"The right to appear ridiculous is something I hold dear."
Good news! My new book, Bono, will be published next month. Now I can afford some cream for my coffee, maybe even a little peanut butter on my bread...and the rent.
Bono is a passionate, articulate celebrity who has transcended his role as international rock star and become an effective political activist. This book provides insights into his life story and contributions to both popular culture and politics.
Bono is the highly recognizable, articulate, and well-known frontman of the band U2, one of the most successful, prolific, and widely respected bands in rock music. Bono has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and has won numerous awards for his political activism—highly unusual for a pop star. What makes Bono such a standout?
Bono: A Biography takes a broad look at the pop star's life from his birth until the present day while also examining in depth the major events throughout his life. It covers Bono's accomplishments as part of U2 and also provides great detail about this complex celebrity figure's achievements outside of his involvement with his band—for example, his activities as a major spokesperson on issues of debt relief and poverty.
This book will be appreciated by general readers as well as high school students with an interest in pop culture and politics. Authored by a writer who has been a fan of U2 and Bono since his youth, this book cites a variety of sources to present an engaging and comprehensive portrait of this passionate musician's contributions to popular music and his ongoing commitment to issues of social justice.
Features
• Contains many direct quotes from Bono's speeches and interviews that address his activism and his life with U2
• Presents a chronology of Bono's life from his birth onwards
• Includes a bibliography of works cited and other books worth reading
Highlights
• Provides a rich, detailed chronology of Bono's life
• Covers the significant milestones in his life
• Presents his struggles with celebrity vs. personal life
• Details Bono's political activism, explains his commitment to U2, and examines his Christian faith
Author Info:
David Kootnikoff is an award-winning writer. His published works include U2: A Musical Biography and Getting Both Feet Wet: Experiences Inside The Jet Program, winner of the Japan Festival Award for contributing to understanding between cultures. He is currently working on his doctoral degree in English at the University of Alberta, Canada.
"My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea." - Tommy Douglas
Canada is mourning a Prime Minister that should have been - Jack Layton, the greatest politician our country has seen since Tommy Douglas. The comparisons have been frequently made and will continue for a long time to come. Both were NDP leaders (Social Democrats) of Anglo dissent who loved their work and approached it as they did life; as optimists who believed in the collective will of people to change the world for the better.
Most people do their work; Jack Layton loved his. And it showed. As with those rare individuals who relish what they do, Layton attracted others to his side and inspired their loyalty. That's what he did until last Monday when he passed away from cancer at the age of 61.
Yuko and I have just returned to Canada from living abroad for over 10 years and his passing is my very first genuine sorrow back home. I was looking forward to watching Jack in action, participating in his project to better the world.
I was too young to see Tommy Douglas in his prime so my recollections are culled from old archived news reels and his written words. Above all, what stands out is his voice and his undeniable integrity. With Jack I recognized the same timbre, the same dignity minus pretense or overwrought gravitas. It's the same quality of sincerity I recognize in the music of Stan Rogers and Leonard Cohen, in the poetry of Al Purdy or Susan Musgrave and in the paintings of Emily Carr or Lawren Harris. As a Canadian, I recognize this uniqueness as intrinsically belonging to us.
(Lawren Harris, "North Shore, Lake Superior," 1926)
An American or a Spaniard might hear or see something completely different and attach their own cultural attribute to it, but it will always remain originally from Canada. Sure, it's white, Anglo-Canada but that doesn't diminish its power for me.
(Tommy Douglas, 1968)
My own spiritual beliefs are agnostic but they bend towards belief in a just universe. I see karma at the centre, but as I grow older I also recognize something larger, perhaps grace, also at work. Grace, as Bono sang, "finds goodness in everything." It's faith, not only that my good or bad deeds will be returned, but that something beyond my control can also deliver me into the hands of joy. It's as simple and as plain as what Jack wrote in his last letter to Canadians:
"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world."
