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[Bono] It is preposterous to think that
others might be as interested in your own story as you are.
Writing a memoir is a whole other level of navel-gazing.
[clicks tongue] But here we are.
Tonight, I'd like to try out some scenes from Surrender,
me book what I wrote meself.
The first one's a dramatic opening. Could have been a dramatic closing.
See...
I was born with an eccentric heart.
In one of the chambers of my heart,
where most people have three doors, I have two.
Two swinging doors, which at Christmas 2016 were coming off their hinges.
The aorta is your main artery, your lifeline.
My aorta, after years of stress, has developed a blister.
A blister that's about to burst,
which will put me in the next life faster than I can say goodbye to this one.
So here I am,
Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City.
Looking down on myself on the stainless steel. [exhales deeply]
Hot blood is swirling, spilling, and making a mess,
which is what blood does when it's not keeping you alive.
Blood and air. Blood and guts.
Blood and brains are required right now.
The brains and the hands of the surgeon who is standing over me.
The man is climbing up to my chest,
wielding his blade with the combined forces of science and butchery.
[American accent] "Your man has a lot of firepower
in that war chest of his."
"We needed extra-strong wire to sew him up.
He's probably at 130% of normal lung capacity for his age."
[breathing deeply]
[normal voice] Air is stamina.
Air is the confidence to take on big challenges.
Air is not the will to conquer Everest
but the ability to endure the climb.
And here I am now without it for the first time.
[breathes deeply]
Without breath. [breathes deeply]
The names we give God. All breath.
Jehovah. Allah. Yeshua.
I'm without air, and I'm terrified.
Because for the first time,
I reach for Yeshua,
and Yeshua is not there.
It's an extraordinary thing to ask the silence to save you.
To reveal itself to you.
To discover if there's a face to that silence.
But in this moment,
God seems to have gone missing.
Where am I?
Without air.
Without a prayer.
Without an aria.
How did I get here?
- ["Vertigo" playing] - [audience cheering]
New York, New York!
74th and Broadway, let the Beacon light our way.
♪ Lights go down, it's dark ♪
♪ The jungle is your head Can't rule your heart ♪
♪ A feeling's so much stronger Than a thought ♪
♪ Your eyes are wide ♪
♪ And though your soul It can't be bought ♪
♪ Your mind can wander ♪
♪ Hello, hello ♪
[audience] Hola!
♪ I'm a place called Vertigo ♪
[audience speaks Spanish]
♪ It's everything I wish I didn't know ♪
♪ But you give me something ♪
♪ I can feel ♪
- [audience cheering] - [Bono] Mmm.
♪ The night is full of holes ♪
♪ As bullets rip the sky Of ink with gold ♪
♪ They sparkle as the boys Play rock and roll ♪
♪ They know that they can't dance At least they know ♪
♪ I can't stand the beats I'm asking for the cheque ♪
♪ Girl with crimson nails Got Jesus 'round her neck ♪
♪ Swinging to the music Swinging to the music ♪
[vocalizes]
♪ Hello, hello ♪
[audience] Hola!
♪ I'm at a place called Vertigo ♪
[audience speaks Spanish]
♪ It's everything I wish I didn't know ♪
♪ But you give me something ♪
♪ I can feel ♪
♪ Feel ♪
[vocalizes]
♪ All of this, all of this can be yours ♪
♪ Just give me what I want And no one gets ♪
[audience cheering, whistling]
♪ Hurt ♪
[Bono] Yeah, thank you. I am still pretending that this is a book tour.
- [exclaims] - [audience cheering]
Oh, yes.
- Hola. - [audience] Hola!
Welcome to my quarterman show.
[audience laughing]
And might I say, this feels somewhat transgresivo
to meet you here without my bandmates.
A lot of you know when U2, uh, go on tour,
it can involve some outsize props.
A giant claw, space stations, mirrorball lemons.
Um, tonight, I have a table and chairs.
[audience laughing]
- And the Jacknife Lee ensemble... - [audience cheering]
...featuring Kate Ellis on the cello and extraordinariness
and Gemma Doherty on the harp and other heavenly voices.
Now, turns out the most extraordinary thing about my life
is the people I'm in relationships with.
I-- I met most of them the same week
I began life with my wife, Ali.
The same week I joined U2.
That's right. Excuse me, darling.
One week during high school, and my whole life sorted.
- [audience applauding, laughing] - Sort of.
["City of Blinding Lights" playing]
Alison Patricia Stewart had faith. Even more absurdly, faith in me.
This 15-year-old girl not just suffered my demonic dreams,
she encouraged her boyfriend, as he told anyone who would listen
that his band were gonna be big when he felt so, so small.
These are the tall tales of a short rock star.
[vocalizing]
♪ Yeah ♪
♪ The more you see the less you know ♪
♪ The less you find out as you grow ♪
♪ I knew much more then than I do now ♪
♪ Neon heart, DayGlo eyes ♪
♪ A city lit by fireflies ♪
♪ They were advertising in the skies ♪
♪ For people like us ♪
♪ And I miss you when you're not around ♪
♪ I'm getting ready to leave the... ♪ [normal] building.
Back then, I was dreaming about this future.
It's so beautiful.
Lately, I've been dreaming about the past.
[vocalizes]
A past that might keep me from the present.
♪ Oh, you look so ♪
[audience] ♪ Beautiful tonight ♪
- [Bono] ♪ Oh ♪ - ♪ You look so ♪
[all] ♪ Beautiful tonight ♪
[Bono] I see my mother scolding me.
"You're making a show out of yourself. You're making a show out of yourself."
But that's what I wanna do with my life.
And the da, rolling his eyes on that one.
My da was a Catholic.
