Surrender
Bono Autobiography: 40 Songs, One Story
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4.0 • 21 Ratings
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- £10.99
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- £10.99
Publisher Description
'A brilliant, very funny, very revealing autobiography-through-music. Maybe the best book ever written about being a rockstar' CAITLIN MORAN
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Bono - artist, activist and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2 - has written his autobiography: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he's lived, the challenges he's faced and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him.
'When I started to write this book I was hoping to draw in detail what I'd previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim's lack of progress ... With a fair amount of fun along the way.' - Bono
As one of the music world's most iconic artists and the cofounder of organizations ONE and (RED), Bono's career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, Bono's autobiography, he picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was 14, to U2's unlikely journey to become one of the world's most influential rock bands, to his more than 20 years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candour, self-reflection, and humour, Bono opens the aperture on his life - and the family, friends and faith that have sustained, challenged and shaped him.
Surrender's subtitle, "40 Songs, One Story," is a nod to the book's 40 chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created 40 original drawings for Surrender which will appear throughout the book.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
He’s spent nearly 50 years fronting the world’s biggest rock band, so Paul ‘Bono Vox’ Hewson has a truly remarkable life story to tell. What you might not anticipate is the winningly original way in which he does it. A gossipy linear narrative recounts U2’s formation in Dublin, their unlikely rise to stadium-filling status and struggle to stay on top. Yet such standard autobiographical fare is presented through the prism of Bono’s lyrics and felt-tip doodles. He’s charmingly self-deprecating—always the first to mock his short stature, big nose, bad haircuts or messianic tendencies—and admits to being a shameless name-dropper, which is handy in a book with walk-on parts for Nelson Mandela, Naomi Campbell, Mikhail Gorbachev, Steve Jobs, Frank Sinatra, Princess Diana, the Pope and several US Presidents. Anecdotes are colourful, characters are deftly drawn, and there are revealing insights into family and faith, songwriting and stagecraft, plus access-all-areas accounts of his AIDS and poverty activism. He writes movingly about his parents’ deaths and his devotion to wife Ali, to whom the book is dedicated. Full of wry wit and homespun wisdom, this is far from your average music memoir, but all the better for it.
Customer Reviews
Surrender
This biography does have its interesting moments, and those are Bono growing up in Ireland and his career with U2. Unfortunately, those moments are few and far between.
There are a lot of political statements in there that drone on like a party political broadcast, and whole sections devoted to various political dealings and charities, which for me were dull as dishwater and rather self righteous.
There is a danger, which he mentions in the book, of subconsciously adopting the ‘white messiah’ complex - setting out to rescue the third world (on their behalf) and selling records off the back of the resulting PR. No doubt there has been some success in this area but it’s not ideal for a ‘Rock Biography’ and is quite polarising for the reader.
Another vague annoyance - he keeps referring to U2 as ‘Punk’. Please note; U2 were never punk. Even in the very early days they were never more than a slightly indie ‘New Romantic’ band (cast in the same mould as Simple Minds, Ultravox, Big Country etc) - with the self indulgence to match. The term ‘Christian Rock’ doesn’t sit well with Punk ideals - and he does assert his and U2’s Christian beliefs at many points in the book.
Other than the various lapse into self indulgence and the political arena - overall the book did have some interesting insights into his life and the music. If only he could have maintained this and more (much more) info on the band and the music - this would have greatly improved the biography.