One of the weirdest moments on Irish television – this is obviously saying a lot – was when U2 sent four lookalikes to perform in their place on Pat Kenny’s Kenny Live in 1992. Their rendition of Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses was watched by a rapt audience that included the real U2. “It’s great to have these guys here replacing us,” Bono said. “They do a much better job than us on television.”
Situational pranks are a long way in U2′s past. This is confirmed by Bono & the Edge: A Sort of Home Coming, With David Letterman, available on Disney on Friday. It’s a long name for an 80-or-so-minute documentary that functions as an unfussy tribute to Bono and the Edge and a valentine to the Dublin that created them.
A Sort of Homecoming is perfectly conventional and also thumpingly agreeable and heart-warming. It casts Dublin in a noirish albeit blustery and rain-swept light. Yet it’s Bono and the Edge who are the revelation. Bono sets to one side the pomposity with which he is, rightly or wrongly, synonymous. He seems in on the joke – much as he was when he pranked Pat Kenny 30 years ago.
Love or loathe them, U2 have to be credited with staying in Ireland through the 1980s. This was at a time when most couldn’t get out of the country fast enough
The wild card in all this is cantankerous US presenter David Letterman, who comes to Dublin for the first time to hang out with Bono and the Edge (Larry Mullen Jr and Adam Clayton, being otherwise occupied, do not participate). In between a slouching Dart trip to the Forty Foot in Sandycove and a conversation with Panti Bliss, he discovers a loquacious Bono who, in an interview at Marsh’s Library, besides St Patrick’s Cathedral, is upfront about his activism causing tensions within the group.
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“It’s an awkward one,” Bono says. “I’m turning what we create as a band into currency that I chose to spend in these areas. They by and large support me. But I do know I test their patience.”
The Edge, though, is more amused by Bono than exasperated. “We acknowledge each other’s idiosyncrasies,” he shrugs. ”“We’re not in competition.”
Love or loathe them, U2 have to be credited with staying in Ireland through the 1980s. This was at a time when most couldn’t get out of the country fast enough. They, however, remained and tried to make a difference.
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Strange though it may sound in 2023, the idea of four famous people opting to live in Dublin when London or New York beckoned was a revelation. Their songs tussled with Martin Luther King and Bloody Sunday – but their real message was that Dublin didn’t have to be a backwater. They remain proud of their home and that is keenly felt in this film by Morgan Neville (who won an Oscar for his documentary 20 Feet From Stardom).
“Do you want to see a Dublin walk,” Bono says to Letterman as they head to McDaid’s off Grafton Street for a singsong with Glen Hansard, Loah, Imelda May, Grian Chatten of Fontaines DC and others. Letterman, who has embraced grumpiness as a lifestyle choice, has no idea what he’s talking about so Bono puffs himself up and does his best impersonation of a tough townie.
Fans will differ as to the value of revisiting such an iconic songbook and live footage filmed at the Ambassador suggests that many of these tracks were perfectly fine as they were
“The thing we’ve all been given is a connection to our regular lives,” says the Edge of their decision to stay in Ireland. “Our friends are the same friends we’ve always had. The band have been protected from the worst excesses of rock ‘n roll stardom by being here”
A Sort of Home Coming coincides with the release of a new album featuring acoustic and string-laden reworkings of U2′s classic hits. Fans will differ as to the value of revisiting such an iconic songbook and live footage filmed at the Ambassador suggests that many of these tracks were perfectly fine as they were.
That isn’t to detract from Morgan’s documentary – a love letter to U2 that doubles as one to Dublin. St Patrick’s Day and the associated hoopla can feel like Irish-America’s revenge against the old country. This, however, is an enjoyable ramble through the U2 back catalogue and the streets that did so much to inspire it.