A Catholic who loved Protestant things like my mother.
When they got married, his own family didn't turn up at the wedding.
Ireland was an unforgiving place in those days,
but Bob wasn't very concerned with the outside world.
Uh... [sighs] ...my father was a tenor. A really, really good one.
He could move people with his singing.
And to move people with music, you first have to be moved by it.
I see my father standing in the living room of 10 Cedarwood Road
in front of the stereo with two of my mother's knitting needles,
conducting Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi.
Right now, he's listening to La Traviata.
["Libiamo ne'lieti calici" playing]
[Bono] On stage at Teatro di San Carlo, Sorrento.
He's not precisely aware of the story,
but he feels it,
a father and son at odds, lovers cast away and returned.
He senses the injustice of the human heart.
His heart is broken by the music.
I'll spend most of my life
trying to figure out the opera playing inside my father's head.
He doesn't really notice much else,
least of all me, age ten, just staring up at him.
Now, if you want your child to grow up to be a grandstanding stadium singer,
there are a couple of ways to go about it.
You can tell them they're gifted, they-- that the world needs to hear their voice.
This is the Italian, uh, method.
[audience cheers, laughs]
Or you can completely ignore them.
This can be the Irish method, much more effective in my case.
I craved my father's attention.
I wanted him to think that I had music in me too.
He didn't hear me,
so I sang louder and louder.
In fact, you could say I sang my way to right in front of you tonight.
Thanks, Da.
My father had some very good reasons for staying lost in his own world.
I think we're gonna need some harp music for this next bit.
It's-- It's the tragic part.
My mother, Iris, died when I was 14.
Last time I saw her alive was at her own father's funeral.
This sounds almost too Irish, I know,
but this is my story. I'm stuck with it.
As my grandfather's casket was being lowered into the ground,
my mother collapsed.
I stood watching as my father and my older brother carried her to the car,
drove her to the hospital, where she died of an aneurysm.
It happens.
I felt useless, so I prayed.
My father's response to this tragedy was to never speak of her again.
With Iris gone, our home at number 10 is becoming its own opera.
I'm locked in a house
where three men are living in rage and melancholy.
A house where the name of our grief is never spoken.
Iris.
My mother's name is Iris.
The house became a river of silence in which I might have drowned
had my big brother, Norman, not thrown me a lifeline.
He-- He gave me a guitar, his guitar.
A shield. A weapon. A confidant.
Another voice to pray with. Music.
["Glad to See You Go" playing]
[audience cheering]
[Bono] I am jumping around the living room
to the sound of the Ramones' Leave Home album.
Songs so simple, and yet they capture how my life feels to me.
Songs so simple that even I might be able to write one.
- It's May 10, 1978. - [cello plays]
Today is my 18th birthday.
We don't do cakes.
Instead, the da wants to talk to me about getting a job.
A job.
I know that if I could do something I love,
I would never have to work a day in my life.
But to do that, you have to be great at something,
and I'm not great at something. I'm not great at anything.
I'm smart enough to know I'm not smart enough.
The Ramones are smart enough to play dumb.
Maybe I need to listen to even more Ramones.
This is the day I'm gonna write my very first proper rock-and-roll song.
It will become U2's first single. It will save my life.
It is called "Out of Control."
[audience cheers]
♪ Monday morning, 18 years of dawning ♪
♪ I say how long ♪
♪ Say how long ♪
♪ It was one dull morning ♪
♪ Woke the world with bawling ♪
♪ I was so sad ♪
♪ They were so glad ♪
♪ Yeah, I had spirit and we had soul ♪
♪ Even then I was out of control ♪
[vocalizing]
Hey, I can do this.
♪ Stories for boys ♪
[Bono] "Drummer seeks musicians to form band."
♪ Stories for boys ♪
Let me introduce you to Larry Mullen Jr.
[audience cheers]
Now, most people who enter the room with Larry Mullen find him striking
in the sense that he is a stylish, good-looking member of the species,
but also in the sense that he can be strikingly suspicious
of you being in his gaze,
of you being in the room,
and perhaps, on a bad day, your reason for being anywhere at all.
But when Larry loves people, he loves them completely,
and I'm grateful to have become one of the beneficiaries of that love.
Now, David Evans.
Sometimes the name you're given at birth just isn't your real name, is it?
David Evans was always the Edge. Always the Edge.
1976, he was 15, a year younger than me.
He was leaning up against the wall at Mount Temple Comprehensive,
plucking a complicated guitar line.
He was in class with Alison Stewart, my future wife,
and it was said that they were the smartest in their year,
that he had a crush on her, that they might have gone for walks.
[audience laughs]
Decided right then, I was keeping an eye on this guitar genius.
Now, let me introduce you to Adam Clayton...
[audience cheering]
...a true believer in rock and roll.
Only one commandment, four strings are better than six. [chuckles]
[audience laughs]
He had the style, the attitude, the ambition,
only problem was he couldn't play,
which wasn't a problem, as I couldn't sing.
[audience laughs, cheers]
♪ Stories for boys ♪
♪ There's a place I go That isn't part of me ♪
♪ Like a radio with no controls ♪
♪ In my imagination ♪
♪ There's only static and flow ♪
♪ No yes or no ♪
♪ The stories for boys ♪
♪ Stories for boys ♪
[audience cheering]
U2's rehearsal room was a small cottage,
backing onto a graveyard in north County Dublin.
Same graveyard that my mother was buried in. We called it the Yellow House.
Today, not for the first time, I've been screaming at my bandmates.
Forget Ireland bursting into paramilitary flames. No, no.
On this day, in the winter of 1978,
the most pressing issue facing all of humanity
is that this band are not being good enough musicians,
as if I was.
