PDF Summary:Surrender, by Bono

In 1976, an Irish schoolboy nicknamed “Bono” answered a call to join a new band. Ten years later, that band—U2—was a global sensation. As U2’s singer, Bono leveraged his fame to become a voice for activist groups fighting poverty, hunger, and the AIDS epidemic. At the same time, he started a family while pushing U2 to explore new styles of music. Bono’s memoir, Surrender, tells the story of his life and U2’s success, while also discussing Bono’s Christian faith and how his childhood affected who he’d become.

In this guide, we’ll cover U2’s rise to stardom, their period of self-reinvention, and Bono's career as a political activist. We’ll also provide historical context for Bono’s early days, the music industry, and U2’s shifting critical reception. We’ll look at the pros and cons of celebrity activism, as well as how Bono’s thoughts on Christian faith compare with those of contemporary religious writers.

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(Shortform note: While Bono laments that U2’s copyright deal hasn’t served as a model for other artists, contemporary pop star Taylor Swift has adopted a game-changing approach to reclaiming copyright that may benefit other musicians as well. At the age of 14, Swift signed a deal that gave her record label the rights to her first six albums. When that company was sold in 2019, the rights to her music went with it. Swift was never given the chance to buy back her original recordings, but since she’d retained the copyright to the composition of her songs, Swift has begun rerecording and reissuing her older albums under her new record label, with the addendum “Taylor's Version” to each album’s title to let fans know which edition they’re buying.)

Rock Stardom

For good or ill, the side of the music business that the public is most aware of is the fame and recognition that comes with success. For Bono, the first decade of U2’s rock stardom—a time he equates to U2’s “teenage years” as a band—opened his eyes to a much wider world. He describes the joys of connecting with an audience during a live performance, the privilege of seeing the world from a rock star’s perspective, and how this experience culminated in the recording of U2’s breakout album, The Joshua Tree.

U2 embarked on their first European tour, and Bono describes how every show was a communal experience in which the audience played as big a role as the band. U2 was catching the energy of the punk rock movement, but where punk was cynical at heart, U2’s early music was a celebration of innocence. Bono says that in the magic of a great concert, he wouldn’t just lose himself in the music; he’d enable the audience to do so as well. It was more than just playing well on stage—when the band could truly connect with the crowd and spark the current of excitement running through them, everyone in the room would have a heightened experience almost like a shared state of flow.

(Shortform note: The heightened “flow state” that Bono mentions was first identified by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. When in flow, you become fully engrossed, lose track of time, and lose yourself in the process, exactly as Bono describes. While fans may be aware of the differences between a band’s live performance and a studio recording, from the musician’s point of view, each requires a different skill set. Live performance requires improvisation and showmanship, whereas recording focuses more on composition and musical precision.)

In addition to the joy of live performing, Bono recalls the childlike excitement of traveling the world for the first time and experiencing the best that Europe had to offer—all at the record company’s expense. After Europe, the band toured the United States, which overwhelmed Bono with its diversity and size. To make an impact in the US, where they’d yet to have a hit song, the band strategically bypassed college music venues, where the crowds were essentially transient, in favor of playing for local audiences where they might build a following in America’s heartland.

(Shortform note: While Bono discusses touring in a generally positive light, that isn’t the experience of all performing artists. In The Woman in Me, singer Britney Spears describes her concert tours as particularly grueling. According to Spears, there were many times in her life when she should have slowed down and pulled back from the concert circuit to tend to her physical and mental health, but the pressures of the music industry wouldn’t let her. Spears also observes that male performers, such as those in U2, are afforded more leeway and freedom from scrutiny than female artists when they go on tour.)

U2 toured and recorded throughout the 1980s, producing four more albums after Boy, including their landmark 1987 album The Joshua Tree. Bono says that the songs on the album reflect his Irish view of America and its dualities—the imaginary land of opportunity and promise versus the real-world place with its problems and its dark side, as shown most clearly in the song “Bullet the Blue Sky.” Bono says that recording the album was a joyous time for the band, and The Joshua Tree’s success rocketed U2 to a new level of superstardom. After finishing the tour that coincided with the album, the whole band moved to Los Angeles for a time as a way of celebration—their last wild, youthful party before it was time to finally grow up.

