Everyone has a Bono story. It’s the 1980s and I’m a star-struck teenager in the snug of The Dockers pub in Dublin down on the quays. It’s Christmas Eve. Cigarettes are allowed in the pubs and the air is heavy with smoke and the scent of the best toasted sandwiches in the land. He’s sitting beside me with a guitar drinking Jack Daniels. He’s strumming softly and I can’t stop smiling. Smartphones have not been invented so I sit there taking photographs using only my eyes and my mind.
Being a journalist has given me a few more Bono stories over the years. I’m high up in Liberty Hall reporting on an extravagant firework display. He’s being rushed away by security people but when I say his name he stops and talks to me, gives me a good quote for my piece, compliments an article I wrote. He is kind. I’m in St Stephen’s Green and I’m laughing into my notebook because he’s carrying a lamb into the park. The day before he, and the rest of U2, have been granted the Freedom of the City and now, according to the old laws, they have permission to graze sheep there.
I’m in The Irish Times office and he’s come in to talk to journalists about his work in Africa with the One Foundation. I’m sitting beside him in a conference room, because earlier I found out where he’d be sitting and I put my coat on the next seat, bagsying the chair. I’m beside him as he answers questions for an hour. Beside him and beside myself. Afterwards, I ask him to sign my phone cover which is one of those that looks like a cassette tape. He signs his name and writes the name of a U2 album yet to be released. When he’s gone I walk outside in the rain, euphoric, holding my phone. In a few seconds the rain dissolves the writing, the cassette cover is washed clean as though Bono never happened. But I know he was there.
I love him for his words, for his music, for his good works, for his success, for his humour, for his mischief, for his nuanced Irishness, for his Dublin pride
I’m in Croker or the Point or Manchester or London singing along with the band, in deep communion with four amazing Dubliners. I see him in different places over the decades because you can’t really move through Dublin without spotting him somewhere but I mostly manage to keep my distance in the Clarence Hotel or in a restaurant in Dalkey or on Grafton Street.
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I know the rules. I know it’s not cool to love Bono but I do. As much as it’s feasible to use the word love about someone you don’t know in real life. Someone who is as flawed as any other human, who has made mistakes, who can drive people up the wall. I love him for his words, for his music, for his message, for his character, for his good works, for his success, for his humour, for his mischief, for his nuanced Irishness, for his Dublin pride, for his faith. And I know some people will find this embarrassing, be embarrassed for me, but I don’t care what anybody else thinks. Feck off with your scorn. Mine is a groovy kind of love.
On Sunday, I take my phone outside in my garden to listen to him on BBC Radio 4′s Desert Island Discs. The sun is shining. I drink coffee and I close my eyes for half an hour as I listen. I am certain, because of the magic of that particular radio programme, because of Lauren Laverne’s interviewing technique, I will know him better by the end. And I do.
He talks about his late father, Bob Hewson. How Bob, while married to Iris, had an affair with another woman close to the family which resulted in a secret son. He talks about how he discovered this in 2000 and how he made peace with his father about it all and how he dearly loves the half-brother he never knew he had.
The show contains several excellent anecdotes. Listen back if you haven’t already. There’s one about how he nearly joined St Patrick’s Cathedral choir back before his name was a four-letter word. Another one about singing in the gym hall in Mount Temple where Larry Mullen formed the band. Bono hadn’t found his voice yet but when he sang Peter Frampton’s Show Me The Way, turning it into a prayer, he realised he could maybe be the singer he was yearning to be. There’s a moving story about why he treasures walks on Killiney Hill with his wife, Ali, and about the song of pure joy she puts on in their house in that hour when people are thinking about going to bed, a song guaranteed to keep the party going.
But it’s the mention of his half-brother that stays with me. Before he met and fell in love with my mother, my own late father fathered two children with two different women, a boy and a girl. I’ve known this information for a long time and never tried to find them but listening to Bono I realise I might like to find them now. To see how their lives turned out. To see if they are looking for us. To see if I could love my half-brother and half-sister dearly. Or even to see if it would have been better to leave well enough alone.
Bono says it himself all the time. He has a big mouth. He should bite his tongue, maybe, but he can’t. I’m glad he doesn’t. I’ll be poring over every word in his new memoir Surrender. I know I’ll find meaning and hope and solace in his story as I do in his songs. Everyone has a Bono story. I’m grateful for mine.