Trying to explain to them how excited I am
about the new Public Image Ltd song.
A great song, I explain, like-- like I know,
can be written on-- on two strings over two chords.
I'm trying to get Edge to make the sound of an electric drill into your brain,
like a chainsaw through the carcass of the past.
Edge is not following the invective.
In fact, Edge is losing patience, and I'm becoming even more invected,
so invected that I grab his Gibson Explorer from him
and wrap it around my own neck
to start making a dangerous squeal of a sound.
[imitating guitar riff]
"Go on. Go on," says Edge. "Keep it coming. You're nearly there."
Y-Y-You like it?
"I'm not sure I like it, but it does sound like a dentist drilling your brain.
[audience laughs]
Here, let me take it. Let me see if I can take it somewhere."
In this ego-filled and egoless moment,
a song is forming.
A song that will be called "I Will Follow."
If you walk away, walk away. Walk away, walk away.
It's like a rhythm hook. You know, like a wah-wah pedal.
Walk away, walk away, walk away. I will follow.
Edge is turning my graffiti
into some Raphael Mother and fucking Child,
and Larry and Adam are burning down the gallery.
That's right.
Come on, let's find the thing that we can do that no one else can do.
Adam, you can do that.
We can do this thing.
Edge, we can do this thing.
Adam, Larry, if you walk away, walk away.
If you walk away, walk away. If you walk away, walk away.
["I Will Follow" playing]
[audience cheering]
On the drums, Larry Mullen.
On the bass, Adam Clayton, Edge.
"I Will Follow."
[audience cheering, whistling]
Oh, man. Sorry about that, Edge, um, Larry, um, Adam.
What a complete fucking eejit I was.
I'm working on it though.
Um, truth is you're...
you're really-- you're really great.
[audience applauding, cheering]
But what no one in that rehearsal room, including me, had thought about
was Iris Hewson resting...
not a hundred yards from where we were playing.
In all the time we rehearsed in the Yellow House,
I never thought about her.
Never once visited her grave.
It wasn't like she was dead.
I-It w-- I-It was worse.
We disappeared her, but Iris would not be denied.
No, not in the music.
["Iris (Hold Me Close)" playing]
[Bono] Iris standing in the hall.
She tells me I can do it all.
Don't fear the world
it isn't there.
Iris playing on the strand.
She-- She buries the boy
beneath the sand.
Iris says that I will be
the death of her.
[whispering] But it wasn't fucking me.
Let me tell you something about the geometry
and the geography of the Irish mind.
The Irish mind is best understood as being like an Irish pub.
You go to forget, but in the end, you're drowning in memories,
and salt-and-vinegar crisps...
[audience laughs]
...a-a-and black stuff.
Um, Finnegan's pub is not just my local,
it is its own country with its own laws and customs.
It is the domain of Dan Finnegan and his sons.
It's a constitutional monarchy, with Dan head of state
and his sons running the government.
There is a code, a strictness, a reverence for tradition.
Indeed, a respect for opera
and for the kind of man who might know how to wear tweed,
like my father, Bob.
Now, within the nation of Finnegan's-- Like my father, Bob.
Now, within the nation of Finnegan's there is a small Italian consulate,
the Sorrento Lounge
which is where, on a Sunday, I would meet my father for a drink.
I would order a pint.
He, the Catholic, would order Black Bush, a Protestant whiskey.
Already a subtle signal that Brendan Robert Hewson was his own man
and one with a great opening line every single time.
"Anything strange or-- or startling?"
Now, by strange or startling,
he was, uh, not interested in the riotous life of a rock-and-roll singer.
Mostly we, uh-- we sat in silence.
Hmm.
I try to impress him.
Uh, how about Luciano Pavarotti calling the house?
You consider that strange or-- or startling?
"Startling, uh, that's obvious. [chuckles]
Strange? Yeah. Why would a great tenor be calling you? No offense."
Uh, none taken. Actually, h-he's-- he's looking for a song.
"Did he dial the wrong number?"
No. He-- He wants me... [stammers]
...with a little help from Edge, to write him a song. Yeah.
Not Gilbert and Sullivan or Rodgers and Hammerstein.
Me, B-O-N-O, Paul.
[audience laughs]
"You? [chuckles] A baritone who thinks he's a tenor?"
Me.
Pavarotti wants me to write him a song. Now who's the fucking eejit?
"He is."
[audience laughs]
♪ Gloria ♪
♪ In te domine ♪
♪ Gloria ♪
♪ Exultate ♪
[Bono] Mount Temple Comprehensive School was a nondenominational,
coeducational experiment.
In a country that was close to civil war along sectarian lines,
we had Catholics and Protestants in the same class.
Uh, you were encouraged to be yourself,
to be creative, to wear your own clothes,
and... [sucks teeth] ...there were girls.
Also, uh, wearing their own clothes.
Ironically, amid this freedom from religion,
we found ourselves getting religion.
We got close to a group of Christian radicals called "Shalom."
They figured all the established churches had not just gotten away from Jesus,
but they had got in the way of Jesus.
As U2 started to get popular,
our first-century Christian brethren began suggesting that our music was frivolous
and self-flattering.
In other words, fun.
We asked the question, "Can we not change the world and have fun?"
"Um, no.
You must choose between this world and the next."
Eventually, it became too much for us, particularly Edge.
He couldn't live with the tension between being a disciple of Jesus
and a-- an apostle of Joey Ramone.
He eventually decided to leave the band.
I felt conflicted too.
Um, I had no interest in carrying on in U2 without Edge.
Larry sympathized with us both.
Adam-- [sucks teeth] Adam did not.
One album and done, like the Sex Pistols.
[sighs]
[audience laughs]
Now we just had to tell our manager.
