bono adam clayton larry mullen the edge me © 1996-2004 khanada rhodes |
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paul's parents were in what is termed a "mixed" marriage, where his father was a roman catholic and his mother was a protestant. this meant that paul and his brother had to be brought up in either the catholic or the protestant church. so each sunday, his father would go to mass at saint canice's roman catholic church, while the rest of the family would attend the local church of ireland protestant church. this seemed to work well and continued in the matter of norman and paul's education. they attended primary school at glasnevin national school in botanic avenue, glasnevin (a ten minute bus ride away) although there was a nearer catholic school in ballymun. one of paul's childhood friends was derek rowan who lived in a nearby street. like paul he was brought up in the protestant faith, thought in the more extreme plymouth brethren denomination. he was later to become a member of the lypton village comprising paul and another friend, fionan harvey, who would be better known as gavin friday. in 1971 when he was eleven, paul left glasnevin, to move to saint patrick's secondary school in the city centre. here he got involved in the sporting side of school life as well as excelling at chess, but all the travelling each day and the school's stricter regime started to alienate paul, and as a result of throwing dog excrement at his spanish teacher when she was having lunch in a nearby park, he was more or less asked to leave. luckily his parents had heard about mount temple, dublin's first comprehensive, co-educational and, most important of all, non-denominational school. paul started mount temple in september 1972. here he did not have to wear school uniform and the whole ethos of the school made for a more relaxed atmosphere. some of his friends in his early years at mount temple included reggie manuel, cheryl gillard, mark holmes, shane fogerty, zandra laing, and maeve o'regan. in the summer of 1974 paul went to criccieth in north wales with the "bee dees" - the boy's department of the ymca whose bible classes he occasionally attended with derek rowan. fairly soon after his return in september 1974, a major tragedy shattered his life - his mother, iris, died of a brain hemorrhage. this one event naturally had a disturbing effect on paul, resulting in him being more rebellious one hand and yet seeking out the spiritual side of life on the other. at mount temple, paul enjoyed the subjects of art, history, and drama. he eventually became a member of the school drama group. he also joined the christian union at this time and was particularly close to a girl called maeve o'regan, though it was another pupil, alison stewart, to whom he would eventually swear his allegiance. in the autumn term of 1976 he answered the invitation from larry mullen junior, two years his junior, to meet at his house with the intention of forming a band. although paul claimed that he could play the guitar, it was his way of organising the group that endeared him to the others. although he couldn't yet sing to a decent standard, his abilities of being able to communicate easily and write poetry made him a good choice for the role of front man and songwriter. as the fledging U2 developed into a half decent band, another group of people around paul grew into a distinct group that would be known as the lypton village, each with their own individual nickname. peter rowan became guggi and it is he who gave paul the name bono, from a hearing aid shop just off o'connell street in dublin, called "bonovox" (meaning "good voice" in latin). from the earliest U2 gigs onwards it would be bono who would cajole and communicate with the audience in order to gain their attention, if not their acceptance of the band. he even (along with gavin friday) took stagecraft lessons to improve his impact upon audiences. in the background he was constantly writing lyrics. many of these were influenced by his new-found interest in christianity. songs such as "street mission," "alone in the light," and "false prophet" eventually gave way to more contemporary teenage influences like "boy/girl," "cartoon world," and "stories for boys." like adam, bono was keen for U2 to succeed and went as far as going over to london in frustration at the lack of interest from the big london based record companies at the time, in order to stir up some interest in U2. eventually U2 did "make it" with a record deal from island records and the money to make albums and tour foreign lands. whenever they played a gig, it would be bono who was the link between the band and the audience. at times this might be just with words, on other occasions it might be jumping into the audience or walking around the venue. as U2's audiences got bigger, bono's antics got more and more outrageous. by 1983 bono would regularly climb scaffolding at the side of the stage to wave a flag or jump up onto the balconies to sing. things came to a head in los angeles in 1983 where bono had to jump down twenty feet into the audience below to escape getting trapped by fans in the balcony. even then his clothes got ripped to shreds! from then on bono would rely more on the music and the lyrics to unite the band and the audience, though a regular feature of U2 concerts since then has been to bring a member of the audience onto the stage, either a girl fan to dance with, or a male fan in some cases to play guitar. lyrically, U2's songs grew away from basic spiritual matters and were now concerned with issues such as human rights ("mothers of the disappeared"), drugs ("bad" and "running to stand still"), sexual desire ("with or without you"), and politics "sunday bloody sunday" and "new year's day"). more often than not bono would use his performance as a way of preaching to his audience about some event or issue that was in the news, such as the enniskillen bombing speech in the rattle and hum film. as bono was more often than not the spokesman for the band off-stage, it was he who started to take the flak as the one pro-U2 music press became disenchanted with the band. by the time of rattle and hum, U2 had grown into one of the biggest bands in the world and had more or less achieved what they set out to do as a group. musically there was still plenty to come, but as bono said as U2 played one of their final gigs of the 1980s at the point depot in dublin, "it's time to think it up all over again." when the "new" U2 emerged in 1991, it was obvious that they had re-invented themselves, both on a musical and on a visual level. bono typified this change with a character he created called the fly. his hair was much shorter and died black; he wore dark sunglasses like roy orbison or lou reed and was dressed in a black leather jump suit. he smoked cheroots and swore frequently, painting a picture of a futuristic cyberpunk. from this zoo tv character metamorphosed other characters - the mirrorball man, dressed in silver, was suited to the american audiences, whilst europe and the far east got mister macphisto, the devil dressed in a gold lame suit and platform heels, with an english upper-class accent, who liked to ring the rich and famous from the stage of U2 concerts. bono himself was now rich and famous, being fested by models, politicians, and even film stars. he even got to sing with one of his heroes - old blue eyes himself - frank sinatra! bono has always been in demand by other musicians to sing on their records. amongst his most memorable have been: "do they know it's christmas" (band aid), "in a lifetime" (clannad), "my wild irish rose" (bringing it all back home), "hallelujah" (leonard cohen), and "new day" (wyclef jean). at the same time, bono's humanitarian causes have been developed via his christian beliefs from an interest in human rights, through environmental issues, the aids issue, the war in bosnia, to third world debt. as an ambassador for the jubilee 2000 "drop the debt" campaign and netaid he would meet such superstars as muhammed ali on one side through to pope john paul on the other as well as winning several awards for his work. apart from song writing, bono's long-term film screenplay project, the million dollar hotel, finally came to fruition in 2000 when it was first shown at the berlin film festival. bono made a brief cameo appearance in the film as well as in entropy, a film by rattle and hum producer, phil joanou. health wise, bono has had his problems over the years, such as at the 1997 popmart concert in sarajevo. things came to a head in 1999 when sinus trouble led to an operation. he has since given up smoking. in all of this madness, bono has remained married to his teenage sweetheart, alison stewart, for almost twenty years. they now have four children: two daughters, memphis eve and jordan, and two songs, elijah bob patricius guggi q, and the latest addition john abraham, who was born in may 2001. U2
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