Bono Has Another Story to Tell

The U2 frontman spent the past few years reexamining his life and career. Now he’s back with new projects, new music—and a fresh sense of urgency to change the world. There id an amazing inyerview with Bono in this summer edition of Esquire. Go and get it.

Bono is for the moment promoting his new film, ’Bono – Stories of surrender’, a film that got 7 minutes of standing ovations at the Cannes film festival last week.

As Edge says in the article,  ‘You find Bono onstage. You’re not going to find him backstage.’ ”

Bono is many things—a rock ’n’ roll salesman and an activist, a showboat and a charmer, a campaigner and a lightning rod. No one has ever accused him of being an actor.

And yes, the band is in the studio reordimg a new album.

”Yeats was buried just down the road,” says Bono near the end of our first afternoon together, name-checking the famed Irish poet. It’s early April and the U2 singer is walking me up the driveway of his vacation estate in the South of France, toward my waiting car. Behind us, the Mediterranean Sea fills the horizon, blue as far as the eye can see. His property stretches before us. A few houses. Couple of pools. It’s blissfully private, even if the glitz of Monaco and Cannes isn’t too far away. Bono is not the first Irishman to trade the dampness of his home country for the sunny shores of the Côte d’Azur—but he might be doing it better than the rest”

Bono has, beside being one of the most important composer of rock music and songs over the last decades, also spearheaded and cofounded mission-oriented organizations like ONE, to combat poverty in Africa; and (RED), to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis; and DATA, which advocated for debt relief throughout Africa. The one that spearheaded campaigns for AIDS relief (PEPFAR). He has received massive dislike for it in some circles, but he just doesn’t care. That is why he is a hero. Or as he himself describes it, ”….I am only helping God across the road as if she were a little old lady”.

One thing is sure – U2 has always declared that rock ’n’ roll could change the world and then acted like it.

Read it here:https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a64865208/bono-stories-of-surrender-u2-interview-2025/?src=dashhudson

Source: Esquire/MadisonVain/Anton Corbijn