Have I told you about Paul McGuinness?
Paul McGuinness, the Winston Churchill of Rock.
I mean, he went to war for U2.
He had just taken us once around the world,
so we really, really weren't looking forward
to telling him that we were breaking up his baby band just as they hit puberty.
But he-- he heard us out.
There was a pause,
some, um, fidgeting, a slap on the face. His.
And then came,
"Am I to gather from this that... [stammers] ...you've been talking to God?
Well... [groans, sighs] ...maybe the next time you ring God,
you might ask him... [chuckles] or her... [chuckles]
...if it's okay for your representative on Earth-- i.e., me--
to renege on a legal contract.
Do you think God would have you break a legal contract, is my question.
A contract that I have signed on your behalf to go on tour.
What sort of a God is that?"
Hell of a negotiator, Paul McGuinness.
It wouldn't be the first time we'd put words in God's mouth.
The tour would indeed go ahead.
And I was so heightened,
I convinced my 21-year-old girlfriend to get married.
Unbelievably, she said yes.
[audience cheering, clamoring]
Now, Edge, he had some fun too,
but Edge was still not sure he wanted
to be in a business of inflamed egos
and pumped-up personalities.
I asked him, would he make an exception for me?
Arpeggiating his way out of a corner,
Edge began working on the sketch of a song.
Well, not just a song, a map. A way forward for U2 in the world.
"Sunday, Bloody Sunday" was religious art meets The Clash.
[vocalizing]
But its ambition was to contrast the original Easter Sunday
with the massacre of 14 unarmed protesters in the city of Derry.
[vocalizing]
While Edge was in his flat in Dublin,
I was with my bride in Jamaica, writing lyrics for these new songs,
explaining to Ali why our honeymoon album was gonna be called War.
["Sunday, Bloody Sunday" playing]
♪ I can't believe the news today ♪
♪ I can't close my eyes, make it go away ♪
♪ How long ♪
♪ How long must we sing this song? ♪
♪ How long, how long? ♪
♪ Tonight ♪
♪ We can be as one ♪
♪ Tonight, tonight ♪
♪ Broken bottles under children's feet ♪
♪ Bodies strewn across The dead-end street ♪
♪ I won't heed the battle call ♪
♪ Puts my back up ♪
♪ My back up against the wall ♪
♪ Sunday, bloody Sunday ♪
[audience] ♪ Sunday, bloody Sunday ♪
♪ Sunday, bloody Sunday ♪
- ♪ Sunday ♪ - [audience] ♪ Bloody Sunday ♪
[Bono] ♪ Here she comes ♪
♪ Here she comes ♪
♪ Here she comes, yeah ♪
♪ Here she ♪
♪ Comes ♪
♪ I'm here at the murder scene ♪
♪ The beginning of a fiction ♪
♪ Facts will not complete ♪
♪ Why so many mothers cry ♪
♪ Is religion now the enemy ♪
♪ Of the Holy Spirit guide? ♪
♪ The real battle yet begun ♪
♪ Where is the victory Jesus ♪
♪ Won? ♪
[audience cheering, applauding]
Something to know about performers:
in pursuit of truth, we are capable of more untruth than most.
[audience member] Cheers.
[audience laughing]
Show business.
Uh, back in the Sorrento Lounge,
the usual opening line from the da.
"Anything strange or startling?"
Everything is strange and startling.
"Oh, you're right there. I-- I took a taxi out here today.
The-- The driver saw where I was going
and-- and asked if I knew Bono."
[audience laughs]
"I said, 'I do not. Do you?'"
"Sure, we all know Bono out here. Sure. Isn't he hounded by the Pavarotti?"
"Hounded. Hounded by the Pavarotti.
I never heard that one. Paparazzi, is it?"
[clears throat]
Funny, uh, you should say that.
The great "Paparazzi" himself has been calling the house again.
This time, he-he wants us to perform with him in his hometown of Modena
to raise money for refugees from the war in Bosnia.
I mean, how do you say no to that?
"For once, would you just do what you're told?"
I want to do what I'm told.
But I'm also being told by the band to stop getting distracted
so we can finish a U2 album,
rather than ones for Pavarotti.
Let me explain something about being in this band
that, uh, even my da doesn't understand.
The popular perception is that I am the leader of U2. I-- I wish.
[audience laughs]
I voted that U2 should be an actual democracy.
So, now I'm in a band with three other people,
each of whom thinks he is the leader of U2.
[audience laughs]
So, my wanting to do something
does not necessarily mean they are wanting to do something.
Anyway, I'm-I'm telling this to-- to the da.
And, um, Da, the whole band was in the studio in Hanover Quay
when-- when the-- when the phone rings, you know.
[phone rings]
[groaning]
[Italian accent] "Bono, Bono, Bono. How are you? [chuckles]
Are you weary from the mountaintop?
[inhales deeply]
Have you come down the mountaintop with the tablets of rock and roll?"
[normal voice] The new album. Uh, yeah, we're late as always.
[Italian accent] "You told me this,
and dearest Bono, that is why I am here to help."
[normal voice] I'm sorry? Y-You're in Dublin?
[Italian accent] "I am this, uh, very minute in the Irish customs and exercise.
I have told them I have nothing to declare
but, uh, my love of Bono, Edge, James and Larry."
[audience laughs]
"It is, uh, my sole purpose in this moment
to-- to be of service to these, uh, great men."
[sucks teeth]
[normal voice] Oh, maestro, they are, uh, great men
and-- and this is a great honor, but it's not a great moment.
[Italian accent] "They don't like me?"
[normal voice] Oh, it's worse. They don't care.
I mean, these are the children of punk rock.
