Surrender begins with the U2 singer and activist nearly dying and ends with him being born. Both episodes are floridly written, a kind of poetic grandiloquence that tempers a default long-windedness throughout these 40 chapters (the “songs” of the title).
But you don’t come to the 500+-page memoir by a big-mouth vocalist of a squillion-selling stadium act for pithiness. If Paul Hewson was born with “an eccentric heart” (a medical condition, rather than a metaphysical state), he also has 130% of a civilian’s lung capacity and a self-acknowledged tendency to “speechify”. The infamous “Bono talk”, after all, welcomes newbie rock stars to fame with an avuncular survey of the pitfalls ahead.
So: not a book for anyone allergic to words. Lyrics – Bono’s own and others’ – quotes from Irish poets and bits of the Bible add to the prose that recounts, analyses, self-flagellates and pays tribute here.
If he goes on a bit, well, there is a vast amount to get through. Like many stars, from Lennon/McCartney through Madonna via John Lydon, Bono lost his mother at a young age. His rages, stubborn streak and stadium-size need for validation all come under close scrutiny, as does his complicated relationship with his late father, who, Bono finds out later in life, also fathered Bono’s cousin.
Even before U2’s debut album, 1980’s Boy, there is a great deal to contend with, not least the loss of a close friend to the Troubles, finding their astute (now ex-) manager, Paul McGuinness, and some serious quandaries about whether rock’n’roll could be God’s work. If McGuinness was U2’s fifth member, then the “immortal invisible” is the sixth. (Bassist Adam Clayton is more agnostic.)
As annoyed as many were back when U2 unexpectedly gave every iTunes owner a copy of their Songs of Innocence album in 2014 (he’s really sorry about that), Hewson clearly remains a pop star like no other, even if Chris Martin of Coldplay shares a tendril of his modus operandi.
Many give to charity, many campaign. But armed with dossiers of stats, Hewson had a frontline role in the Jubilee 2000 anti-poverty movement. Headed by British economist Ann Pettifor, this coalition of groups and celebrities of conscience – the Dalai Lama, Muhammad Ali – persuaded the US et al to cancel billions of dollars of debt from developing countries.
Bono knows he can be annoying. Fortunately, he can also be the right kind of annoying when, say, persistence and a silver tongue are needed to get big guns on side.
For the many encounters with musical greats here – he passes out on Frank Sinatra’s white sofa, worried he’s lost bladder control – the most gripping passages come where the stubborn, religious punk from Dublin unsheathes what must, admittedly, be a very silver tongue when it counts. If the “behind the music” content is strong in Surrender, the real-world behemoths are next-level: US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, Steve Jobs, Nelson Mandela, arch-conservative congressman Jesse Helms, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, various Kennedys, George Soros, presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush, Warren Buffett, Diana, Princess of Wales, Rupert Murdoch, Oprah Winfrey, Dr Anthony Fauci, Gerry Adams, Bill and Melinda Gates and the previous pope. As interesting as U2 fans may well find tales of recording Achtung Baby, the big-picture stuff means Surrender is so much more than a tale of epic Celtic rock’n’roll, quite light on the sex’n’drugs.
It’s all about the antiretrovirals. At the height of HIV/Aids, the infamous US evangelical Helms fulminated against the victims. There are few better defences of Bono’s particular combination of gab and grit than his turning Helms round on international aid for people with HIV by quoting chapter and verse of scripture at him. Cue $500m to spend on preventing mother-child HIV transmission in Africa – if not exactly an open-hearted embrace of same-sex relations closer to home.
Another episode reads like a thriller. The ongoing campaign to combat HIV in the developing world agonises about endorsing a watered-down aid announcement by the Bush Jr administration, morally compromised by the war in Iraq. Bono receives Rice’s promise that, in exchange for endorsing this interim package, the HIV money will come later. He reluctantly agrees. Aghast, Soros chides him for selling the campaign out “for a plate of lentils”. In the end, though, Rice and Bush honour the handshake and put $100bn into a plan for Aids relief known as Pepfar. As Bono reasonably exhales, it’s “a lot of lentils”.
So much of this comes under the aegis of “white saviour” work. He is alive to the accusation: in hindsight, Band Aid was tin-eared; the dearth of African representatives in the room at Jubilee and other organisations Hewson has been involved with, such as (RED), which also fights HIV in Africa, was hubristic (African partners are now on board).
He acknowledges that he leaves Ali, the wife he credits with keeping him upright and sane, at home with the kids while gallivanting off to save other people’s kids. If Bono has a tendency to wax eloquent, Surrender is also a comprehensive survey of his character flaws, his pomposity and his mistakes. One thing he really doesn’t clear up satisfactorily, though, is U2’s tax position, repeating the line that U2 is a business that has to be run on business principles, including tax efficiency (the company is based in the Netherlands).
The real eye-opener throughout is the depth, breadth and idiosyncrasy of his faith, a non-sectarian Catholicism that’s not strictly church-y. At a tender age, three of U2 attended a back-to-basics religious group known as Shalom that sought to live as first-century Christians.
He writes persuasively about learning from the US civil rights campaigners to find “doors to walk through” to move a cause forward. In the US, that means a dialogue with rightwingers expedited by faith.
He locates himself in “the compromised middle”, a pragmatist who gets things done by breaking bread with the enemy. He acknowledges that even some in his own band find that hard to live with. Most pop star memoirs are confessionals of one sort or another. This one finds Bono examining his conscience more knowledgeably than most.
• Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono is published by Hutchinson Heinemann (£25). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
