Surrender – 40 songs, one story | Inside Bono’s head

His magnetism is unequalled, his tendency to preach too. Bono is not only one of the most famous singers in rock history, he is also one of the most divisive. He himself sometimes gets on his nerves, he admits in Surrender – 40 songs, one storyautobiographical book in which he assumes his contradictions and also exposes what drives him.

Alexandre Vigneault
The Press

A frank tone

We have already read a book where Bono tells himself, Bono by Bono, a collection of interviews published in 2005 by Michka Assayas. However, even if this book was enlightening, it had a shortcoming: it spoke more of politics than of music. Obsessed with his campaign for the cancellation of the debt of African countries, he resisted going back in time to tell himself and the story of his immense group. Surrender fix that: Bono opens it up with candor and emphasizes U2, from auditioning in Larry Mullen Jr.’s kitchen to the biggest stadiums in the world to the studios where the band’s songs were born.

Three angry men

“A house is not enough to make a home”, sings Bono in Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own, addressed to his father Bob. Young Paul Hewson lost his mother at 14. A painful absence that his father, his older brother and he buried in silence. And anger. Bono found in music an outlet for his personal tragedy, but also for the violence that plagued Ireland during his adolescence. Punk music, first: the Ramones, the Clash, the Sex Pistols. And that of U2. He describes the chaos of the beginnings, but already foresees what will make the strength of his group. “We wanted to merge with our audience in a way that no rock band had ever known how to do,” he wrote. And, as a singer, it was up to me to create this fusion, to cause a chemical reaction with the crowd […] It takes a kind of sleight of hand for the band and the audience to melt into each other, a pseudo-religious ritual that ends up becoming truly religious. »

From anecdotes to analyzes

Pavarotti arriving in the studio with a TV crew, Michael Hutchence from INXS stark naked in a villa in the south of France, Bowie in an electric blue suit in a Dublin tank top pub, Bono spoils his readers with amusing anecdotes. Fortunately, it offers more than that: observations on the construction of U2’s music (the subterranean influences of psalms and opera, for example), scenes from the studio installed at Slane Castle with Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno (for Unforgettable Fire) or in the coldness of Berlin for Achtung Baby, while the group is on the verge of implosion. Bono is also interesting when talking about other people’s music, whether it’s the resemblance he perceives between Lou Reed and Van Morrison or the elusive intelligence of Sting’s and Paul Simon’s lyrics. He often defines things in a few sentences or a strong image, as when he says that you almost have to take off your shoes to listen to Radiohead, as this group commands respect.

A fragmented story

Surrender does not tell the trajectory of U2 and its singer chronologically. Bono advances by association of ideas, often making leaps forward or backward by several decades. He can go from creating a song to an impromptu visit by Mikhail Gorbachev to his home in Dublin. This process keeps the story alive, giving the impression of a huge collage that is revealed over the chapters. Following this thread is literally getting into the singer’s head, learning to understand the faith that mobilizes him, but also the realism that prompts him to shake hands in Washington or Davos. And this is the great strength of this book: its ability to give meaning to events beyond the scenes told.

clan spirit

Bono repeats it: he would be unable to lay the slightest song without his three acolytes. And yet, he is often the one who yells at them because they are neither good enough nor inventive enough… Something his friends have obviously forgiven him for decades. “I’m only a quarter of an artist without Edge, Adam and Larry,” he wrote. U2 is a tight-knit and loyal clan: Joe O’Herlihy, on sound, has been with the band since 1978; Willie Williams (lighting) since 1983. Bono also devotes some fine pages to Paul McGuinness, the band’s agent for three decades, who believed in U2 before the band itself. The figure that dominates, between the lines, is Ali, his wife, his pillar from the beginning of U2. Like what there are times in life when the stars align.

Surrender – 40 songs, one story

bono

Fayard

666 pages

8/10