They will likely suspect that you are just here
to twist their arm into going to Modena.
[wails]
[Italian accent] "This pains me.
I came only in genuflection and cordiality,
and now you question my motivation."
[normal voice] No. No, no, maestro. It's not like that.
[Italian accent] "Perfetto. I am on my way."
[exclaims]
[normal voice] Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
[audience laughs]
[sighs]
[audience cheers]
I-- [sniffs] I go to Edge, Adam and Larry,
I say, "Look, he's the greatest singer in the history of the world.
It's a huge honor he's coming to see us... [coughs] ...in the next half an hour."
"The next half an hour? He might be coming to see you," says Larry.
"He's not coming to see us."
"This is some kind of stunt," says Adam.
"He'd likely show up with a photographer, you know? We will not be coerced."
What are you going to do? Hide?
"No, we're not gonna hide," says Edge.
"Actually," say Adam and Larry in perfect unison,
"that is exactly what we're gonna do. We are going to hide."
[Bono] Sorry?
And with that, two grown men hide from Luciano Pavarotti.
- [doorbell buzzing] - The buzzer rings...
and there he stands. Oh, my God.
The greatest singer in the history of the w-wor--
Oh, oh, oh.
- With a film crew. - [audience laughs]
Seven or eight excited Italians. One of them's crying. [chuckles]
[Italian accent] "Bono, Bono, Bono. Edge, Edge. Bono, Edge.
Whe-Where are James and Larry?"
"These are my friends from Rai Uno.
They have a satellite dish... [chuckles]
...in case we decide to announce the show in Modena.
I mean, while we're all together."
[audience laughs]
[normal voice] "In what corner of the universe
is the great Pavarotti knocking on your door
and you are not letting him in? Has the world gone bloody mad?"
Da, in-- in my corner of the universe, we very much let him in.
In Edge's corner too.
In fact, we're off to be part of Pavarotti & Friends
to support War Child in Modena.
Yes.
Adam and Larry are missing in action on this one,
but w-would, uh-- would you like to go?
"Oh, um, really?
Uh, okay, um,
I suppose you better have at least one real tenor on your side."
[audience laughing, applauds]
And then... And then...
[Pavarotti sings in Italian]
[Bono] The greatest voice in the history of the world.
But the miracle in Modena
was the transformation of Brendan Robert Hewson,
my Irish Catholic father,
not by Luciano Pavarotti,
but by the woman on his arm, Diana, Princess of Wales.
For those of you who don't know, uh, Edge's family were Welsh,
so they were thrilled to meet the Princess of Wales.
Edge dared me to-- to ask the da, so I did.
Uh, Da, you fancy meeting, uh, Lady Di?
The Evans are-are wondering.
"What? What? Why would I want to meet a member of the royal family?
I mean, that's like asking me, do I want to meet the winner of the lotto?"
Got it. I know. Just-Just-Just asking.
The next bit y-you just couldn't make up.
The da is in our trailer,
not eating from Pavarotti's deli tray of exotic Italian meats
with names that none of us can pronounce.
And when he turns around...
she's right there.
Approaching 6 feet tall in her heels,
a vision in ivory.
Diana approached the da as if in slow motion.
"How do you do?"
The da melted.
The shock of a close encounter with the British royal family
quickly became a teenage crush.
"Um, uh... [stammers] ...very well. [chuckles] Tha-Thank you for asking.
U-Uh, v-very pleased to meet you."
800 years of oppression, disappearing in eight seconds.
[audience cheering]
If you've ever wondered about the usefulness of the royals--
which a lot of Irish people have-- um,
I-I would point to-- to this incident.
Eight centuries of oppression, one princess and we're even. Yes.
When-- When we get home,
the da is still talking about Princess Diana,
but he's modulating.
"I must say, uh... [stammers] ...she does great things for charity,
but it's not charity that you're on about, is it?
It's justice, isn't it?
I mean, you wouldn't need charity if the world was just."
Is the son, uh, starting to make sense to the father?
"Uh, I wouldn't go that far,
but I heard your song 'Pride' on the radio,
and, uh, I might have felt some."
Well, you know, it was that song that got us an invitation to Live Aid.
Bob Geldof said that when he heard it, he could forgive me the mullet.
[audience laughs]
When U2 walked on stage at Live Aid,
we found ourselves looking out at a sea of white flags of surrender,
swelling in the wind, even then,
and a generous spirit moving through the crowd.
Felt like our punk prayers were coming of age,
you know?
Prayers of peace.
Because to be hungry is to be at war with yourself.
To be at war with the very ground that you walk on.
That's right.
["Pride (In the Name of Love)" playing]
[vocalizes]
♪ One man comes in the name of love ♪
♪ One man to come and go ♪
♪ One man comes he to justify ♪
♪ One man to overthrow ♪
♪ In the name of love ♪
♪ What more in the name of love ♪
♪ In the name of love ♪
♪ What more in the name of love ♪
♪ One man caught on a barbed-wire fence ♪
♪ One man he resist ♪
♪ One boy washed up on an empty beach ♪
♪ One boy who never will be kissed ♪
♪ In the name of love ♪
♪ What more in the name of love ♪
♪ In the name of love ♪
♪ What more in the name of love ♪
Oh, yeah!
[echoing] Wembley Stadium, London.
A thought is being broadcast all over the world.
What if we were the world?
What if we could feed the world?
What else?
What else could be done in the name of love? What else?
[normal] I still ask myself that question,
and I still wanna know the answer.
♪ In the name of love ♪
♪ What more in the name of love ♪
♪ In the name of love ♪
♪ What more in the name of love ♪
♪ In the name of love ♪
♪ What more in the name of love ♪
♪ In the name of love ♪
♪ What more in the name of love ♪
- [Doherty vocalizing] - [audience vocalizing]
[Bono] Live Aid and all its spin-offs raised $250 million.
