who has been called ‘the father of globalisation’2 – and we shall see that Bono’s similarities to such a thoroughly establishment character go beyond their moneyed Dublin accents.) In the United States, the belief that Bono brings some vaguely understood ‘European’ value-set to the global discussion may be part of the reason that he is viewed widely there as a largely benign and politically left-liberal figure. At one of George W. Bush’s warmest public appearances with the singer (‘Bono, I appreciate your heart’), the then-president couldn’t resist an anecdote that relied for its humour on the perception that Bono was his political opposite: ‘Dick Cheney walked in the Oval Office, he said: “Jesse Helms wants us to listen to Bono’s ideas.” ’ This brought the house down, with Bono himself smiling and clapping.3 This political perception, however, is based upon a misunderstanding of both his own ‘values’ and those of institutional Europe: neither Bono nor the EU is nearly as committed to social justice and collectivist values as US pundits are wont to insist. Meanwhile, his tendency to verbal and emotional Americanisms is part of the reason he is viewed with greater suspicion in Europe – or at least, strikingly, in Britain and Ireland, where Bono is largely a figure of ridicule and the object of often-nasty abuse. The British comic magazine Viz called him ‘the little twat with the big heart’, while writer Jane Bussmann suggested in the Guardian that Bono purveys ‘self-serving bollocks’, with Africa serving a ‘masturbatory function’ for him.4 Then there is the oft-heard, surely apocryphal story of a Glasgow U2 gig when Bono silenced the audience and began a slow hand-clap, then whispered weightily: ‘Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.’ A voice cried out from the audience: ‘Well, fucking stop doin’ it then.’5
Ridicule of this sort is widespread in Ireland but rare in the Irish media, where U2’s friends are many and their influence and patronage large. Indeed, consideration of Bono in his home country is complicated by the peculiarly Irish concept of ‘begrudgery’, an alleged national tendency to tear down those who are successful. This tendency, insofar as it exists, is born of a healthy, possibly postcolonial suspicion that the world is less meritocratic than it makes out, or that success has often come at a moral cost. Sadly, begrudgery is more often bemoaned than typified: ‘fuck the begrudgers’ is Ireland’s ancient and venerable and ubiquitous version of ‘haters gonna hate’.
Petty begrudgery certainly exists; most Dubliners have probably either said or heard the following: ‘I saw Bono in town today, but I pretended not to recognise him – I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.’ In reality, however, Ireland was all too short of begrudgers during the 1990s and 2000s boom years known as the Celtic Tiger, when financiers, bond-holders, politicians, journalists, property developers and even rock stars were inflating a mad bubble that, when it burst, decimated economic life in the country. This book, in any case, has nothing to do with envy and doesn’t question the basis for Bono’s success – the music industry is probably slightly more meritocratic than most – but rather how he has chosen to use it politically.
The widely varying views of Bono across and within countries pose a dilemma for the writer, especially one writing for an international audience. How seriously can you treat a figure who is so often ridiculed, in such a range of venues, for so many reasons? There’s also the fact that Bono, as a public figure, can be hard to pin down because he works in so many registers even by the standards of our frictionless, boundaryless celebrity culture: one day, it seems, you read that he is meeting the leaders of the G8, the next that he is pursuing his ex-stylist through the courts to recover a hat; this morning he’s selling you an iPod, this evening it’s his version of the Irish peace process. Ultimately, I have endeavoured to take him as seriously as he appears to take himself, which is to say ‘very’ but with regular efforts at deprecation and light relief. The reason I take seriousness as a starting point has a only a little to do with the respect that any person is due – too much of the ridicule of Bono is dumb and misguided anyway – but more to do with the fact that he appears to be taken seriously (his organisations funded, him personally invited on to prestigious platforms) by the world’s most powerful people. To understand why they do that means rising above mere terms of abuse, most of the time anyway.
I adopt this relatively high tone with some regret – as you move down the social scale the dislike of Bono gets stronger: if Tony Blair is at one, loving extreme, then the graffiti-scrawlers of inner-city Dublin are at the other, and I would hate to think of the latter feeling entirely neglected. But in a world where the New York Times mostly treats Bono like a guru, whereas many Guardian writers treat him like a fool; where countless continental Europeans regard him as a great artist, while America’s South Park satirists depict him as literally a piece of shit; where the BBC does a slightly probing TV documentary called Bono’s Millions in 2008, then devotes a whole day of promotional radio programming to the release of U2’s new album in 2009; where a friend I meet in the pub wonders why I would want to criticise Bono, then one I meet on the street reckons my task is too easy to be a proper challenge – in such a world there is no perfect way to approach this book. I hope the way I’ve chosen makes it more likely that some of Bono’s many fans and admirers will be prepared to engage with my arguments.
I am myself neither a big fan nor a dedicated detractor of U2’s music. The Frontman considers Bono largely as a political operator, rather than as a cultural producer. Bono himself many years ago said he saw the roles as separate, and music as a largely useless vehicle for political change. So this will not be the book that decides if Achtung Baby is really better than War. But, even within those limits, it would be remiss for this book not to consider, for example, what ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ tells us about Bono’s posturing on Irish politics, or whether U2’s turn from an American toward a European visual and musical aesthetic in the early 1990s had any political analogue. Insofar as the business, the politics and the music are intertwined, it is important to reflect that, as well as to try to unravel them.
This is, obviously, not conventional biography; nor is it an effort at psychological profiling of its subject. Although I indulge in occasional speculation about his thoughts and motives, it will not, sadly, be possible to get right behind the wrap-around shades and discern what interplay of idealism and cynicism gives rise to a figure like Bono. I am loath to judge another man’s motivation, but nor would it be appropriate simply to assume, despite what many of his acquaintances have told me, that in his political and humanitarian roles ‘he means well’. The point of The Frontman is to focus not on what motivates Bono but on his rhetoric, his actions, and their consequences. For nearly three decades as a public figure, and especially in this century, Bono has been, more often than not, amplifying elite discourses, advocating ineffective solutions, patronising the poor, and kissing the arses of the rich and powerful. He has been generating and reproducing ways of seeing the developing world, especially Africa, that are no more than a slick mix of traditional missionary and commercial colonialism, in which the poor world exists as a task for the rich world to complete. In big and small ways, he has turned his attention to a planet of savage injustice, inequality and exploitation, and it is not unreasonable to argue that he has, in some ways, helped make it worse.
Has he also helped make it better? There is no doubt that some of his campaigning and the work of the organisations he supports have improved the lives, health and well-being of many people in Africa. It would be silly to insist otherwise. And it would be presumptuous in the extreme to suggest that this or any other book can omnisciently weigh up the faults and accomplishments and deliver a definitive, objective verdict. I have endeavoured to give credit to Bono where I believe it’s due, but I don’t pretend to be a neutral arbiter. I could build and wallpaper an outhouse with the literally hundreds of books and articles that explicate How Bono Makes It Better: they are readily available online and in your local library. This one sets out to make the opposite case.
Bono himself is not shy about taking a lot of credit. He recently called his campaigning ‘a movement that changed the world’.6 In the midst of the George W. Bush years, he said: ‘People openly laughed in my face when I suggested that this administration would distribute antiretroviral drugs to Africa. They said, “You