(Shortform note: U2’s fascination with the US has continued to the point that in 2018, Forbes Magazine suggested that U2 was perhaps the best American rock band. In 1987, when U2’s popularity in the US skyrocketed, they caught the attention of the mainstream news media, not just the music industry press. In an echo of the 1960s’ “British Invasion,” when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones took over the American airwaves, U2 influenced many bands that followed and opened the door for other Irish artists such as the Cranberries, Snow Patrol, and the Corrs.)

Fatherhood and Family

It was during this time of celebration that Bono first became a father. Bono’s fears and feelings regarding fatherhood are complex, especially because of his own upbringing. He discusses how his marriage to Ali helped him explore his childhood trauma, his anxieties about being a rock star dad, and how he and Ali grew into being parents.

Bono and Ali married in 1982, and as U2’s popularity grew, Ali and the band became Bono’s real family. Ali helped Bono realize that due to the trauma of losing his mother, a part of him hadn’t grown out of childhood. When Bono looks back at the anger he’d directed at his father during his teenage years, he concludes that the irrational child deep inside him blamed his father for his mother’s death. Though he’d transferred his love for his mother onto Ali, he’d still never processed his feelings toward his father.

(Shortform note: Bono’s observations about his own development align with those of psychologists who argue that people who experience trauma when they’re young can get trapped by their childhood coping mechanisms. One way that children avoid dealing with emotions is by projecting blame onto a parent, as Bono says he did toward his father. This makes the grieving process even more difficult, because moving beyond the death of a loved one requires acknowledging your feelings and accepting emotional support, neither of which was allowed or available in Bono’s family after his mother’s death.)

Though Bono was deeply in love with Ali and cherished their marriage, he was unsure that he could be a good father. Since Bono’s father had been so distant after his mother’s death, Bono never learned what a caring, loving father should act like. Once Ali became pregnant, Bono remembers feeling happy, but frightened—what if he couldn’t cut it as a dad, and what if their child was as angry and awful as he’d been toward his father growing up? He feared that parenthood wouldn’t be compatible with his rock-and-roll lifestyle, in which he’d be absent for months at a time touring and recording with the band.

(Shortform note: Bono’s fears about not knowing how to be a parent are both valid and common. In The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, Philippa Perry acknowledges that how you were raised will affect your own parenting, but if you examine and address the feelings from your childhood, you’ll be able to avoid repeating negative patterns. For someone raised in an emotionally stifling environment, the challenge will be to acknowledge and respect the emotions your children are feeling, as well as to help them articulate what they feel. Perry asserts that parents shouldn’t see children as something to manage but instead should view them as individuals with whom you mean to form a lifelong connection.)

Despite Bono’s fears, he and Ali became parents, with two daughters born in ’89 and ’91, followed by sons in 1999 and 2001. They didn’t want their kids to grow up with the privilege and stigma of being a famous person’s children, so they chose to raise their family in Dublin, where Bono says that fame isn’t some kind of holy grail and that everyday people are valued just as much, if not moreso, than celebrities. After getting over his initial misgivings, Bono learned the value of parenthood. According to him, becoming a parent made him grow up while reminding him of the innocence of childhood—all of which fed his creativity as an artist.

(Shortform note: Many children of famous parents have struggled with forming their own identities outside of their family relationships, regardless of where they grow up. However, from a cultural standpoint, Bono isn’t the only one to observe that fame and celebrity aren’t revered in Ireland as elsewhere. In interviews, Bono’s children—who’ve followed their parents into social work and performing arts—have commented that while their father’s fame opened some doors, they were able to lead relatively normal childhoods. This normalcy may have freed the family to engage in a way that fed Bono’s creativity—experts say that regularly interacting with children can help parents relearn emotional expression and playful exploration.)

New Directions

As Bono’s life was changing, so too was U2’s music. Bono admits his obsession with constantly reinventing U2 and its music, in part to avoid becoming a band that only recycles its old greatest hits. As examples of his quest for reinvention, he brings up the stress of finding a new sound for the ’90s, the absurdist stage show that followed as a result, and the back-to-basics approach U2 adopted in the 2000s.