[audience cheering]
But African countries were paying that sum
to you and me every week
for old loans we shoved down their throats during the-- the Cold War.
"Every fucking week," as Bob Geldof would say.
I learned a big lesson from that.
Injustice is often disguised as bad luck.
As front man with U2,
I realized that if U2, um,
was gonna be writing big songs about big subjects,
I needed a bigger brain.
- Um, a software update. - [audience laughs]
Rather than go back to school-- You don't have to laugh actually.
- [audience laughs] - It's all good.
I went-- I went to Africa with the missus.
Um, Ali and I were working in this orphanage
in Ajebar, South Wollo, Ethiopia.
It's the autumn of 1985.
These rural people are struggling to survive without food and water.
Their world has turned in on them.
The very land they live off has refused them entry.
Tsegaye: "I am the source, I am the Nile,
I am the African, I am the beginning!
I am the song, I am the singing
I am the Ethiopia that 'stretches her hand in supplication to God'
O Nile, you are the eloquence that rings the Ethiopian bell
across the deaf world!"
Because buried in this ground are great riches.
But a great famine has turned this great nation upside down.
Same country is about to turn our tiny lives right side up.
We will never be the same again and we won't want to be.
In this parched place,
we learn lessons from a landscape and a people that we can never forget.
"Poverty is not natural.
It is man-made and can be overcome by the actions of women and men."
Most likely women, who better understand
that where you live should not decide whether you live.
Are we right?
[audience cheering]
["Where the Streets Have No Name" playing]
♪ I wanna run ♪
♪ I want to hide ♪
♪ I want to tear down the walls ♪
♪ That hold me inside ♪
♪ Show me a place ♪
♪ High on the desert plain ♪
♪ Where the streets have no name ♪
[vocalizing]
♪ I wanted to feel ♪
♪ Sunlight on my face ♪
♪ But I need some shade and shelter ♪
♪ In this waterless place ♪
♪ Each desert rose ♪
♪ Is a prayer for rain ♪
♪ Where the streets have no name ♪
[vocalizing]
♪ Where the streets have no name ♪
♪ We're still building And burning down love ♪
♪ We're burning down love ♪
♪ We can get through the fire ♪
♪ If I go with you ♪
♪ There's no other way through ♪
[audience cheering]
It was hard for Ali and me to come back from Ethiopia.
A large part of us is still there, actually.
After The Joshua Tree,
U2 were getting a bit famous.
A bit mainstream.
We were either gonna be embarrassed about that or not.
Fame is currency,
and we wanted to use what you gave us to do more
than get a seat at a fancy restaurant.
Which, by the way, is not to be sniffed at.
I joined some new bands.
Drop the Debt, RED, the ONE Campaign, fighting extreme poverty.
Really, the ONE Campaign just had one idea.
You don't have to agree with someone on everything
if the one thing you do agree on is important enough.
This led to meetings with people who held the purse strings for the world's poor.
There are such people.
They're called the government. They're called the IMF, the World Bank.
This might be a moment to break the fourth wall...
Really?
...and ask some hard questions about my motivations.
Okay, there's been a mistake in the teleprompter. EHP.
Am I trying to cover up my guilt for having such a lavish lifestyle?
Yes, my lifestyle is lavish.
I am an overpaid, overregarded, overrewarded, overfed rock-and-roll star.
Am I a hypocrite? Yes.
But not on this front.
On a lot of other fronts.
But I will say, hypocrites get a bad rap.
I mean, hypocrites do the right thing at least some of the time.
But in the end...
what does it matter?
I mean, really, who cares? Motives don't matter.
Outcomes matter. Lives matter.
Human potential matters. Justice matters.
You wouldn't need charity if the world was just, as the da says.
But it's not, so get the check. Get the check.
["Desire" playing]
♪ Lover, I'm off the streets ♪
♪ Gonna go where the bright lights Big city meet ♪
♪ With a red guitar, on fire ♪
♪ Desire ♪
♪ She's the candle burning in my room ♪
♪ I'm like the needle, needle and spoon ♪
♪ Over the counter, with a shotgun ♪
♪ Pretty soon, everybody got one ♪
♪ In a fever when I'm beside her ♪
♪ Desire ♪
[audience] ♪ Desire ♪
♪ Burning ♪
♪ Burning, baby ♪
♪ Burning with love ♪
[exclaims] Whoo!
♪ She's the dollars, she's my protection ♪
♪ She is the promise In the year of election ♪
♪ Oh, sister, can't let you go ♪
♪ I'm like a preacher stealing hearts At a traveling show ♪
♪ For love or money, money Love or money, money ♪
♪ Love or money, money, money, money Money, money, money, money, money ♪
♪ And the fever, I can't deny her ♪
♪ Desire ♪
♪ And mark and yen to the pound To the pound, to the pound ♪
♪ And all that makes the world go round The world go round ♪
♪ Makes the world go round ♪
♪ Money makes the world go round ♪
Really?
[audience cheering]
All right, um, they're gonna change the cameras,
and I'm gonna have a very strong drink, um...
And we'll be right back.
[audience cheering]
[crew member] We got four lenses,
- and we're looking for the hero lens. - [Bono] Okay.
[crew member] Right. The most beautiful. We would like you to stand there.
- [Bono] Oh, I would love to. - And we'll-- we'll micro direct you.
- Focus on the near eye. - [exhales sharply]
Beautiful. We're never gonna go tighter than that, are we?
[crew member 2] I don't think so.
[crew member 1] I think that'd be a bit,
difficult to perform... [chuckles] ...with those limitations.
