Bono: Intimacy is the new punk
We have fragmentary information on what U2 are up to in the studio, working on the new album. Meanwhile, Bono’s solo cycle, which began three years ago with the autobiography “Surrender” and culminated in a tour and a film, “Stories of Surrender”, is not yet finished. These days, a “new” book by Bono is being released in Italy by Mondadori, which is titled like Andrew Dominik’s tour and film published in streaming on Apple TV. We put the adjective in quotation marks, because “Stories of Surrender” is a revised and abbreviated version of the book, with 27 chapters out of 40, rearranged to coincide with the narrative structure of the film. Originally published for the Anglo-Saxon market, the new version of the book has been made available only in Japan and now in Italy.
However, the book includes some new material, including the introduction entitled “A Tale of Two Shows: Intro Music” and an updated afterword. It is precisely the introduction that offers various insights into the phase the singer is going through, in a manner not dissimilar to our interview last spring, conducted precisely in conjunction with the presentation of the film at Cannes. “My story continues to reveal itself to me, in every new medium in which I tell it,” writes Bono, who then continues: “The paperback book in your hands contains more streamlined stories than the original, precisely to echo the narrative arc of the film. The first act of my life was family, fun… and trauma. The second act was when I found an alternative family in the band and with Ali, my wife. This third act is the confessional, when I began to understand the first two acts and I learned to talk to you about it.”
Bono expresses an interesting concept: the confessional dimension is a form of transgression, which he compares to punk:
“I haven’t felt this close to an audience since I was barely out of my teens, in 1980, when I played at the Marquee Club on Wardour Street in London. In those days, ‘intimacy’ meant people were so close that saliva got in your face. But in the world of theatre, I’m learning to be myself on stage. Myself, a place I’ve only reached fleetingly, in a few songs, in all these years of performing.
Intimacy is the new punk rock, I tell myself. What I learn is put to the test just a few months later in Las Vegas, where fame is a mask that eats away at your face, where the artist is on the menu 24/7.”
Bono then links his solo work to U2’s performance at the Sphere in Las Vegas, saying that Paul McCartney complimented him on the part where the screen transforms: “Sometimes it’s not a comfortable place to be, but that’s where the tale of two shows ends and this book begins.”
When we interviewed him last June, Bono explained the meaning of the word “Surrender”, which recurs in several U2 songs and gives the title to the book and the show:
“It’s not very easy to make peace with the world right now. And as for how I’m making peace with myself, it’s not going very well… While making peace with God is something that has always been easy for me. I’ve always felt loved for who I am, in my faith and in my religion. I titled the book ‘Surrender’ not because I knew what that word meant or how to put it into practice, but because I knew I had to address this issue.”
