U2’s Bono here at the 2014 Palm Springs Film Festival.
Photo: Chelsea Lauren. All rights reserved.
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Bono and his family have received death threats multiple times throughout his career. That’s what the U2 singer said at a literary festival in the English town of Cheltenham. This was also due to the political activism of his band. The first threat was related to the U2 song “Pride (In the Name of Love”), which is about US civil rights activist Martin Luther King.
U2 in the movie:
U2 went on tour in Arizona in the 1980s, Bono said, when there was a debate going on about a holiday in honor of King. The state did not want to introduce the holiday, it took a stand on the stage for Martin Luther King Day. He then received a threat that if he sang the entire lyrics, he would not make it to the end of the song alive.
Bono said he half-kneeled and closed his eyes during the performance. When he opened his eyes again, he realized that bassist Adam Clayton had been standing protectively in front of him the whole time. “He was there for the whole verse,” Bono said.
In his memoirs, Bono also writes that in the 1990s a gang leader in his hometown of Dublin planned to kidnap his daughters. The gangster’s people “would have been scouting our homes for several months and coming up with an elaborate plan.”
Bono had presented his memoirs at The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival. These will be released on November 1 under the title “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story”.
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