Surrender by Bono - Sinead Crowley reviews his autobiography

A heart that is broken is a heart that is open...

This is a book that begins with open heart surgery. After hinting at it in interviews – and indeed in songs – Bono confirms in Surrender that he did have emergency, life-saving surgery in 2016 on his ‘eccentric heart’. And then, over more than 550 pages he proceeds to lay that heart bare again, with a wide-ranging, detailed, occasionally (and deliberately) meandering but ultimately fascinating uncovering of a life people have been trying to peer into for over forty years.

Surrender is loosely based around forty U2 songs, each one triggering a memory, a reflection or an explanation of a turn in the road. The opening section takes the singer and the reader back to Dublin in the 1970s, and a reasonably middle-class upbringing for the time – a Da with a steady job and a decent car, holidays to Mosney, a big brother with a career in Aer Lingus and, as explained in one of the book's many beautifully delivered anecdotes, the foil wrapped meals that went with it.

But Bono's life was blown apart by the death of Iris Hewson when her youngest son was just fourteen, a tragedy that left the teenager searching for someone else to hear his voice. His mother’s presence is everywhere in his early work and indeed remains a part of it to the present day- he admits he almost pulled the song Iris from the 2014 release Songs of Innocence because the grief was still so raw. The loss and rage created by her absence needed an outlet but luckily for the young Paul David, it wasn't long before music, friendship and love of another kind arrived in his life.

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Listen: Bono reads an extract from Surrender

This story begins in Finglas and, although the singer goes on to travel the world, he, and the book remain rooted in Ireland. Bono is generous in name checking those who helped him out along the way, from the neighbours on Cedarwood Road to the engineers and producers who worked on various U2 albums, including Brian Eno, whose esoteric conversation style was like a college education to the young Dublin foursome. This being Ireland, many of the side characters in Surrender are familiar to the reader, too. An inspirational teacher at Bono's daughter’s primary school turns out to be renowned singer Iarla Ó Lionáird while a story about a soul-searching session at Captain Americas on Grafton Street ends with an unexpected cameo from Louis Walsh.

After forty years as a lyricist, Surrender shows that Bono is very comfortable with longer form writing. The book is entertaining, frequently hilarious, and written in an engaging, conversational style that may well see the audio version being as popular as the printed book. Dublin of the 1970s is brought skilfully to life, from a house in Stonybatter, transformed by a funeral into ‘a factory producing sandwiches and tea’ to the relatable challenge of having to get a bus into the city centre and back out again to attend a school five miles down the road. That bus journey, however, led to visits to the Dolphin Discs record shop on Friday afternoons and a schoolboy’s love of music was nourished and grew.

A lot of the U2 origin story has already been well documented, the four boys from different backgrounds arriving at the same progressive North Dublin school, the note left on the Mount Temple noticeboard by Larry Mullen looking for others to join a band. But Surrender teases out those bullet points and gives a more rounded picture of the journey from school hall to world stage. Alongside nascent talent, the band possessed a useful combination of self-belief and the courage to chance their arms, whether that be Bono heading to London to hand cassette tapes to journalists or the band booking the 1200 capacity National Stadium when the best crowd they could hope for was a fraction of that number. They, and their ambitious manager built it - and people came.

Listen: Bono reads an extract from Surrender

Where books about musicians and music are concerned, the description of the creative process is often the hardest thing to get right. In Surrender Bono stresses the importance of U2 as a four piece, with all members contributing to the song-writing process, and he’s scrupulous in his acknowledgement of the contribution of producers like the aforementioned Brian Eno as well as U2 stalwart Steve Lillywhite, with the recording of Boy described as ‘the five of us on a sugar rush of excitement for the music’. The band’s particular method of song writing is best described in a chapter set in Berlin, during the recording of Achtung Baby, a fraught period which was the closest, according to drummer Larry Mullen that they ever came to breaking up but which resulted in an album many feel is their finest piece of work. The band is working together – sometimes working against each other – and it’s a claustrophobic, emotional time but out of the storm ‘furious beauty’ emerges. This book is, however, ultimately a singer’s story and some of the most vivid artistic moments can be found when the band is playing live in front of an audience. Bono takes the reader with him from the dressing room to the stage – and yes, there are nerves – and celebrates that unmistakable sensation when singer steps into the song and band and audience become one, the moment when ‘the song is singing me’.