It's not only there in the substance, but also in that tender phrase, "My friends." That's grace - the faith that a stranger is not really one at all, but is a soon-to-be friend. And as Tommy Douglas said:
"Courage, my friends; 'tis not too late to build a better world."
No band in the universe is as big as U2. U2 is so big -- the joke goes -- that when Bono wants to change a light bulb all he has to do is hold it and the world revolves around him. At their bombastic worst, few bands blur the line between rapture and corn quite as effectively as the Sonic Leprechaun and his Irish Soul Men.
But at their best, U2 achieves what very few artists in any genre can: they create work with a sustained intensity that transforms the particular into the universal. U2 has that rare ability to communicate what Federico Garcia Lorca called "duende"; that "mysterious power which everyone senses and no philosopher explains."
Popularly associated with flamenco, the concept of duende was imported into the south of Spain centuries ago by the Roma people, and has since migrated over to English. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as "the power to attract through personal magnetism and charm," but it's much more than that. In 1933, Lorca gave his famous lecture, "La Teoria y Juego del Duende" ("The Play and Theory of the Duende") in Buenos Aires detailing his notion of duende:
"I have heard an old master guitarist say: 'Duende is not in the throat; duende surges up from the soles of the feet.' Which means it is not a matter of ability, but of real live form; of blood; of ancient culture; of creative action."
My own relationship to music is based on this concept. It has to move me on some level, be alive, visceral and not about what's cool or popular.
This has led to some bruising clashes with certain aficionados when I proclaim, for example, that Bob Dylan's so-called "gospel" period beginning in the late 70s cuts far deeper than his fabled mid-60s output. The "Bobbynazis" roil and flail, but I refuse to surrender. That's the beauty of art -- its impact lies in the heart of the beholder.
So it is with U2. Sometimes the band's earnest intentions can seem as uncool as Napoleon Dynamite's retro-geek is cool. But as Miles Davis once so elegantly riffed, "So what?" -- my gut tells me a different story.In the wasted aftermath of the late 70s punk and post-punk explosions, U2 shifted the paradigm; it was cool enough to care, to believe that music could do more than just inspire gobs of hot neon or tinted highlights and actually change the world. My interest was sparked when I walked into A&B Sound on Seymour Street in Vancouver and caught a glimpse of their first video for War. As I watched the peculiar spectacle of four figures galloping on horseback across the frozen tundra of the Arctic Circle, the ricocheting chords and slithering bass of "New Years Day" filled the store:
And so we are told this is the golden age And gold is the reason for the wars we wage
It was the antithesis of the times. Boy George, Madonna, and Michael Jackson all exemplified glossy pop; Duran Duran the pursuit of glamour, singing "Rio" in pastel suits aboard a yacht in the sun-kissed tropics. But here was something different -- a band confronting harsher elements, brilliantly fusing bombast with conviction in a song inspired, we were told, in part by the Polish independent union Solidarity.
Throughout 1982 when much of War was written, Solidarity and its leader, Lech Walesa, were in headlines around the world challenging the communist authorities in both Warsaw and Moscow. For a pubescent kid looking for something to believe in, this was a group that inspired faith. I didn't know it at the time, but I was responding to the exuberance of what could be, the limitless possibilities inherent in what Lorca called "newly created things."
Fast forward to 2004 and "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" from How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. The band connects with an emotional power, one that "surges up from the soles of the feet" with the velocity of an accelerating rocket. Written for Bono's late father Bob Hewson, (the "atomic bomb" of the album's title) who died in 2001, the song manages to uncover a condensed kernel of human pathos recognizable to anyone who has suffered the loss of a loved one:
And it's you when I look in the mirror And it's you that makes it hard to let go Sometimes you can't make it on your own
A few years ago, while I was trying to make sense of the song's emotional impact, a student of mine was suddenly murdered by a triad gang in Hong Kong. His father, a police officer, was beginning to cause some very dangerous people enough anxiety for them to unleash their wrath on his one and only son. That loss was devastating and it opened me up to the song's raw power. As Bono says on the album's accompanying DVD, "a song can change the world...it can change the temperature in the room." I kept listening to it again and again, feeling my heart leap into my throat with the force of a Molotov cocktail. I was overtaken with rapture, a caesura captured in time.
