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Summary
Summary
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * Bono--artist, activist, and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2--has written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced, and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him. * A VOGUE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"A brilliant, very funny, very revealing autobiography-through-music. Maybe the best book ever written about being a rockstar." -- Caitlin Moran, award-winning journalist
"When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I'd previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim's lack of progress ... With a fair amount of fun along the way." --Bono
As one of the music world's most iconic artists and the cofounder of the organizations ONE and (RED), Bono's career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender , it's Bono who picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was fourteen, to U2's unlikely journey to become one of the world's most influential rock bands, to his more than twenty years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candor, self-reflection, and humor, Bono opens the aperture on his life--and the family, friends, and faith that have sustained, challenged, and shaped him.
Surrender 's subtitle, 40 Songs, One Story, is a nod to the book's forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created forty original drawings for Surrender, which appear throughout the book.
Author Notes
The lead singer of U2, Bono was born Paul David Hewson in Dublin. He met The Edge, Larry Mullen Jr., and Adam Clayton at school, and in 1978, U2 was formed. The band released their first album, Boy, on Island Records in 1980 and to date have released a total of fourteen studio albums that have sold 157 million copies worldwide. Heralded by Rolling Stone as "a live act simply without peer," the band's record-breaking 360° Tour (2009-2011) remains the highest-grossing concert band tour of all time. U2 have won numerous awards, including twenty-two Grammys, more than any other duo or group, as well as an Academy Award nomination and the Amnesty International Ambassador of Conscience Award. In 2005, U2 was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Alongside his role in U2, Bono is a ground-breaking activist. A leader in Jubilee 2000's Drop the Debt campaign, he next took on the fight against HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty, co-founding sister organizations ONE and (RED). ONE is a movement of millions of people dedicated to the fight against extreme poverty and preventable disease. With ONE, Bono has lobbied heads of state and legislatures all around the world, helping to ensure the passage of programs, such as the U.S. PEPFAR AIDS program, that have helped to save tens of millions of lives over the past twenty years. (RED)--which partners with companies to raise public awareness about, and corporate contributions for, the AIDS crisis--has to date generated more than $700 million for the Global Fund to treat and prevent AIDS in Africa. Since 2020, ONE and (RED) have also been fighting COVID-19 and its impact on the developing world.
In 2016, Bono co-founded the Rise Fund, a global impact fund investing in entrepreneurial companies driving positive social and environmental change in alignment with the UN's Sustainable Development Goals.
Bono has received a number of awards for his music and activism, including the Freedom of the City of Dublin (with U2), Chile's Pablo Neruda Medal of Honor, the Légion d'honneur from the French government, an honorary British knighthood, the Fulbright Prize for International Understanding, and TIME magazine's Person of the Year (along with Bill and Melinda Gates). He lives in Dublin with his wife Ali Hewson.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bono, lead vocalist and primary lyricist for the rock band U2, reflects on his creative and personal evolution in this powerful and candid debut memoir. Born Paul David Hewson and raised in 1970s Dublin by a Catholic father and a Protestant mother, Bono always viewed music as his "prayers." With remarkable frankness, he details what makes a great song ("The greatest songwriting is never conclusive, but the search for conclusion"); domestic life with his wife, Ali, and their four children; how the band almost fell apart during the 1990 recording of Achtung Baby ("We ran out of love for being in the band"); why he always wears glasses (migraines that were eventually diagnosed as glaucoma); and his experience of the conflict between unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland that lasted from 1968 to 1998. Along the way, Bono also shares plenty of memories of famous friends--Prince, he notes, is a "genius" who made him realize the importance of U2 owning their master tapes. Self-aware (Bono admits that sometimes he feels like he's "a sham of a rock star") and poignantly reflective ("I'm discovering surrender doesn't always have to follow defeat"), this is a must-read. Agent: Jonny Geller, Curtis Brown. (Nov.)
Booklist Review
He was born Paul Hewson, but the world knows him as Bono, the lead singer and beating heart of the Irish band U2. Speaking of hearts, he begins his fine memoir with a striking revelation: he was born with an "eccentric'" heart (one of the chambers of his heart has two doors, most people have three). At 18, he recalls, he realized that if he could do what he loves, he would never have to work a day in his life, but then it occurred to him that you have to be great at something. Bono discusses how he discovered what that was, chronicles his phenomenally successful career up to now, and shares his thoughts on fame, the purpose of music, family, friends, and his passionate activism. As the subtitle suggests, this is an autobiography-in-songs. "Songs are my prayers," Bono says. He reveals the origins of some of his hits. "With or Without You," for example, was a product of "listening to too much Roy Orbison" as well as channeling Scott Walker and Harry Nilsson. That the singer-songwriter writes well for the page should not come as a surprise, but his drawings might. Fans of Bono and U2 will adore this rich and expansive memoir, while music lovers of all persuasions will find much to enjoy here, too.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Award-winning (22 Grammys!) Bono's first book will generate enormous interest.