The musical journey continues, the Joshua Tree is chopped down to construct the material that will lead to Achtung Baby, and beyond. But then a second act emerges. Bono’s journey toward activism began with songs and performances but over the years he decided it was not enough to lend his name to campaigns, he wanted to work on them, or even instigate them himself. This was not a straightforward process – Bono admits he had to unlearn a lot about what he thought of as ‘poverty’ and on issues like economics had to go ‘back to school’. Meanwhile the journey that took him from Croke Park to the White House and across Africa saw him sitting down with players who would not usually be found in the audience at a rock concert, and some whose beliefs were in direct opposition to those previously expressed by the band. His decision to do business across the political spectrum was not always appreciated by the rest of U2 ,or even his own family members, but Surrender makes it clear he feels the end result was worth the effort.

The work rate was punishing, organizations like RED, ONE and DATA stacking up while the singer grappled with issues including ’White Messiah Syndrome’ and the need to balance targeted intervention with the dismantling of the causes of poverty itself. If that doesn’t sound very rock and roll well, it’s because it wasn’t. At times during this section of the book the narrative slows down and when Ali Hewson raises an eyebrow at the IMF reports stacked on the bedside table, it’s likely some readers will do the same. Meanwhile, when the singer starts to look at some of his new advocacy colleagues as ‘band members’ he has to decide what impact his new direction is having on the old crew.

But in a book where Bono has decided to open up every aspect of his life to the reader, a global aid conference in Arusha is as central to his story as an appearance at the Oscars. And, while it would have presumably been easier to hang out in Killiney or at a nice pink house in the South of France, in Surrender Bono makes it clear he wanted to harness his fame and use it for something ‘more useful than getting a table in a busy restaurant’. His religious faith is also a constant in his story and undoubtably behind many of his actions and decisions.

There are plenty of headline grabbing moments in this book – Bono’s discovery that his cousin was in fact his half-brother, his fiery but eventually very loving relationship with his father, the threats to his family when the band became famous. Meanwhile, U2’s split with Paul McGuinness is revealed to be far more nuanced than a simple decision on behalf of the manager to retire. There are admissions too, if not quite of failure, then of misjudgments, among them the decision to release Songs of Innocence free of charge which Bono says was entirely his idea. He also says that the decision to move one of the U2 companies to Holland – a decision that attracted more criticism than any other in their long career - ‘maybe went too far’ and that the band dug its heels in, displaying a stubborn streak.

Another refreshingly honest section takes place late at night in Renards nightclub in Dublin. Out out for the evening, the actor Cillian Murphy makes the classic admission ‘I loved your early stuff, but -’ and goes on to question what happened to Bono’s lyrics between the days of One Tree Hill and Vertigo. The singer defends himself and his work, but it’s clear he relishes the challenge.

That episode in Renards takes place in a chapter called Vertigo, which contains everything from songwriting, to the band’s collaboration with Apple to the joy of late-night beers, and is a good example of how Surrender uses songs as starting off points, and rarely sticks to a conventional linear narrative. In this book, just as in good conversations, memories ping other memories and chats are circular and often all the more revealing for it.

And then comes the third stage of the book – the third age? - which sees Bono coming home, to Temple Hill in South Dublin and his family. The four children are now grown and two have chosen a life in the spotlight themselves. Meanwhile their Dad, who turned sixty during a global pandemic is asking the big questions about where to go from here, when ‘here’ has been ‘everywhere’. Should he keep knocking on doors? Should he keep performing? Or should performance become central to his life again?

‘It’s healthy to question why anyone should be still listening to us as a band. Asking if our song is complete. In this moment I am questioning the question. Now I find myself wishing away the freedom to be anything but the singer and the song.’

Listen: Bono reads an extract from Surrender

He’s certainly not the first person to take stock but Bono is lucky because the landlady, as always, has his back. Although it’s a quiet one, Ali Hewson’s presence is rock solid throughout this book, her story inextricably intertwined with Bono’s own. Married when they were barely out of their teens, Ali went on to travel a long road with her husband - apart from the times when she thought it best to let him journey alone and then find his way home. Several sections of this book are, quite simply a love letter from Bono to his wife, and a fervent thank you to her for his family and his security. Forty years later, two hearts still beating as one.

Surrender will turn up in a lot of stockings this Christmas. Music lovers will enjoy a trip back to the days when mosh pits were sweaty and radio play was all important, while some readers may well be surprised by the level at which Bono’s activism goes far beyond photo opportunities. Meanwhile the U2 fans, the die hards will pore over it, and relish the opportunity to follow Bono into his home, his bedroom (complete with silent, but never switched off iPhone) and his head.

Surrender is the closest most of those fans will ever come to having a pint with the man himself and they’ll find him very entertaining company. In many ways this book is a ‘thank you’ to them too.

Surrender is published by Penguin

Surrender by Bono - Sinead Crowley reviews his autobiography

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