As with other U2 songs like "Bad," "Without Or Without You," or "One," "Sometimes" is a smoldering ballad that gradually intensifies until finally breaking into a transcendent crescendo:
You're the reason I sing You're the reason why The opera is in me
It's an explosive confession that raises the room temperature and for Bono's father who apparently loved opera, it's a fitting tribute.
Producer Chris Thomas, who has worked with everyone from the Beatles to the Sex Pistols, doesn't intrude or impose any formulas on what is essentially the song's mournful tone. But it's not a tome of despair. As with gospel-blues, the raw passion of Bono's voice elevates the music above grief and into the realm of catharsis. "Keening" is how the Irish dramatist J.M. Synge once referred to it, and Lorca identified it in the "deep song" of his country's folk music:
"It is truly deep, deeper than all the wells and seas in the world, much deeper than the present heart that creates it or the voice that sings it, because it is almost infinite...It comes from the first sob and the first kiss."
Few other bands come close to these dizzy heights. "Sometimes" is pure duende. Music of this caliber and class feels as primal as shelter and food. It's in this realization that "Sometimes" crosses from the particular to the universal, cutting deep into the heart's core to pull out an emotional response that has nothing to do with Bono's father, but everything to do with our shared vulnerability as fragile living beings.
Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been freed from house arrest, but the real test of her freedom will be whether the junta allows her to travel around the country meeting with her supporters. She's been locked up for 15 of the last 21 years and has been released twice before already. She could easily be detained again if the junta feels threatened, regardless of their expressed goodwill.
But for now, the mood is one of rejoicing. She greeted a throng of supporters last night when she was officially freed and then delivered an impassioned speech today encouraging them. “Democracy is when the people keep a government in check,” she said. “I will accept the people keeping me in check.” As one woman said, “I’m happier than if I won the lottery. But this is just the beginning, not the end. The political prisoners are still in jail. Everyone needs to be released!”
Kyaiktiyo Paya
When Yuko and I traveled there in 2008, it was just months after the "Saffron Revolution" that had brought thousands of monks into the streets to protest the country's brutal military regime. Deciding whether or not to visit Myanmar/Burma, a nation of over 50 million, wasn't easy. Suu Kyi has recommended tourists stay away until "genuine progress towards democratization" is made, while others such as Thant Myint-U, an historian and grandson of former United Nations Secretary General U Thant, have argued for engagement.
Top of Mount Popa
I made my decision after befriending a Burmese student in Hong Kong who had been confined and tortured by the regime. He urged me to go, meet the people and report back about his country. I knew to avoid any organized tours and meet the locals to prevent our money going directly to the junta.
The video for U2's first single "Get On Your Boots" turns out to be pretty sticky...and hard. It's the video equivalent of a Jeff Koons sculpture dipped in candy floss ice cream...
...or maybe it's like a trip to the local planetarium. As Sun Ra says: “The music is different here, the vibrations are different, not like planet earth...”
"It's based around the idea that men have fucked things up so badly, politically, economically and socially that it's really time we handed things over to women. We had our doubts when we saw a rough cut – but the finished video is brilliant. He's [Alex Courtes] really nailed it."
Eh? I guess that explains all the sexy ladies with moustaches. I prefer Ann Powers' Obama connection:
"This is U2's celebratory announcement of a new historical moment, one in which America and the world confront the catastrophes of the recent past and bust out some elbow grease to make things better."
I'm a long time, die-hard fan, but this song and now the video just reek of stale product. Sure, the riff is sticky - ear candy - but why the limp vocals? And how about these lyrics:
That’s someone’s stuff they’re blowing up We’re into growing up Women of the future Hold the big revelations
At least "Vertigo" sounded like a rocket in flight...it's as though a vampire sucked all the sugar out of the band...and hard candy without the sweet is like sucking on plastic...or tinsel.
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