Bono writes that making the album Achtung, Baby was a particularly difficult time for the band. To record it, they arrived in Berlin exactly one year after the Berlin Wall came down. They had nothing written except some vague ideas and a wish to shed the ponderous seriousness that had come to define them and their music. Bono wanted to experiment with new musical arrangements and technological effects, but the process of improvising an album turned out to be much harder than expected. Bono takes responsibility for straining his relationship with the band, but the end product was an album they’re all proud of.

(Shortform note: The wall dividing Communist-controlled East Berlin and the capitalist city of West Berlin was built in 1961 during the height of the Cold War. As tensions between the East and West relaxed, the wall was opened for unrestricted travel between the cities on November 9, 1989. U2’s arrival date that Bono refers to was nearly a year later, when East and West Germany were politically reunited. Despite the difficulties Bono describes with writing and recording Achtung, Baby, the album is remembered both as one of U2’s best and also as a complete reworking of their sound.)

Though Achtung, Baby became a touchstone of the ’90s, the tour that went with it was a reaction against the garage-band aesthetic of the grunge movement. Though Bono enjoyed and appreciated grunge, its drab and serious undertones weren’t what U2 needed at the time. Dubbed “Zoo TV,” the Achtung, Baby tour featured a giant television with real-time channel surfing, and Bono adopted what he considers his most clownish stage persona ever. As part of his act, during every concert, Bono would crank-call the White House and ask to speak to President George H.W. Bush.

(Shortform note: The grunge movement that Bono says he played against with the Zoo TV tour was a fusion of punk rock and heavy metal that rose from the Seattle music community in the late 1980s. Though relatively short-lived as a musical style, grunge had a heavy influence on mainstream rock music and fashion in the 1990s. While not latching onto U2’s anti-grunge reaction, critics recognized the Zoo TV tour as a mockery of the excessive rock n’ roll lifestyle. In recompense for repeatedly annoying White House telephone operators with his on-stage calls, Bono invited them to be guests at a concert, flown there at U2’s expense.)

Hits and Misses

Throughout the ’90s, U2 would veer even more heavily toward electronic music and pop, to limited critical and commercial success. In the early 2000s, the band returned to its roots, in part because of the death of Bono’s father. Bono writes that while dealing with his father’s illness, he stopped pushing the band in new directions so they could relax and find their most authentic sound. Doing so brought U2 a new wave of acclaim with the album All That You Can’t Leave Behind, including songs (such as “Beautiful Day”) about finding joy amid heartache.

(Shortform note: While critics recognized U2’s new album as a return to their classic form, it was also their first in the digital music era. At the time, the music industry was hurting from a wave of music piracy enabled by the file-sharing app Napster, and two weeks prior to their album’s release, U2’s new songs were leaked online. As he describes in his memoir, Bono’s lyrics about navigating loss were inspired by his dealing with his father’s mortality, but the album took on new meaning for fans after the terror attacks of 9/11. All That You Can’t Leave Behind’s hopeful undertones served as a light for some listeners during that period, as did U2’s tribute to the 9/11 victims during the 2002 Super Bowl championship of the US’s National Football League.)

U2 made a splash with new fans when they offered their 2004 single “Vertigo” to be used in a video promoting the iPod music player, the first use of any of their songs in a commercial. While the song and the iPod were hits, their next collaboration with Apple didn’t go so well. To promote 2014’s Songs of Innocence, they made a deal to give the album for free to all iPod users. Bono says they thought people would see it as a gift, but instead they sparked a wave of angry customers whose devices now contained a product they hadn’t ordered, crossing a line of digital privacy. While Bono regrets the decision, Apple shrugged it off as a worthy, if failed, musical experiment.

(Shortform note: While Bono accepts the blame for the free album debacle, he doesn’t go into the reasons why it angered Apple customers. Many felt that having content they didn’t purchase automatically downloaded to their devices was an invasion of privacy—U2’s album may have been much more welcome had users been given the option to download it. The free album also highlighted the control that tech companies have over digital content, much like Amazon did in 2009 when it suddenly removed digital copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from Kindle ebook readers. These incidents with Apple and Amazon sparked a growing concern with tech giants’ power to control and potentially censor digital art and information.)

