I am finding myself merging my world of interviews with my blogs. I began to feel as if a puzzle piece was missing from my blogspot, a hole in the platforms of my words...through this I began to see, that interviews were the perfect fit.
So...alas, here is one of my favorites, an incredible interview from none other than Rolling Stones.
The Rolling Stone Interview: Bono
JANN S. WENNER
"By not encouraging me to be a musician, even though that's all he ever wanted to be, he's made me one"
-BONO
On the first weekend of October, I visited Bono in Cancun, Mexico, where U2 were on a weeklong break before the second North American leg of the band's Vertigo Tour. Bono and U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr. were both there with their families -- in fact, it was Elvis Mullen's tenth birthday that weekend, and a barbecue was planned at the house Bono had rented on the beach, where he, his wife of twenty-three years, Ali, and their four children were staying.
With a storm gathering outside, Bono and I retreated to the bedroom, where we sat down to begin our conversation. We started at noon and talked into the evening, then started again the next morning. In all, we talked for more than ten hours. Anyone who has been to a U2 concert knows Bono's dramatic ability to tell a story and his sheer love of words.
What was your childhood in Dublin like?
I grew up in what you would call a lower-middle-class neighborhood. You don't have the equivalent in America. Upper working class? But a nice street and good people. And, yet, if I'm honest, a sense that violence was around the corner.
Home was a pretty regular three-bedroom house. The third bedroom, about the size of a cupboard, they called the "box room" -- which was my room. Mother departed the household early: died at the graveside of her own father. So I lost my grandfather and my mother in a few days, and then it became a house of men. And three, it turns out, quite macho men -- and all that goes with that. The aggression thing is something I'm still working at. That level of aggression, both outside and inside, is not normal or appropriate.
You're this bright, struggling teenager, and you're in this place that looks like it has very few possibilities for you. The general attitude toward you from your father -- and just the Irish attitude -- was "Who the fuck do you think you are? Get real." Is that correct?
Bob Hewson -- my father -- comes from the inner city of Dublin. A real Dublin man but loves the opera. Must be a little grandiose himself, OK? He is an autodidact, conversant in Shakespeare. His passion is music -- he's a great tenor. The great sadness of his life was that he didn't learn the piano. Oddly enough, kids not really encouraged to have big ideas, musically or otherwise. To dream was to be disappointed. Which, of course, explains my megalomania.
I was a bright kid, all right, early on. Then, in my teenage years, I went through a sort of awkward phase of thinking I was stupid. My schoolwork goes to shit; I can't concentrate. I started to believe the world outside. Music was my revenge on that.
I got the sense that it was kind of a dead-end situation.
Its blandness -- its very grayness -- is the thing you have to overcome. We had a street gang that was very vivid -- very surreal. We were fans of Monty Python. We'd put on performances in the city center of Dublin. I'd get on the bus with a stepladder and an electric drill. Mad s***. Humor became our weapon. Just stand there, quiet -- with the drill in my hand. Stupid teenage s***.
Just to provoke people? Performance art?
Performance art. We invented this world, which we called Lipton Village. We were teenagers when we came up with this, a way of fighting back against the prevailing bootboy mentality.
You were like the freaky kids?
Yeah. Gavin Friday -- who's doing the music for the 50 Cent movie now -- was the most surreal-looking. He had an Eraserhead haircut; he wore dresses and bovver boots. I mean, myself and my other friend Guggi -- we're still very close friends -- were handy enough. We could defend ourselves. But even though some of us became pretty good at violence ourselves, others didn't. They got the shit kicked out of 'em. I thought that was kind of normal. I can remember incredible street battles. I remember one madser with an iron bar, just trying to bring it down on my skull as hard as he possibly could, and holding up a dustbin lid, which saved my life. Teenage kids have no sense of mortality -- yours or theirs.
So that was your teen rebellion?
I don't know if that was rebellion. That was a defense mechanism. We used to laugh at people drinking. We didn't drink. Because people who spilled out of the pubs on a Friday night and threw up on the laneway -- we thought we were better than them.
You were the smart-kid clique?
We were a collection of outsiders. We weren't all the clever clogs. If you had a good record collection, that helped. And if you didn't play soccer. That was part of it. Now, when you look back, there's an arrogance to it; it's like you're looking down, really . . .
At the jocks?
At the jocks, at the skinheads, at the bootboys. Maybe it's the same arrogance my father had, who's listening to opera and likes cricket. Because it separates him.
You wrote an extraordinary song about your father, "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own." When I spoke to Edge this week, he said that you're turning into your dad.
He was an amazing and very funny man. You had to be quick to live around him. But I don't think I'm like him. I have a very different relationship with my kids than he had with me. He didn't really have one with me. He generally thought that no one was as smart as him in the room. You know that Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue" where he gives the kid a girl's name, and the kid is beaten up at every stage in his life by macho guys, but in the end he becomes the toughest man.
By not encouraging me to be a musician, even though that's all he ever wanted to be, he's made me one. By telling me never to have big dreams or else, that to dream is to be disappointed, he made me have big dreams. By telling me that the band would only last five minutes or ten minutes -- we're still here.
