in a different way?
Jacknife is a kind of genius. Edge is in love with his arrangements and is the only one, among other things, that he never says: “What happened to the guitar?”. He doesn't think like this, he only thinks: “Wow, so the song has another feeling”. I had the privilege of singing Sunday Bloody Sunday in front of Doherty, who is from Derry and is a daughter of the peace process (Born after the agreement of the Holy Friday of 10 April 1998, editor's note). He plays the harp, he is an innovator. He also has a certain punk spirit: he puts the distorting distorts and is an excellent singer. That version of Sunday Bloody Sunday… I'm afraid of not being able to reply it again, because I flew very high. It was as if Nina Simone had entered the room. Wow. I think it was Philip Glass who said that Kate Ellis is one of the most incredible cellors with whom he has ever worked. I was surrounded by talented people.
But, in a completely random way, this thing still happens to me before I get on the stage: I can be very quiet, to go on stage beautiful and impatient to start, or it happens that it comes to me. I seem to have not yet overcome that thing, even if I am 60 years old. When I have some time, and apparently it will happen in the coming months, I may need to go to a squeeze and spread me on his sofa. But I imagine that at the moment my squeeze is the audience. In short, if I think about it, that's exactly what happens.
The show in many ways is a tribute to your father. Did you do it to repay it of everything that did for you?
Certain. I think I wanted to get closer to him and in the end it happened and he became the protagonist. He had the best jokes. I enjoyed playing him evening after evening … and then those jokes. When I say, “Do you know that Pavarotti phoned me to ask me for a song?”, He replies: “Did you make a mistake?”. It was a funny guy. And now I understand it better.
It was your old publisher, Jann Wenner, who convinced it. It was he 20 years ago, after one of those massacred interviews you make for Rolling Stone in which you tart us. In the end he said to me: “I think you have to apologize to your father.” And I: «What? I just told you that it was difficult to type. ” And he: “No, you only told me how difficult you were.” When I apologized to my father, many things changed for me, but unfortunately there was no longer.
You speak imitating his voice, put yourself on his chair, become on the stage. It is a very powerful thing. It was cathartic, I guess.
I don't know enough of the theater to find out if it has already been done, but maybe I should put a warning about health risks, I'm not sure we are insured. But do you know what? A part of me was more worried that people did not laugh at my jokes. Do we trust people who don't make you laugh? I'm not so sure. People do not come to the U2 concerts to make great laughter, but I have never participated in a beautiful conversation in which it was not laughed.
The director of Surrender It's Andrew Dominik. What approach did you ask him to adopt?
Made a film entitled Chopperwho is one of my favorites and had the protagonist Eric Bana when a comedian was, not the bana we know now. Clearly he is very good at working with non-actors. He also worked with Nick Cave, so I knew he understood music. I met him and I liked it. We frequented the same laps and he often made my wife laugh with taste. It has a true and comfortable deafness. When we discussed a scene or anything else, if he didn't like what I was saying, he did: “I don't feel you, friend”. But I am grateful to him because he pulled beautiful performances out of me. I don't know how he did. And then what lights! We achieved this result thanks to Erik Messerschmidt, the director of photography, and a whole series of other very good people who worked on us. There are no limited to filming the show. “Bono,” he told me, “this is another form of art, you have to let me guide her in another direction.” And I: “I just want to see what happens on stage.” “Let me do.” I don't know if he came as he wanted, but I'm proud of the work we did together.
The latest U2 unpublished album is eight years ago, it is the longest time ever between two of your records and fans are more and more impatient. What can you say to pull them on moral?
They are right. Nostalgia should not be tolerated for too long, but sometimes you have to deal with the past to get to the future and present. We want to go back to the present, at the time we are. We have recorded and it seems to me that this is the future. We had to solve some issues and now we came out.
How is Larry? Are you playing with you in the studio?
We played together in the same room, all four. And I can say that he has completely overcome the series of injuries he has had. His way of playing is innovative to the maximum. He gives everything for the band and does not want to talk about anything else, which is quite surprising. Among other things, being in a room in a group where every single musician has a role both as a single and in the whole is very rare, because nowadays the music is assembled. Even some of our songs have been assembled and it is something that we will still do, but trying to capture a special moment of a rock band that gives the best is the meaning of the disc that we are doing and that we have recorded, even if we have not yet finished it.
Do you know when it could be finished?
No.
I close with a question about Pop. The thirtieth anniversary is approaching: will there be a box set?
I didn't think about it. I'm sure someone wake up has come to us, but if he did it, I don't know anything about it. The video of the Popmart Tour in Mexico is one of the most extraordinary shows ever of U2. I love the imagination of that album. If that disc had a feature it was not to be pop.
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