06 November 2022
Newsdesk
On a new episode of PERSON TO PERSON, CBS EVENING NEWS Anchor and Managing Editor Norah travels to Dublin to interview U2 front man Bono about his new memoir “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.” Bono opens up about how the Irish rock band stayed together for decades, his relationship with his father and going to therapy. His wife of 40 years, Ali Hewson, who rarely does interviews, sits down with O’Donnell to talk about their relationship.
Below are some highlights from tonight’s PERSON TO PERSON interview.
Norah O'Donnell: “So many people in your life you've been friends with since you were boys and girls.”
Bono: “Yeah. Community is at the very heart of, I think, U2’s music. And it's a very Irish thing. Everybody I needed on the road to wherever I was going were right there. I just had to see it. You have the people you need much closer to you than you realize sometimes and that's the story of U2.”
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Norah O'Donnell: “It's so rare that any relationship lasts decades, much less a rock band. What do you think the secret is?”
Bono: “It's getting harder. And, you know, the band has nearly broken up several times, usually after the good albums because they're the ones that really cost you in the studio and the male ego in particular, I think gets more brittle. And the ability to sublimate, to surrender to each other, which is essential for a band, gets harder.”
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Norah O'Donnell “You worry a lot about becoming irrelevant. Does that still bother you”
Bono “You're about to be irrelevant and that's okay. It's relevant to who, is the real question. So, songwriters always want to get to the younger audience, but at a certain point, the younger audience just don't return that love.”
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Norah O'Donnell: “Did you find in writing and reflecting, you found something out about yourself that you didn't know?”
Bono: “I got a bit bored with the subject of the book.”
Norah O'Donnell: “Which was yourself.”
Bono: “Yes.”
Norah O'Donnell: “Is that why it took seven years?”
Bono: “Yeah, that and the bad typing. I wrote the book to explain myself to myself largely, and to my family and to my kids and to, you know, explain me and what I was doing, you know, while I was away and when I was at home.”
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Norah O'Donnell: “What scares you most about success?”
Bono: “Finally feeling successful”
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Norah O'Donnell: “Do you feel like your father was proud of you?”
Bono: “Yes. In the end.”
Norah O'Donnell: “You write at one point in the book about how a parent can parent: you can say, oh, you're so great at what you do, or they can reserve that, and both ways can be motivating.”
Bono: “You can tell them they're extraordinary, and everything that comes out of their mouth is interesting. Or you can just ignore them.”
Norah O'Donnell: “And which was your father?”
Bono: “My father definitely followed the latter advice, and it worked very well.”
Norah O'Donnell: “Did that motivate you that you had something to prove to your father?”
Bono: “Yes. I'm very grateful for my father. I wish I was more there for my father, actually. And grateful for the gift of this voice. When he passed away, I feel something changed in my voice. Ali said I was -- I went through a period of a little more attitude, a little more angry. But I eventually let go of that then. I think now I have a voice that even my father might approve of.”
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Norah O'Donnell: “Most rock stars don't stay married 40 years.”
Bono: “Most. Yeah.”
Ali Hewson: “A lot of people don't stay married for years. I mean, there's no secret. It's work. But and it works for some people, and it doesn't work for others. And I think…”
Bono: “I find that very hurtful. She calls it the work of love. And I'm like, I hear -- I can feel the adjective hard coming, the hard work.”
Norah O'Donnell: “But that's true.”
Bono: “And I take that. I wasn't -- I don't know, I just feel it was a lot of fun”.
Ali Hewson: “I think that keeping it light is -- it was going to be my next line. (Bono: “Really? Oh wow”) I think adding funny in it is really important and remembering why you married somebody at times and the rest is, you know, it's easy. There are days when you're really grateful that you kept it together, and then there's days where you're not so grateful. But it's amazing.”
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Bono: “Our relationship began with, of course, the obvious, you know, romance and flirtation, but it quickly moved into friendship. And I think that's a real part of who we are. The most important line that you said to me years ago, which was, don't look up. Don't look up at me or down at me. Look across at me. I'm there.”
Norah O'Donnell: “You wanted to be treated as an equal.”
Ali Hewson: “Yeah. Well, I think that's really important in every relationship, is that we all respect each other and sometimes, yep, I do feel that maybe, you know, there's a little bit of we both put each other a bit on a pedestal and sometimes under a pedestal. But it's just that keeping the balance, remembering who each other is and, you know, always holding on to the truth of each other.”