Guardian Review
When manager Paul McGuinness took on U2 in 1978 he said, quoting F Scott Fitzgerald, that their 18-year-old frontman saw "the whole equation". Incapable of meeting punk's standards of cool, the young Dubliners found improbable success by going too far and being too much. That impulse produced fabulous coups, from their performance at Live Aid in 1985 to their reinvention of stadium rock with Zoo TV - as well as memorable disasters, notably the decision to deposit 2014's Songs of Innocence into every iTunes account in the world. As Bono writes in this, his first memoir: "Our best work is never too far from our worst." The same goes for his extracurricular activities. Nobody has done more to expand the parameters of rock stardom, often in contentious ways. If any song title sums him up, then it's Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World, from 1991's Achtung Baby. Bono wants to go everywhere, meet everyone, learn everything and somehow pull it all together. His failures are therefore more interesting than most people's successes. Running to 557 pages, Surrender is characteristically expansive, but it whizzes by, with each of its 40 present-tense chapters pegged to a relevant song lyric and decorated with a felt-pen sketch. Bono has storytelling verve and a genuine desire for self-examination, neither of which is guaranteed in rock memoirs. He is enthusiastic about praising others, often at his own expense. The supporting cast is ridiculous: he relates colourful encounters with David Bowie, Frank Sinatra and Johnny Cash as well as Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Steve Jobs and Pope John Paul II. You could trace Bono's desire to build bridges back to his parents' marriage: his father Bob was a Catholic and a romantic; his mother Iris, whose death when he was 14 became his primal trauma, was a pragmatic Protestant. It's notable that he still lives in Ireland and has retained the same bandmates, best friends partner and core collaborators for more than 40 years. His wife Ali emerges as the book's quiet star: "'I wouldn't trust a man who didn't find you attractive,' I say. 'I wouldn't trust a woman who found you interesting,' she replies." This enduring camaraderie, together with his religious faith, becomes a recipe for how to become incomprehensibly famous without losing your head - but there is also candour about the persistent tension between family and showbusiness; music and activism; ambition and principles. Bono is unusually open to being challenged in interviews, turning them into megaphones for his own doubts. He manufactures that push-and-pull dynamic here by restaging arguments, especially with Ali and McGuinness, who sceptically describes his lobbying for debt cancellation as "Mr Bono Goes to Washington". After he reluctantly agreed to a photo op with George W Bush as part of an effort to get him to fund HIV medication in Africa, George Soros told him: "Bono, you have sold out for a plate of lentils." Bush eventually agreed to $15bn for starters ("That's a lot of lentils") but it was a bruising education in political realities. Lessons are learned, too, in a section on "White Messiah Syndrome": "Despite our best intentions, some of us activists can burn out in the fire of our own do-goodery and the secret is to know when to shut up and listen." There's some blarney here - a weakness for the too-cute aphorism and the florid metaphor - but Bono's appetite for contradictions and humiliations, which goes far beyond tactical self-deprecation, more than compensates. He admits that his "tendency toward the preposterous" and his bullish conviction can be "very wearying". Such self-knowledge makes this generous, energetic book anything but.
