Bono Read online

  During one of your first visits to Paris, more than twenty years ago, you told me that you were planning to write a screenplay from the point of view of a terrorist. Do you remember that?

  Oh, I do remember it very well, yes. I was trying to figure out how one Irishman could take the life of another Irishman in such cold blood. I was obsessed with the thought that these same people had in every other way ordinary lives. They were milkmen, taxi drivers, schoolteachers. I worked with some people on it. What I was intrigued by was what Hannah Arendt called the banality of evil, her description of the trial of [Adolf] Eichmann, and how he used to walk his dog close to Auschwitz. And he was a lovely man—the sweetest man you could meet while you are walking your dog—and responsible for this kind of evil. It was a subject we were living with here. I don’t know if I told you about my own experience of one of the worst bombings in southern Ireland. I just very nearly escaped.

  I don’t remember you mentioning that.

  It just left a little bit of a mark. I told you that I used to have to pass through the City Centre to go home. It was two bus trips to school. I told you I used to go and look around the record stores. There was a coffee shop I used to go to called Graham Southern’s, near the bus stop. If I had the money, I’d read a music magazine or have a cup of coffee there. One day, fifteen minutes after I left, the street was blown to pieces. It was a bomb outside. It was a close call—a little street called Marlborough Street.*

  Now I understand why that terrorist story was haunting you.

  But it haunts everyone who’s lived near or close by. That’s what the terrorists intend.

  I see a distinction between two different kinds of terrorists. On the one hand, you have the bombers from the IRA or the Loyalists, or ETA in the Basque country: they don’t look for martyrdom, they fight a war. On the other you have the suicide bombers who want to be martyrs, like that girl Zarema. In modern times, a terrorist’s story is that of someone who thinks that he or she has to die first, so their people or the whole world will be better off, or saved, because others are going to die as well. It’s like The Pied Piper of Hamlin: the idea is to have as many people as possible following them off the cliff. It seems like modern terror is as much about self-hatred as hatred. It is intrinsically suicidal.

  Yeah. I guess that’s a psychological truth, that you can’t love anyone else without loving yourself. And I guess you probably can’t hate anyone else without hating yourself. But outside of the perversion and the warped mind, we have to tackle the real problems that fester and turn decent people toward indecent acts. I mean, there are some problems that haven’t been approached in Ireland, in Israel, in the Middle East. They’re not an excuse for this ill harvest we’re reaping, but they have to be approached. Love and mercy . . . Mercy is the outworking of love, but love demands that you try to see things from another person’s point of view.

  Terrorists are focused on big ideas. You’re quite aware that there are no greater idealists than terrorists. Most of them revere the notions of God and holy justice. I guess for a person like you, who is deeply religious and idealistic, it must be very disturbing.

  I’m a lot of other things as well. But you see, Michka, people who are open spiritually are open to being manipulated more easily, are very vulnerable. The religious instinct is a very pure one in my opinion. But unless it’s met with a lot of rigor, it’s very hard to control.

  Correct. But you’ve also never seen a skeptic or an atheist smash himself to pieces in order to kill as many people as possible. I mean, atheists would organize concentration camps or would plan collective starvation, but this kind of terror we are dealing with now is of a spiritual nature. You can’t hide from that.

  It’s true. Yeah, smashing other people to pieces doesn’t need the same conviction. Most terrorists want to change the material world. Well, add eternity to that, and people can go a lot further to pursue their ends. It’s a big prize, isn’t it, eternity? It’s not a two-term or a three-term presidency. [laughs] But of course, this is always a corruption of some holy thesis, whether it’s the Koran or the Bible. My understanding of the Scriptures has been made simple by the person of Christ. Christ teaches that God is love. What does that mean? What it means for me: a study of the life of Christ. Love here describes itself as a child born in straw poverty, the most vulnerable situation of all, without honor. I don’t let my religious world get too complicated. I just kind of go: Well, I think I know what God is. God is love, and as much as I respond [sighs] in allowing myself to be transformed by that love and acting in that love, that’s my religion. Where things get complicated for me, is when I try to live this love. Now, that’s not so easy.

  What about the God of the Old Testament? He wasn’t so “peace and love.”

  There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is. I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that’s why they’re so relatable. But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you’re a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross.

  Do you know this passage from the Old Testament? God is addressing Moses. He’s telling him that He is trying to teach the Jews, but they won’t go for it. They keep reverting to their bad habits. And He uses this funny phrase: “Behold, it is a stiff-necked people” (Exodus, 32:9). And I thought, this is the daily experience I have with my children! Sometimes, you’re so mad with your child that you want to throw them out the window.

  [laughs thoroughly] Yes. There are moments, and I know they have them about me.

  Speaking of bloody action movies, we were talking about South and Central America last time. The Jesuit priests arrived there with the gospel in one hand and a rifle in the other.

