When Bono takes the road for a tour, he generally brings about 200 trucks, a scene that weighs around 170 tonnes, hundreds of employees and three Lycée friends named Adam, Larry and Edge. But when he came out in early 2023 to promote his memories, Addition: 40 songs, a story, He brought little apart from a table and chairs, a false beer and a keyboardist, cellist and harp player.
The shows were a hybrid concert of unique rock and a Broadway style production in which Bono paid tribute to his wife, Ali Hewson, to his three group comrades, and to his late father, Paul Hewson, often stopping to make classics U2 as “where the streets have no name”, “with or without you”, and “I will follow” in the radical way.
The tour only managed only a handful of markets around the world and has never played something bigger than a theater, so the vast majority of U2 fans did not have the ability to experiment. It finally changes on May 30, when the film BOno: Redition stories Landed on Apple TV +. It was created at the Cannes Festival earlier in the month.
In the middle of a very busy press day in Cannes, we had 18 minutes with Bono to discuss his first solo program, the new documentary, the status of the long -awaited new album of the U2, and the health of drummer Larry Mullen Jr., who missed the group’s recent residence to recover from an injury.
Most of the books, even for very high levels, are only a series of public interviews and readings. What made you want to do something so radically different?
You put your finger on it. The stage game came out of a desire not to participate in a promotional book tour and keep my own interest in this. I didn’t know I could do it. And become other people was a bit of a vacation for me, number one. But then playing my father with the tour of my neck, the turn of my head … to play Luciano Pavarotti was quite the challenge. And then I transformed our rock & roll group into three chairs and a table.
You are used to a fairly large scene, a fairly large production budget and all kinds of accessories. This time, you had very little. This had to force you to show creativity given these limits.
That’s right. There is the maximalism of the U2 spectacle in all areas of this table and chairs. If I was not Irish, it would be pretentious to speak Last band of Krapp and Samuel Beckett. But there is a simplicity that I liked to learn, or to relearn, could you say, because in our beginnings, the kind of fireworks were only the mood in which you were. The Pyro jumped into a crowd, and all this excitement that would cause. I started to get into gestures and understand how powerful a simple gesture could be. A movement of the hand. A head tour. Look at one person in the crowd.
Coming back to your adolescence, you have never really done a full concert without the other guys from U2. Have you had an apprehension about the scene by yourself?
I was terrified. But I seem to appreciate this. My medication of choice puts me in a place where I am not comfortable because I think I learn more when I am there. And I am also a student of artists who wish to break the fourth wall. Iggy Pop, for me, was just a master. He is a master of unpredictability. Spontaneity. A master of walking in a song and becoming the song.
But there were then actors like Mark Rylance. I went to see Mark Rylance in (the play) Jerusalem. I couldn’t believe it. And I felt this conflicting artist.
Patti Smith. You see it in it. She is not comfortable on a raised scene. A show that I saw Patti Smith Group, and she entered behind, fought, went to bed, through the crowd. And got up on stage. What entry.
I tried it backwards in my twenties. But I like these artists who, in your opinion, could break the fourth wall, could sit on your knees, bite you, could steal you, could tamp you, could make love with you, could chase you on the street, could break your heart. I wanted to see if I could be this kind of interpreter.
Have you seen Springsteen in Broadway Or any other recent one-man show to inspire how to do this?
I saw Springsteen in Broadway. I mean, every time I see Bruce, it changes my life in one way or another. Opera, for example. He is Irish-Italian. He gives you permission to go to the Opera. “Jungleland.” It’s an opera right there. I saw him twice on Broadway, and I knew I would better find something different because I couldn’t touch that. I just tried to create these different characters and play them.
You are supported by the keyboardist Jacknife Lee, the cellist Kate Ellis and the Harp Gemma Doherty player during the show. How did they help you reshape the songs and approach your music in a different way?
Jackknife is a bit of a genius. Edge is impressed by his arrangements. By the way, didn’t think: “Where’s the guitar in there?” Edge doesn’t think like that. It’s just like, “wow. This is another feeling that the song has now.”
I had the privilege of singing “Sunday Bloody Sunday” in (Doherty) of Derry who was a child of the peace process. It is of this city. She plays the harp and she is an innovator. She also has a little punk spirit. And so she adds distortion to the harp, and she is a big singer.
