“One princess, and we’re even,” Bono added. With warm and comic mimicry, he recalled phone calls with Luciano Pavarotti and his pleas of “Bono, Bono, Bono” as the opera star recruited him to perform at a benefit show in Modena, Italy, and once turned up at U2’s studio on short notice – with a film crew.īono also re-enacted his many tense bar room meetings with his father, who seemed to regard his son’s career as some kind of failed business venture.īrendan Robert Hewson’s rough facade did once collapse unexpectedly – when he met Princess Diana, an encounter Bono described as like watching centuries of Irish loathing of the royals “gone in eight seconds”.

Tweet from prices were rock star levels: Thousands of dollars for the best seats and well into the hundreds even for obstructed views.Ĭompared to a U2 show, the setting was relatively intimate – handwritten illustrations on screens hanging toward the back of the stage and a few tables and chairs that Bono used as props to climb on or to simulate conversations. He opened with an account from his book of his heart surgery in 2016, but otherwise pranced and leapt like a man who had never seen the inside of a hospital and belted out songs written decades ago without any sense he had forgotten what inspired them.

Through Sunday Bloody Sunday, Where the Streets Have No Name and other U2 classics, he traces his biography from his stifling childhood home in Dublin and the grief over the early death of his mother Iris Hewson to the formation of the band that made him a global celebrity and his enduring marriage to Alison Stewart.įormer President Bill Clinton, Tom Hanks and U2 guitarist The Edge were among his famous admirers in the audience, which often stood and cheered and sang along.įor the 90-minute plus Stories of Surrender show, billed as “an evening of words, music, and some mischief,” Bono wore a plain black blazer, matching pants and added colour with his orange-tinted glasses. Tweet from is now a published and best-selling author, his Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story out this week and already in the top 10 on. The 62-year-old singer, songwriter and humanitarian described himself as an eternal boy (born Paul David Hewson) with his fists “in the air,” a “grandstanding” rock star and a baritone trying to be a tenor.

U2 by u2 book