Bono: Stories of Surrender (2025)
“Starting a landslide in my ego”
“Starting a landslide in my ego
Look from the outside
To the world I left behind
I’m dreaming
You’re awake
If I were sleeping
What’s at stake
A day without me”
“A Day Without Me” by U2 (songwriters Adam Clayton, Dave Evans, Larry Mullen, Paul Hewson)
I wasn’t going to watch Bono: Stories of Surrender but then again, I hadn’t planned on listening to his interview with Joe Rogan either and on a podcast that has seemingly only gained infamy for the U2 front man’s ill judged take on the dark arts of USAID. But I listened to the podcast, watched Andrew Dominik’s latest cinematic creation (Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James by the coward Robert Ford, Killing Them Softly, Blonde) and thoroughly enjoyed each medium in their own eccentric ways and far beyond my own cynically low expectations.
“A Day Without Me” remains my favourite U2 song and although it doesn’t feature in this 86 minute black and white documentary film, it was my entry into fandom for the Irish band who bridged my music listening from the New Romantics of the early 1980’s, my terrible hair metal choices later in the decade (before Guns n Roses saved a little of my street cred) and before Radiohead blew my mind in 1994 with “The Bends”. Three decades on I’m still a fan, I still have every album they’ve ever released and still consider their debut album “Boy” as one of the greatest first albums ever pressed to vinyl. “I Will Follow”, “Out of Control” and “Stories for Boys” do make the cut for the early stages of the documentary (it’s not so much a documentary as a performance art piece, more of which briefly follows) but U2’s debut album first pricked up my ears as a long haired college student of the late 1980’s and it was an awkward match made in musical heaven. I was as raw, urgent and unhinged as U2’s debut album was (is) and I was as immediately hooked as I was on completing their back catalogue of the time with “October”, “War” and “The Unforgettable Fire” quickly joining “The Joshua Tree” in my collection and CD’s I still have to this day. Each and every album would follow (“Rattle and Hum” in 1988 through to “Songs of Surrender” last year) but I fell out of love for the band, and Bono in particular, around the release of “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” in 2000. We didn’t split due to musical differences (and I doubt Bono or his band mates The Edge, Adam Clayton or Larry Mullen lose any sleep at the loss of my fandom!) but Bono clearly entered the George Carlin “Big Club” and seeing him embracing George Bush and a whole host of other despicable globalist, anti-human mass murderers, ghouls and goblins turned more than my stomach, my head in other musical directions once more, and then I remembered that all my real musical heroes were dead and anyway, Radiohead had released “OK Computer” in 1997 and THE perfect album had been created and so Bono could cuddle up to any blood soaked mass murderer and destroyer of human lives he wished.
I’d still be listening to the music.
I just didn’t care as a fan anymore.
Based on Bono’s 2022 memoir “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story”, this performance art one-man stage show is brilliantly captured by director Andrew Dominik (and edited smoothly by Lasse Järvi to give the appearance of a rolling and seamless transition from spoken word to song) as Bono narrates his early life from the epochal and life determining meeting of his band mates and particularly his wife Ali in 1978 through to the year 2000 and the declining health and then sad death of his father. The music and song choices follow this pattern with songs from “Boy” beginning the show and “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” ending proceedings (almost) and particularly, and a new poignancy even for this cynical old fan, of their year 2000 hit “Beautiful Day”. I saw and heard the pain that only losing a parent when in your teenage years can bring as I share this pain too and I saw a singing and dancing love letter to his wife and friends, his band mates and his “Ma” and “Da” before the Pride (In The Name of Love) Bono has for being a father himself.
I may not be a fan anymore but the mere mention of opera and Luciano Pavarotti means I’m lost in memories for my dear old Ma and his one-way conversations with his Da threw me into conversations I sadly never had the opportunity to have with mine.
If you start a landslide into Bono’s ego you might not care for everything you encounter, but this documentary is a fine piece of black and white art from both artist and director.
Fancy some sunshine filled images from Ironbridge and a “Beautiful Day” with my beautiful son from last summer?
Or my appreciation for the films of director Andrew Dominik?
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon
https://substack.com/@johnnogowski2/note/c-122517652?r=7pf7u&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action