Okay, so turn around, buddy.
Yeah. No, that's pretty good. He sort of naturally knows what to do, right?
[Bono] It's the third act.
[crew member] All right, that's good.
[Bono] The confessional.
[sighs]
All this saving the world,
is it really service, duty, righteous anger,
or is it just a childlike desire to be at the center of the action?
The center of attention.
Which begs the question,
can you have a child and remain a child?
Time to grow up.
Can't fuck this up.
Desire and virtue, um,
is a whole dance,
and no one does it better than my missus.
"Desire" went to number one in the charts.
I don't know if there's a connection, but we were so excited,
uh, we had our first baby.
Um... I didn't know how to feel.
I didn't kn-know if I'd know how to be a father.
Um-- Didn't know if I could be a father
because I didn't think I had been much of a son.
Um...
I said in the beginning that Alison Stewart had faith.
I mean, this woman part wrote the story that you're listening to.
When Ali and I married,
we moved out of our family homes.
That's how young we were.
We moved into an old stone tower on the Irish coast,
the lighthouse.
Ali will let her soul be searched,
but only if you arrive at her fort defenseless,
have you half a chance at challenging
her own almost unbroachable defenses,
it's the only way over that drawbridge.
Wasn't two years into our marriage,
and I could see my wife in prolonged moments
returning to the vast silence that she holds inside herself.
She was suggesting that even when I was home, I wasn't home.
Our weekly walks along the promenade tinged with melancholy,
as the waves try to make up their mind whether they're leaving or staying.
Leaving or staying.
["With Or Without You" playing]
♪ See the stone set in your eyes ♪
♪ Am I such a thorn in your side? ♪
♪ Should I wait for you? ♪
There's a selfishness implicit in the desire to be great at something.
♪ Sleight of hand and a twist of fate ♪
♪ On a bed of nails you make me wait ♪
You're trying to prove yourself, but to who?
♪ Without you ♪
♪ With or without you ♪
Alison Stewart saw to me...
♪ With or without you ♪
...by seeing through me.
♪ Through the storm we reached the shore ♪
Before I had anything...
♪ You give it all but I want more ♪
...before I had my name...
♪ And I'm greedy ♪
...she knew what I had...
♪ For you ♪
...and hadn't.
♪ With or without you ♪
Concentration.
♪ With or without you ♪
You can't be great at anything...
♪ I can't live ♪
...without an incredible concentration.
♪ With or without you ♪
But a lot of it's just dysfunction.
♪ You give yourself away ♪
A sort of blindness...
♪ And you give yourself away ♪
...where you might not see the person right next to you.
You might want an audience...
♪ And you give yourself away ♪
more than you want a family.
♪ My hands are tied ♪
You might not want to give up...
♪ My body bruised, you got me with ♪
...the emptiness...
♪ Nothing to win ♪
...that gave you everything.
♪ And nothing left to lose ♪
♪ With or without you ♪
♪ I can't live ♪
♪ With or without you ♪
I called my book Surrender
because I knew this is a word I needed to understand better,
that it was the antidote
to w-whatever condition I was suffering from.
And it didn't come natural to me.
One Sunday in 1999,
I'm back in the Sorrento Lounge with the da,
and for the first time ever, um,
decide I'll ambush him with his own question.
Just throw it at him.
Anything strange or startling, Da?
"I have cancer.
I'm, uh, in the departure lounge, uh, as it were.
You won't, uh, be putting up
with my unfunny jokes much longer."
Hmm. [sighs]
Huge boulders fall on your head,
just like that, from some imaginary mountain.
I-- I thought I was getting to know him, um, that there'd be more time.
How Bob Hewson of you.
Just when I thought I was finally getting to know you,
that you might give up some answers, you give me the slip.
Beaumont Hospital... [sighs]
...Dublin, the summer of 2001.
I see my father in a hospital bed.
This time it's him who's running out of air.
And I see myself lying next to him
on a mattress on the floor.
He's breathing,
but his breathing's getting shallower,
like the grave in his chest.
He shouts my name,
uh, confusing me with-- with my brother...
[stammers] ...and the other way around.
"Paul, Norman. Paul, Norman. Paul."
I jump up, call the nurse.
"Are you okay, Bob?"
she whispers in his ear.
His tenor has now become short, tinny breaths.
An S after every exhalation. "Yes. [stammers] Yes. Get me out of here.
Get me out of here. I wanna go home. Yes.
Yes, I wanna go home. Yes."
I said, "It's okay. It's okay.
It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.
[crying] Are you okay?"
Listen.
Silence.
I put my ear close to his mouth.
Silence.
Silence followed by,
"Fuck off."
[exhales deeply]
[breathes deeply]
There's something... [sighs] ...perfectly imperfect
about my da's exit from my life.
I don't believe he was telling me
or the very vigilant night nurse to fuck off,
though I'm not ruling that out.
- Uh... - [audience laughs]
...I'd like to think
he was addressing the burdens that had been on his back for most of his life.
I have a feeling...
they're my inheritance,
but I believe I have a choice in the matter.
And there was kindness too.
I think he believed that to dream
was to be disappointed,
and he didn't want that for me.
This is a-- [stammers] This is-- [sighs]
This is when you realize your father is your friend.
And you know, the journey, uh, of--
you know, from father to friend is, uh-- is the only one to be on really,
uh, if you're a father, and I am.
Um, and I, uh... [sighs] ...sort of made friends with my father
after he passed, which is a bit of a mistake.
Um...
To imagine the story from his perspective is humbling, you know.
He loses his wife.
He's left with his two kids,
and one of them is charging in his direction,
you know, coming for him guns blazing.
