U2 frontman Bono 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. This ESQUIRE cover story, “Bono Has Another Story to Tell” by Senior Digital Director Madison Vain, is on Esquire.com now and will be in the Summer issue, available by June 17 everywhere magazines are sold.
On what the Edge’s grandkids call him: Bono seems surprised by the query. “Bono,” he says after a pause. He knows it might sound silly. “You have to remember,” he adds, “Edge’s mother used to call him Edge.”
On taking himself too seriously: “I’m starting to realize that I don’t trust people who don’t make me laugh…and I wonder, was I one of them?”
On recovery for open-heart surgery in 2016 and its complications: Recovery was hard, and the massive thirty-year-anniversary tour for the Joshua Tree album loomed. “The loss of air” is what he remembers most of the aftermath, a complication that arose following the successful operation. Four decades of sprinting around stadiums while singing—screaming—had given him a lung capacity far greater than his peers. But Bono suddenly felt like he’d lost control of the intake. “It terrified me,” he says. “I’d never been so terrified.”
On the TV and streaming shows he watches: Someone in his office recommended the Chef’s Table docuseries. “I said, Come on, you cannot be serious,” recalls Bono. “I’ve got to watch Chef’s Table?” Assuming you, like me, are very much a person who engages with regular life (TV), I am certain you can guess how this story ends: Bono’s first Netflix binge. He loved the episode that followed Evan Funke through Bologna (“he’s got a great value system”) and the one focused on Jeong Kwan, a Buddhist nun who cooks for visitors at her temple (“incredible!”) and, of course, the Francis Mallmann installment (“I’m like, wow. And I had just met him on tour”). His eldest, Jordan, got him into Fleabag. His second daughter, Eve, an actress who has found onscreen success in Bad Sisters and The Perfect Couple, introduced him to The Kardashians. At some point, he even caught some Love Island.
On stepping down from the shared board of his foundations ONE and (RED) in 2023: “I’m the wrong sex, wrong age, wrong color, wrong ethnicity, and I’m not African.” Still, it’s obvious how hard the decision was. Is. “You need to find your place, don’t you? Where to be useful. I had found a place where I could be useful,” he says. He misses it.
On having a messiah complex: “Any rock star worth their salt has to.”
On his politics: “I describe myself as a radical centrist. And I am sure that that sounds absurd, but I am also sure that is how we get through the future. What’s being served up on the far left and on the far right is not where we need to be.”
On what’s happening in the U.S., geopolitically: “The United States has been a promised land to a lot of people, but it looks like it’s about to break that promise,” he says. “I can understand people coming to a place where they say, ‘I don’t see why the United States has to pay for aid, drugs, or anything else in places far away where there is no vote.’ I think that position is dumb. I think it makes a lot of geopolitical troubles for you down the road, but I can understand it.” What he cannot accept is “the delight that was taken in the destruction of life-support systems—pulling them out of the wall—that’s the clue to the true nature of this. Evil walks amongst us, but it is rarely this obvious.”
On the current geopolitical climate being the moment that truly unifies Europe: “I always say, ‘Europe is a thought that needs to become a feeling.’ We’re 450 million people—we’ve got a lot. And if we can keep the European project a romantic one, that could be a great thing.”
On the new U2 album the band is working on: It’s early days, but Bono can’t believe how good the new material sounds. “Everyone in the band seems desperate for it,” he says. “It’s like their lives depend on it.” He pauses briefly. “And, as I tell them, they do.”
On U2’s audience: “I hope they’re going to still be there for us. We’ve pushed them to their elastic limit over the years. And now it’s a long time that we’ve been away. But I still think that we can create a soundtrack for people who want to take on the world.”
[Photo Credit: Anton Corbijn for Esquire Magazine]
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