Kirkus Review
The U2 frontman considers his life through the lenses of faith, family, activism, and, occasionally, music. It's not that Bono avoids discussing his world-famous band. He writes wittily about meeting future band mates (and wife) in school in Dublin and how he first encountered guitarist The Edge watching him play music from Yes' album Close to the Edge. "Progressive rock remains one of the few things that divide us," he writes. Bono is candid about the band's missteps, both musical (the 1997 album, Pop) and ethical (force-feeding its 2014 album, Songs of Innocence, to every Apple iTunes customer). At nearly every turn, the author spends less time on band details than he does wrestling with the ethical implications of his successes and failures. Dedicating each of the book's 40 chapters to a U2 song gives him a useful framing device for such ruminations: "Bad" deals with the loss of a friend to heroin, "Iris (Hold Me Close)" with the death of his mother when he was 14, "One" about the band's own struggles. Considering Bono's onstage penchant for sanctimony, his tone is usually more self-deprecating, especially when discussing his efforts to address AIDS in Africa and find the "top-line melodies" that would persuade politicians to release funding. He concedes being imperfect at the job; after a weak negotiation with then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he recalls being berated by George Soros, who tells him he "sold out for a plate of lentils." There's little in the way of band gossip, and the author has a lyricist's knack for leaving matters open to interpretation, which at times feels more evasive and frustrating than revealing. But he also evades the standard-issue rock-star confessional mode, and his story reveals a lifelong effort of stumbling toward integrity, "to overcome myself, to get beyond who I have been, to renew myself. I'm not sure I can make it." Chatty and self-regarding but pleasantly free of outright narcissism. A no-brainer for U2's legions of fans. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Not content with writing one of the best memoirs of 2022, Bono has turned the creativity amp to 11 by making the memoir's audiobook version into a rapturous blend of music, sound effects, vintage sound clips, and of course, his own mesmerizing narration. For instance, when Bono talks about dreaming that he's in a movie, listeners hear an old film projector begin to spin and old-timey movie music plays under his narration. Bono begins his memoir in 2016, as he's about to undergo an eight-hour surgery to correct his heart's aortic valve. Each of the 40 subsequent chapters is named after a U2 song, and each chapter begins with or stripped-down acoustic or live versions of those songs, in music clips that run between 20 and 90 seconds. Bono provides the vocals, although musician the Edge pops up periodically, including singing the falsetto lead on "Desire." Although these musical snippets are short, they sound newly recorded, rather than clipped from existing album tracks. When Bono remembers watching the 1969 moon landing, Neil Armstrong's "one small step for man" speech plays quietly under Bono's narration. An innovative and wildly entertaining audiobook. VERDICT Bono's epic, introspective memoir is given an impressive music-filled production. It's certainly one of the best audiobooks of the year.--Kevin Howell
Excerpts
Excerpts
1 Lights of Home I shouldn't be here 'cause I should be dead I can see the lights in front of me I believe my best days are ahead I can see the lights in front of me. I was born with an eccentric heart. In one of the chambers of my heart, where most people have three doors, I have two. Two swinging doors, which at Christmas 2016 were coming off their hinges. The aorta is your main artery, your lifeline, carrying the blood oxygenated by your lungs, and becoming your life. But we have discovered that my aorta has been stressed over time and developed a blister. A blister that's about to burst, which would put me in the next life faster than I can make an emergency call. Faster than I can say goodbye to this life. So, here I am. Mount Sinai Hospital. New York City. Looking down on myself from above with the arc lights reflecting on the stainless steel. I'm thinking the light is harder than the steel counter I'm lying on. My body feels separate from me. It is soft flesh and hard bone. It's not a dream or vision, but it feels as if I'm being sawn in half by a magician. This eccentric heart has been frozen. Some remodeling needs to take place apart from all this hot blood swirling around and making a mess, which blood tends to do when it's not keeping you alive. Blood and air. Blood and guts. Blood and brains are what's required right now, if I'm to continue to sing my life and live it. My blood. The brains and the hands of the magician who is standing over me and can turn a really bad day into a really good one with the right strategy and execution. Nerves of steel and blades of steel. Now this man is climbing up and onto my chest, wielding his blade with the combined forces of science and butchery. The forces required to break and enter someone's heart. The magic that is medicine. I know it's not going to feel like a good day when I wake up after these eight hours of surgery, but I also know that waking up is better than the alternative. Even if I can't breathe and feel as if I am suffocating. Even if I'm desperately drawing for air and can't find any. Even if I can't breathe and feel as if I am suffocating. Even if I'm desperately drawing for air and can't find any. Even if I'm hallucinating, 'cause I'm seeing visions now and it's all getting a little William Blake. I'm so cold. I need to be beside you, I need your warmth, I need your loveliness. I'm dressed for winter. I have big boots on in bed, but I'm freezing to death. I am dreaming. I am in a scene from some movie where the life is draining out of the actor in the lead role. In the last moments of his life he is vexed