And one of them is gonna take him out
by achieving all the ambitions he was afraid to have.
He told me in those final days, when accepting his cancers,
that he'd lost his faith.
And he also told me that I should never lose mine.
That it was the most interesting thing about me.
But it did happen, where I reached out...
Yeshua.
...and that thing that I have
- held so tightly... - Yeshua.
...wasn't there. It was the most terrifying moment of my life.
Yeshua.
["Iris (Hold Me Close)" playing]
♪ Hold me close ♪
♪ Hold me close and don't let ♪
♪ Hold me close and don't let me go ♪
♪ Hold me close ♪
♪ Like I'm someone that you might know ♪
[cries]
["Beautiful Day" playing]
♪ The heart is a bloom ♪
♪ Shoots up through the stony ground ♪
♪ There's no room ♪
♪ No space to rent in this town ♪
♪ You're out of luck ♪
♪ The reason that you had to care ♪
♪ Traffic is stuck ♪
♪ You're not moving anywhere ♪
♪ You thought you'd found a friend ♪
♪ To take you out of this place ♪
♪ Someone you could lend a hand ♪
♪ In return for grace ♪
♪ It's a beautiful day ♪
♪ The sky falls You feel like it's a beautiful day ♪
♪ Don't let it get away ♪
♪ You're on the road ♪
♪ But you got no destination ♪
♪ You're in the mud ♪
♪ In the maze of her imagination ♪
♪ You love this town ♪
[audience cheers]
♪ Even if that doesn't ring true ♪
♪ You've been all over ♪
♪ And it's been all over you ♪
♪ It's a beautiful day ♪
♪ Don't let it get away ♪
♪ Beautiful day ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Touch me now ♪
♪ Take me to that other place ♪
♪ Teach me, love ♪
♪ I know I'm not a hopeless case ♪
[audience cheering, whistling]
♪ The dead are always with us Won't leave us alone ♪
♪ Blowing through our memories Rattling their bones ♪
♪ The dead are always with us There's more of them than us ♪
♪ The valley of dry bones, dust to dust ♪
♪ Parched and abandoned Filled with doubt ♪
♪ But after the flood All the colors came out ♪
[Doherty vocalizing]
♪ All the colors came out ♪
♪ It was a beautiful day ♪
♪ Don't let it get away ♪
♪ Beautiful day ♪
♪ Yeah, yeah ♪
♪ Touch me now ♪
♪ Take me to that other place ♪
♪ Reach me ♪
♪ I know I'm not a hopeless case ♪
♪ What you don't have You don't need it now ♪
♪ What you don't know You can feel it somehow ♪
♪ What you don't have You don't need it now ♪
♪ Don't need it now ♪
[audience cheering]
I-- I have a very unscientific theory
that when you lose someone you love, they bequeath you something.
A gift.
When I lost my mother...
well...
I got you, um, to fill that hole.
When I lost my father, I found my voice started to change,
and I-- I-I couldn't help thinking
that the baritone who thought he was a tenor
actually became one.
I don't know how.
All kinds of reasons.
Might have something to do with this word for-forgiveness.
I don't know if I forgave my father, or my father forgave me.
'Cause I was born... [sighs] ...with my fists up.
Surrender does not come easy to me.
To bow down to my bandmates, to my wife, to my Maker,
is a struggle.
I have faith enough to hope and hope enough to love.
And this music is how I practice that.
And my father on Earth, he gave me that.
And he left me with one of his favorite melodies to haunt me.
Only realized recently,
the title has the same name as our local watering hole,
the Sorrento Lounge.
[singing in Italian]
"Come Back to Sorrento."
And it was this melody.
[singing continues]
And I-- I will.
[singing continues]
[breathing deeply]
[singing continues]
[audience applauding, cheering]
[Bono] One, two, three, four.
["The Showman (Little More Better)" playing]
♪ Baby's crying 'cause it's born to sing ♪
♪ Singers cry about everything ♪
♪ Still in the playground Falling off the swing ♪
♪ But you know that I know ♪
[clears throat] I just can't remember the next bit.
What's the next bit of the melody?
Whoo! Keep going. That's great.
One, two, three.
♪ It is what it is It's not what it seems ♪
♪ This screwed-up stuff Is the stuff of dreams ♪
♪ I got just enough low self-esteem ♪
♪ To get me where I want to go ♪
Another verse.
♪ The showman gives you Front row to his heart ♪
♪ The showman prays His heartache will chart ♪
♪ Making a spectacle of falling apart ♪
♪ Is just the start of the show ♪
[vocalizes] ♪ Oh, you don't care ♪
♪ But you know I'm there ♪
♪ You think you look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ A little more better ♪
♪ Look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ A little more, little more ♪
♪ You think you look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ That's what's gonna get you ♪
♪ Look so good ♪
A to G.
♪ I'll be chasing the sunlight ♪
♪ That's why I'm staying up all night ♪
♪ I lie for a living, I love to let on ♪
♪ But you make it true When you sing along ♪
♪ You think you look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ A little more better ♪
♪ Look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ A little more, little more ♪
♪ You think you look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ That's what's gonna get you ♪
♪ Look so good ♪
Keeps-- Keep chorus going.
♪ Look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ A little more better ♪
♪ You think you look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ A little more, little more ♪
♪ You think you look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ That's what's gonna get you ♪
♪ Look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ A little more, little more ♪
♪ You think you look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ A little more, little more ♪
♪ Look so good ♪
[Doherty] ♪ A little more, little more ♪
- [speaks Italian] - [audience cheering, whistling]
[sniffs, clears throat]
- Happy? - [crew member] Back to work.
Okay. [chuckles]
- [crew member] That was great. - [Bono] I loved it.