Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story

The doors to Bono's inner life are open. The waste of human potential is a recurring theme; as is his faith, which he describes as separating the signal from the noise, a "still, small voice" that manifests itself most strongly in his marriage, his music, and his struggle against extreme poverty. But above all, Surrender is a love story addressed to his wife, Ali, whom he invited on their first date the week of the band's first rehearsal. Alison Stewart sets the tone for every major scene in this play, whose third act has just opened with more questions than answers about what to fight for and when to surrender. Bono, whose real name is Paul David Hewson, has been selling stadiums with U2 for forty years. The band has sold 170 million albums and won twenty-two Grammys and a host of accolades, including the Legion of Honor. He lives with his wife Ali and their four children in Dublin, Ireland. Surrender is his first book. “I was born with an eccentric heart.” A remarkable book by a combative artist, who admits he is at his best when he learns to surrender. Episodic and irreverent, introspective and illuminating, Surrender is the organized—but not too much—narrative of Bono’s life around 40 U2 songs. Bono grew up in north Dublin with a Catholic father and a Protestant mother, as sectarian violence escalated in Ireland. He was only fourteen when his mother died, a loss that would shape his search for a family. He began life feeling like an average person, yet his entire existence would be devoted to fighting the idea that anyone else was. His creativity was eruptive but never left him... in the studio, on stage, at protests, in the halls of Congress in Washington, or at the bar counter on the corner. We learn about his struggles with anger, which color his writings on love and non-violence. He admits to having an ego "much bigger than [his] self-esteem." In four decades, U2 went from a band of ambitious teenagers to the biggest band in the world.

ISBN: 9782213712956