This version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” … I am afraid that I will never reach her again because she took me elsewhere. I felt like Nina Simone crossed the room, and I said to myself: “Wow”. Kate Ellis, I think it was Philip Glass who said it was one of the most amazing cells he had ever worked. I was surrounded by size.
But I always have this random thing before going on stage. I can be really easy and walk on stage and feel confident at night and I can’t wait to do it, or I want to vomit in the bathroom. I do not seem to be at the top, even in the sixties. And when I receive a break, which apparently arrives in the coming months, I might should go see a shrink. Maybe I should lie on this sofa. But I guess the public is the shrink here. I mean, if I think about it, that’s what I do.
The show is a tribute to your father in many ways. Have you done this to reimburse him for everything he has done for you?
Certainly. I think I wanted to get closer to him, and I ended up doing exactly that. Well, he ended up in the star of the show. He had the best lines. It made me laugh. And play it night after night … then just these fucking. And I say: “You know that Pavarotti sounded the house, and he is looking for a song?” “Did he sound the bad number?” He was funny. I understand it better.
Your former publisher, Jann Wenner, sent me on this road. He was 20 years ago after one of these Herculean interviews with which you do Roller Where you put us to the test, and these are days that have felt weeks and weeks that have felt days. And finally, he said, “I think you owe your father excuses.” And I said to myself, “What? I just told you how difficult it was.” He said, “No, no, you just told me how difficult you were.” When I apologized to my father, it changed a lot for me. Unfortunately, he was not there.
You literally speak in his voice, you sit on his chair, get it on stage. It is a fairly powerful thing. I’m sure it was cathartic.
I do not know enough about the theater to find out if it has been done before, but I may have to put a health warning. I’m not sure we are covered. But what do you know? There was a part of me that was just more concerned that people make fun of my jokes.
Do we trust people who are no longer funny? I’m not sure. And people do not come to U2 emissions for belly laughs. But I have never been in a great conversation that did not have.
Andrew Dominik is the director of the film. What approach do you want him to adopt to capture this show?
He made a film called Chopper, And this is one of my favorite films. And he featured Eric Bana when Eric Bana was an actor. Not the Eric Bana that we know now. Obviously, it was excellent for working with non-actors. He worked with Nick Cave, so I knew he understood music.
I had met him and loved him. We have shared social circles. He makes my wife laugh a lot out of herself. He has real deafness and practical deafness. When we discuss a scene or something else, if he didn’t like what I said, he would be like: “I can’t hear you, guy.” But I am grateful to him. I am so grateful to him because he took these performances out of me. I don’t know how he did that. And its lighting. And with Erik Messerschmidt like his DP and a whole multitude of other brilliant people around us, we had this thing.
It does not seem to have just recorded this show. He said, “Look, it’s another art form, Bono. And you will have to let me take it in a different place.” I said: “Well, I just want the show on stage.” “You have to let me take it in another place.” And I don’t know if it happened where he wanted me to go, but I’m very proud of the work we have done together.
The latest album of new U2 songs took place eight years ago. This is the longest gap of all time between albums. Fans become restless. What can you tell them to keep their morale?
Well, they are right. And nostalgia should not be tolerated for too long, but sometimes you have to face the past to go to the future and today. To come back now, it is our desire. Return to this moment in which we are. We recorded. And it looks like me a future. We had to go through things, and we are on the other side.
How is Larry? Does he play with you guys in the studio?
We played in the room together, the four of us. And I can tell you that he is completely through the injury storm he has crossed. His game is the most innovative. It is just all about the group. He doesn’t want to talk about something else, which is quite incredible.
By the way, being a group in a room where each individual musician has a singular and collective role is so rare because music is assembled these days. And even a part of our music that we have assembled, and we will refer it again, but try to capture a moment of a rock & roll group in flight is at the heart of this disc that we have made that we have recorded, but we have not finished.
Do you know when it might be over?
No.
I receive the hook here, so I will end up a question on Popular. The 30 -year birthday is coming. Will we have a Popular 30 box?
Well, I never thought about it. In fact, I’m sure someone intelligent thought about it. But if they did, I am not aware of it. And the popmart tour film in Mexico is one of the most extraordinary U2 emissions of all time. I love imaging around this album. And the only thing this album was not was pop.
