Irish singer Bono yesterday published his memoir, Surrender (Surrender), detailing his journey from his youth in Dublin to becoming the leader of U2, one of the most famous rock bands in the world.
The introspective book is organized through 40 different U2 songs, including 40 original drawings. Its launch coincides with the same day that Matthew Perry’s book goes on sale, observes the press.
In the almost 600 pages, according to The New Yorker publication a few weeks ago, the singer recognizes what the process of recovering from the death of his mother Iris was like, in 1974, when he was just 14 years old.
That time, Iris couldn’t get over the stroke she had had four days before during the wake for Gags Rankin, her father. “We rarely thought about her again. We were three Irish men (hers referring to her brothers Norman and her Bobby) and we avoided the pain that we knew thinking and talking about her would cause us. Even though it was her grandfather’s funeral, and even though Iris had fainted, we were kids, cousins, running and laughing. Until Ruth, my mother’s younger sister, came through the door saying: Iris is dying”, says the singer in the book, who acknowledges that the death of his mother ended up influencing songs like ‘I Will Follow’, ‘ Mofo’ and ‘Out of Control’.
The 62-year-old artist, whose real name is Paul David Hewson, is a long-time humanitarian activist who has lent his voice to a variety of causes, including the fight against poverty and AIDS.
a family story
In his book, moreover, he focuses on songwriting and “the pseudo-religious part of being a rock star, how we transform the messy into messianic.” “When I started writing this book, I expected to draw in detail what I had previously only sketched in songs,” Bono said in a statement when the publication was announced a few months ago. “Surrender is a word loaded with meaning for me.”
According to Entertainment Weekly, the band’s leader reflects on ‘Beautiful Day’, one of the 40 songs that appear in his memoir. That song became a true anthem of the group was released in 2000 as part of the album All That You Can’t Behind, for which they won three Grammy Awards (song of the year, recording of the year and best rock performance by a duo or group). , and has become a staple of their concerts since they first performed it live on their Elevation Tour in 2001.
In addition, the theme reflects on his own family history and his fear of having cancer, like his father; time and mortality and about friendship and family. “I knew we could write songs like that, but the trick would be not to give in to melancholy, to write with defiance and honesty,” she admits.
“The song took off and took us out of wherever we were in our lives, into orbit and back to Earth in four minutes and five seconds. Because what good is liftoff if, being so far above us, you don’t have the advantage of perspective?” she wonders.
The middle section of the song relates it to astronaut Neil Armstrong’s line on the Apollo mission to the Moon: “Suddenly I realized that that pretty little blue pea was Earth.” Everything and everyone that mattered to him could be covered with a thumb, ”said the artist.
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