  I know, I know. Religion can be the enemy of God. It’s often what happens when God, like Elvis, has left the building. [laughs] A list of instructions where there once was conviction; dogma where once people just did it; a congregation led by a man where once they were led by the Holy Spirit. Discipline replacing discipleship. Why are you chuckling?

  I was wondering if you said all of that to the Pope the day you met him.

  You know, he loved to play soccer.

  Could you please, just for once, spare me the Monty Python digression?

  Apparently, he was very good in goal. You’d need to be, in his position.

  Do you think you got one of these past him?

  Let’s not get too hard on the Holy Roman Church here. The Church has its problems, but the older I get, the more comfort I find there. The physical experience of being in a crowd of largely humble people, heads bowed, murmuring prayers, stories told in stained-glass windows, the colors of Catholicism—purple, mauve, yellow, red—the burning incense . . . [suspends sentence] My friend Gavin Friday says Catholicism is the glam-rock of religion.

  So you won’t be critical.

  No, I can be critical, especially on the topic of contraception. But when I meet someone like Sister Benedicta and see her work with AIDS orphans in Addis Ababa, or Sister Ann doing the same in Malawi, or Father Jack Fenukan and his group Concern all over Africa, when I meet priests and nuns tending to the sick and the poor and giving up much easier lives to do so, I surrender a little easier.

  But you met the man himself. Was it a great experience?

  I was with a few great people: Jeff Sachs, the great economist; Bob Geldof; Quincy Jones, who’s been a mentor to me, a deadly serious m
an, but he kept whispering to me to check out the Holy Father’s shoes: ox-blood loafers, as it happens. “These are some funky slippers,” he was saying. There were some nervous giggles, but we all knew why we were there. The Pontiff was about to make an important statement about the inhumanity and injustice of poor countries spending so much of their national income paying back old loans to rich countries. Serious business. He was fighting hard against his Parkinson’s. It was clearly an act of will for him to be there. I was oddly moved . . . by his humility, and then by the incredible speech he made, even if it was in whispers. During the preamble, he seemed to be staring at me. I wondered. Was it the fact that I was wearing my blue fly-shades? So I took them off in case I was causing some offense. When I was introduced to him, he was still staring at them. He kept looking at them in my hand, so I offered them to him as a gift in return for the rosary he had just given me.

  Didn’t he put them on?

  Not only did he put them on, he smiled the wickedest grin you could ever imagine. He was a comedian. His sense of humor was completely intact. Flashbulbs popped, and I thought: “Wow! The Drop the Debt campaign will have the Pope in my glasses on the front page of every newspaper.”

  I don’t remember seeing that photograph anywhere, though.

  Nor did we. It seems his courtiers did not have the same sense of humor. Fair enough. I guess they could see the T-shirts.

  Did he really help, eventually?

  Without his support and his right hand in these matters, Diurmuid Martin, an Irish archbishop, we would not have gotten such a result. They weren’t just platitudinous words out of Castel Gandolfo on that day. Actions followed. They were tactical and strategic, and put the shoulder of the Church to a few doors that had been slammed shut on us.

  Just for the last time, I would like to go back to our tour of the dark side of religion. Appalling things seem to happen when people become religious at too early an age or when their experience of life is nonexistent. Don’t you think?

  Zealots often have no love for the world. They’re just getting through it to the next one. It’s a favorite topic. It’s the old cliché: “Eat shit now, pie in the sky when you die.” But I take Christ at his word: “On Earth as it is in Heaven.” As to the first part of your question, in my experience, the older you get, the less chance you have to transform your life, the less open you are to love in a challenging way. You tend towards love that’s more comforting and safe.

  As I told you, I think I am beginning to understand religion because I have started acting and thinking like a father. What do you make of that?

  Yes, I think that’s normal. It’s a mind-blowing concept that the God who created the Universe might be looking for company, a real relationship with people, but the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between Grace and Karma.

  I haven’t heard you talk about that.

  I really believe we’ve moved out of the realm of Karma into one of Grace.

  Well, that doesn’t make it clearer for me.

  You see, at the center of all religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the Universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “As you reap, so will you sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff.

  I’d be interested to hear that.

  That’s between me and God. But I’d be in big trouble if Karma was going to finally be my judge. I’d be in deep shit. It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross, because I know who I am, and I hope I don’t have to depend on my own religiosity.

  The son of God who takes away the sins of the world. I wish I could believe in that.

  But I love the idea of the Sacrificial Lamb. I love the idea that God says: Look, you cretins, there are certain results to the way we are, to selfishness, and there’s mortality as part of your very sinful nature, and, let’s face it, you’re not living a very good life, are you? There are consequences to actions. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death. That’s the point. It should keep us humbled . . . It’s not our own good works that get us through the gates of Heaven.

