In Bono’s autobiography, the failures get more attention than the successes ★★★★☆

In October 1990 U2 arrives in Berlin. There they want to work in the same Hansa studios where David Bowie and Brian Eno have worked on their albums that have become classic. “It was sheer arrogance to think we would create something at the level of David Bowies low or heroes‘, writes U2 singer Bono (62) in his autobiography, to be released today: Surrender – 40 Songs, One Story. “But some arrogance is crucial to the creative process.”

With this conclusion Bono is halfway through the six hundred pages of his very catchy memoir. That first half contains the pretty spectacular story of the first ten years of U2: in 1990 the Irish pop group has grown into one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

Bono writes about his early years in Dublin with a sense of detail. At the age of 14 he loses his mother, a traumatic event that would determine his further life. He grows up with his father and older brother (“three men who yelled at the TV”) on Cedarwood Road in Dublin. Paul Hewson is still simply called Bono. At Mount Temple Comprehensive School, he will not only meet the three boys with whom he forms U2, he will also meet Alison Stewart, Ali, whom he has now been married to for over 40 years. They didn’t fall in love right away, Bono writes, “but they slowly clambered toward each other.”

Bono, guitarist The Edge (consistently referred to as Edge by Bono in the book), bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. are still together. That will certainly have to do with the manager who looks after their affairs from 1978 to 2013, Paul McGuinness. Bono realizes this early on: bands don’t split up because of musical differences, but because of the money. By dividing all income equally, there are never skewed faces within U2 – at least not for this reason.

Ali and Paul aren’t the only constants keeping Bono on track. That is also the belief –Surrender teeming with biblical references. And they are the street friends of yesteryear, Guggi and Gavin Friday of the somewhat anarchic collective Virgin Prunes. U2 and Virgin Prunes had their own virtual village together, Lypton Village. Bono writes extensively about it. ‘We wanted to start our own country, or at least a city. Or a village, an alternative community we wanted to call Lypton Village. We had our own language and a surreal sense of humor.’ In this “fictional teenage world based on a shared sense of surreal craziness,” Paul Hewson was named Bono and Guggi and Gavin Friday became lifelong friends, and Lypton Village remained a haven.

Friday, who is still involved with U2 (he gave with Anton Corbijn the photo section of Surrender form) compared U2 to God and Virgin Prunes to the Devil.

There were, of course, crises in the band. One presented itself when U2 arrived in Berlin to, as Bono writes, ‘de Joshua Tree to fell.’ Of this album from 1987 and the partly live recorded successor Rattle & Hum, the band had professed its love for American roots (blues, gospel and soul). But there was also criticism, and Bono was not insensitive to that: that U2, especially with Rattle & Hum, had become too much of an American band. And were the Irish the right people to musically honor Billie Holiday and BB King?

The Berlin adventure that would eventually lead to the album Achtung Baby, a new milestone in U2’s existence, started very difficult and almost led to the end of the band. Top producers Brian Eno, Daniel Lanois and Flood were there right away. “What the hell could go wrong?” Bono writes.

‘Everything.

“Something very important was missing: the songs.”

There were only a few sketches and besides Bono, nobody really wanted to search so frantically for a new sound. “We have become the biggest band on the planet thanks to a collection of sounds that you don’t want us to use anymore,” is the criticism of Bono, from the band.

In the end it’s all about the song one that the crisis will avert, but we read in it Surrender not much left. Bono leaves most of the studio scenes, recording albums, making songs blank. That makes his memoirs a lot more readable for non-pop nerds than many rock biographies. The failures, like the album doll from 1997, get more attention than the successes. ‘Not really thriller huh?” says producer Nellee Hooper, referring to Michael Jackson’s hit album, when he doll-recordings leaves business that have not been done.

It is to Bono’s credit that he also does not leave the personal mistakes unspoken. For example, we should know that he has achieved many successes as a fighter against poverty in the world, but was also put on his number by, for example, George Soros and Condoleezza Rice (by Bono always friendly Condi). But why Bono set himself up as a world improver, he gives no explanation for that. The fact that the band, and certainly manager McGuinness, have trouble with his political outings, does not stop Bono from knocking on the door of the White House and the Vatican. With a great sense of anecdotal he describes his adventures on the political world stage. At the same time, you also understand more about the artistic decline of U2. The more Bono allows himself to be photographed with the greats of the earth, the less interesting and successful U2’s music becomes.

It is not surprising that McGuinnes no longer feels like it in 2013, after 35 years. Bono understands that, he writes. With McGuinness on board, they would never have decided in 2014 their new album (Songs Of Innocence) to put it in the hardware of every iTunes user free of charge – he also finds that obvious. Bono guiltily writes: “On September 9, 2014, we will not just put a bottle of milk in every porch, but in every refrigerator in every house in every city.” With a heartfelt mea culpa, he takes full responsibility for an action that was widely criticized at the time.

In this way he removes more annoyances that made him or U2 insufferable in the eyes of many. But not everything. For example, U2’s flight to the tax haven of the Netherlands is discussed. ‘Perhaps we went too far when we transferred one of our companies to the Netherlands to reduce the tax burden. According to some people, that showed little patriotism. Our argument was: if Ireland is fiscally competitive, then so can we. We didn’t tie in.’ But that’s not how you make friends here, Bono. In the Netherlands there is still great indignation about this tax shelter.

Surrender also contains a number of passages that you as a reader do not know what to do with. Strangely enough, the most recent musical adventure Bono and The Edge experienced in Kyiv’s underground earlier this year is in the middle of the book. Laughing is his claim that Noel Gallagher is the best British songwriter since Paul McCartney. Too private the account of the trip he made with his family to Jordan and other Biblical places. A good editor-in-chief would have helped Bono cut out at least a hundred pages. It is also often not clear how the choice of song title above each of the 40 chapters came about. But those are little things. With his autobiography, Bono provides insight into how U2 became and could remain the biggest rock band in the world, and has been for forty years.