and questioning his great love. "Why are you going? Don't leave me!" "I'm right here," his lover reminds him. "I haven't moved." "What? It's not you leaving? Am I the one walking away? Why am I walking away? I don't want to leave you. Please, don't let me leave." There are some dirty little secrets about success that I'm just waking up to. And from. Success as an outworking of dysfunction, an excuse for obsessive compulsive tendencies. Success as a reward for really, really hard work, which may be obscuring some kind of neurosis. Success should come with a health warning--for the workaholic and for those around them. Success may be propelled by some unfair advantage or circumstance. If not privilege, then a gift, a talent, or some other form of inherited wealth. But hard work also hides behind some of these doors. I always thought mine was a gift for finding top-line melody not just in music but in politics, in commerce, and in the world of ideas in general. Where others would hear harmony or counterpoint, I was better at finding the top line in the room, the hook, the clear thought. Probably because I had to sing it or sell it. But now I see that my advantage was something more prosaic, more base. Mine was a genetic advantage, the gift of . . . air. That's right. Air. "Your man has a lot of firepower in that war chest of his." That's the man who sawed through my breastbone speaking to my wife and next of kin, Ali, after the operation. "We needed extra-strong wire to sew him up. He's probably at about 130 percent of normal lung capacity for his age." He doesn't use the word "freak," but Ali tells me she has started thinking of me as the Man from Atlantis, from that 1970s sci-fi series about an amphibian detective. David Adams, the man I will owe my life to, the surgeon-magician, speaks with a southern twang, and in my heightened Blakean state I begin to confuse him with the crazed villain of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. I overhear him asking Ali about tenors, who are not known to run around a stage hitting high notes. "Aren't tenors supposed to stand with two legs apart, firmly rooted in the ground, before even considering a top C?" "Yes," I say, without opening my mouth and before the drugs wear off. "A tenor has to turn his head into a sound box and his body into a bellows to make those glasses smash." I, on the other hand, have been racing around arenas and sprinting through stadiums for thirty years singing "Pride (In the Name of Love)," the high A or B depending on the year. In the 1980s the stylish English songster Robert Palmer stopped Adam Clayton to plead with him. "Will you ever get your singer to sing a few steps lower. He'll make it easier on himself, and all of us who have to listen." Air is stamina. Air is the confidence to take on big challenges or big opponents. Air is not the will to conquer whatever Everest you will encounter in your life, but it is the ability to endure the climb. Air is what you need on any north face. Air is what gives a small kid on a playground the belief that he won't be bullied, or if he is, that the bully will have the air knocked out of him. And here I am now without it, for the first time. In a hospital emergency room, without air. Without breath. The names we give God. All breath. Jehovaaaah. Allaaaah. Yeshuaaaah. Without air . . . without an air . . . without an aria. I am terrified because for the first time ever, I reach for my faith and I can't find it. Without air. Without a prayer. I am a tenor singing underwater. I can feel my lungs filling up. I am drowning. I am hallucinating. I am seeing a vision of my father in a hospital bed and me sleeping beside him, on a mattress on the floor. Beaumont Hospital, Dublin, the summer of 2001. He is deep breathing, but it's getting shallower and shallower like the grave in his chest. He shouts my name, confusing me with my brother or the other way around. "Paul. Norman. Paul." "Da." I jump up and call a nurse. "Are you okay, Bob?" she whispers in his ear. We are in a world of percussive, animated whispers, a world of sibilance, his tenor now become short tiny breaths, an s after every exhalation. "Yesssss sssss sss." His Parkinson's disease has stolen the sonority. "I want to go home sssssss I want to get out of here sssss." "Say it again, Da." Like the nurse, I am leaning over him, my ear close to his mouth. Silence. Followed by another silence. Excerpted from Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story by Bono All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Part I | |
| 1 Lights of Home | p. 3 |
| 2 Out of Control | p. 11 |
| 3 Iris (Hold Me Close) | p. 17 |
| 4 Cedarwood Road | p. 31 |
| 5 Stories for Boys | p. 43 |
| 6 Song for Someone | p. 55 |
| 7 I Will Follow | p. 69 |
| 8 11 O'clock Tick Tock | p. 83 |
| 9 Invisible | p. 107 |
| 10 October | p. 133 |
| 11 Two Hearts Beat as One | p. 147 |
| 12 Sunday Bloody Sunday | p. 161 |
| 13 Bad | p. 179 |
| 14 Bullet the Blue Sky | p. 191 |
| 15 Where the Streets Have No Name | p. 201 |
| 16 With or Without You | p. 211 |
| 17 Desire | p. 223 |
| Part II | |
| 18 Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses | p. 233 |
| 19 Until the End of the World | p. 245 |
| 20 One | p. 257 |
| 21 The Fly | p. 271 |
| 22 Even Better Than the Real Thing | p. 289 |
| 23 Mysterious Ways | p. 297 |
| 24 Stuck in a Moment | p. 309 |
| 25 Wake Up Dead Man | p. 319 |
| 26 The Showman | p. 335 |
| 27 Pride (In the Name of Love) | p. 353 |
| Part III | |
| 28 Beautiful Day | p. 375 |
| 29 Crumbs from Your Table | p. 391 |
| 30 Miracle Drug | p. 403 |
| 31 Vertigo | p. 429 |
| 32 Ordinary Love | p. 443 |
| 33 City of Blinding Lights | p. 461 |
| 34 Get Out of Your Own Way | p. 471 |
| 35 Every Breaking Wave | p. 489 |
| 36 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For | p. 505 |
| 37 Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way | p. 521 |
| 38 Moment of Surrender | p. 533 |
| 39 Landlady | p. 549 |
| 40 Breathe | p. 553 |
| After Words | p. 559 |