  That’s a great idea, no denying it. Such great hope is wonderful, even though it’s close to lunacy, in my view. Christ has his rank among the world’s great thinkers. But Son of God, isn’t that farfetched?

  No, it’s not farfetched to me. Look, the secular response to the Christ story always goes like this: he was a great prophet, obviously a very interesting guy, had a lot to say along the lines of other great prophets, be they Elijah, Muhammad, Buddha, or Confucius. But actually Christ doesn’t allow you that. He doesn’t let you off that hook. Christ says: No. I’m not saying I’m a teacher, don’t call me teacher. I’m not saying I’m a prophet. I’m saying: “I’m the Messiah.” I’m saying: “I am God incarnate.” And people say: No, no, please, just be a prophet. A prophet, we can take. You’re a bit eccentric. We’ve had John the Baptist eating locusts and wild honey, we can handle that. But don’t mention the “M” word! Because, you know, we’re gonna have to crucify you. And he goes: No, no. I know you’re expecting me to come back with an army, and set you free from these creeps, but actually I am the Messiah. At this point, everyone starts staring at their shoes, and says: Oh, my God, he’s gonna keep saying this. So what you’re left with is: either Christ was who He said He was—the Messiah—or a complete nutcase. I mean, we’re talking nutcase on the level of Charles Manson. This man was like some of the people we’ve been talking about earlier. This man was strapping himself to a bomb, and had “King of the Jews” on his head, and, as they were putting him up on the Cross, was going: OK, martyrdom, here we go. Bring on the pain! I can take it. I’m not joking here. The idea that the entire course of civilization for over half of the globe could have its fate changed and turned upside-down by a nutcase, for me, that’s farfetched . . .

  But sometimes I’m not far from thinking the world has been shaped by a bunch of nutcases, or one big nutcase hiding somewhere in some big fancy invisible lighthouse. [Bono laughs] Now, that cartoon stuff of yours has taken possession of my brain. What I mean here is that Christ was not the only one to make those kind of claims. There have been other prophets.

  That’s right. But they didn’t change anything . . .

  Actually, you can look at the history of religion like the history of rock music. Different bands competing for the same market.

  Steady on! [laughs]

  I’m half serious about that. It’s just that there was something in the air. I don’t think it’s so off the wall to say that. You might take that famous quote by John Lennon—the one that almost got the Beatles burned at the stake in the Sun Belt—in reverse. You might say that in his time, Jesus Christ was as popular as the Beatles.

  That’s very funny, Michka. I want to avoid remixing here, but I guess we can say that. You know, Jesus . . . He had a real messianic complex. [laughs]

  He was a bit like you, wasn’t He?

  No, He only thought He was Bono! [laughs for quite a while] No, but seriously, if we only could be a bit more like Him, the world would be transformed. All I do is get up on the Cross of the Ego: the bad hangover, the bad review. When I look at the Cross of Christ, what I see up there is all my shit and everybody else’s. So I ask myself a question a lot of people have asked: Who is this man? And was He who He said He was, or was He just a religious nut? And there it is, and that’s the question. And no one can talk you into it or out of it.

  You said to me: “Nobody goe
s to church, nobody’s religious anymore.”

  But at the same time you’re saying to me religion is everywhere . . .

  The religious instinct is everywhere.

  The experience I have every day is that people look for magic.

  They’re right to look for magic.

  I don’t know, really. To us, celebrity is magic, and it’s certainly a new cult. I mean, people try to get close to celebrities, because they think they convey some sort of magic, that they bring them luck, actually. Anyway, if we want to sum this up, someone who becomes a terrorist and someone who goes to a U2 concert have something in common. They both want to escape from the materialistic, dull daily life. You see what I mean? Both are looking for transcendence.

  But there are two routes out of town. There always were, there always are. There’s transcendence and there’s the cover version, or the dull copy: junk-food transcendence of drugs, the “easy to digest but finally that’s gonna give you heart disease” religion. But I tend to believe that people who just want a cheap way out of their life can find zealotry in lots of places. The true life of a believer is one of a longer, more hazardous or uphill pilgrimage, and where you uncover slowly the sort of illumination for your next step. Religious people, generally, they freak me out. Honestly, I start twitching when I’m around them. But sometimes, maybe weirdos are the only people who really know they need God.

  And what about the other ones? What would they need God for?

  I look around at the twentieth century: it’s not a great advertisement for unbelief. Where did communism bring Russia? Look at what more openness is bringing to China. I will say this for the Judeo-Christian tradition: we have at least written into the DNA the idea that God created every man equal, and that love is at the heart of the Universe. I mean, it’s slow. The Greeks may have come up with democracy, but they had no intention of everyone having it. We have to conclude that the most access to equality in the world has come out of these ancient religious ideas. [pause] Michka, are you still there?