Bono’s Activism

Part of U2’s “self-serious” public image wasn’t because of the band’s music but because of Bono’s work as an activist. Bono’s eyes were opened to the problems of poverty, sickness, and starvation when he and Ali went on mission trips in the ’80s, so as his personal platform grew with U2’s fame, he made use of it to shine a spotlight on certain issues. Bono speaks about his advocacy for debt relief in Africa and the need to combat the global AIDS crisis. He also acknowledges some of the problems involved with Western philanthropy and celebrity activism.

One of Bono’s core beliefs is that problems such as poverty and hunger represent a failure of justice, not a lack of charity. The primary injustice he addressed in the ’90s as a spokesman for the Jubilee 2000 campaign was the vast amount of debt left over from the Cold War that the world’s poorest nations owed to the richest. Bono argues that having to pay off that old debt prevented whole countries from investing in themselves. The point of the Jubilee 2000 project was to get the lender nations, including the US, to cancel poorer countries’ debt altogether, freeing their resources for education, health, and infrastructure. The Jubilee 2000 campaign was successful, and its core group of activists looked for their next project.

(Shortform note: The Cold War debt that Bono refers to grew dramatically in the 1970s. As the US and the Soviet Union wooed other countries to their respective forms of government, Western nations offered low-interest loans to developing countries in return for staving off Communist movements. During this time, the collective debt of the developing world grew from $70 billion to $750 billion, which when coupled with the Great Inflation of the 1970s, threatened a massive, worldwide loan default. Prior to the Jubilee 2000 campaign that Bono became heavily involved with, the World Bank and the IMF tried to relieve the debt crisis, but in ways that imposed heavy restrictions on borrower countries’ economic policies.)

The issue that Bono and his colleagues tackled next was the African AIDS epidemic. However, Bono points out that with the change in US government in 2001, he now had to reach out to President George W. Bush after having spent years mocking the president’s father. To build a bridge with the new administration, Bono connected with conservative politicians over their shared Christian faith. At the same time, he made the case for AIDS relief to the American public by touring the US’s more conservative states along with other performers. Their efforts were phenomenally successful—in 2003, President Bush committed $15 billion to AIDS reduction in Africa, and that US spending on AIDS relief would eventually top $100 billion.

(Shortform note: Finding common ground between people with differing views is especially challenging in the modern, polarized political landscape. The authors of Crucial Conversations discuss strategies for doing so that Bono intuited, according to his memoir. The first step is to understand the other person’s point of view, which can only be done by listening to them with sincere curiosity. Then, instead of arguing points of disagreement, talk about the things you agree on and build the discussion from there. President Bush’s AIDS relief program, brought about by these types of open discussions, has survived through both liberal and conservative administrations, though its ongoing funding is continually up for debate.)

The “White Savior” Problem

In retrospect, Bono writes that the victories for debt and AIDS relief were won by people even more involved than he was and that perhaps he wasn’t as essential to the movement as his ego would have him believe. Also, he acknowledges that when celebrities get involved in social problems, people assume their activism is self-serving and performative. Because of that, Bono often worries about how his activism affected his bandmates in U2—was he damaging their brand by speaking out on topics that concerned him? Was he inadvertently making U2 uncool?

(Shortform note: Despite Bono’s misgivings about his role as an activist, celebrities can be powerful tools for nonprofit organizations that might otherwise struggle with calling attention to their causes. Especially considering the growth of social media in the decades since the peak of Bono’s activist work, celebrities with large followings can focus public attention as never before, though they have to be careful not to overshadow the messaging from non-famous activists. Celebrity spokespeople, both online and otherwise, are most effective when their efforts support real-world organizations—not just internet trends—and are targeted toward actionable goals.)

The broader issue with Western activism that Bono became aware of over time is that often people from wealthy countries try to solve the world’s problems without including those who are struggling in the discussion. Bono argues that there’s also an unfortunate trend to use African faces as a stand-in for poverty and suffering in media without also highlighting the artistic creativity and entrepreneurial innovation that Africa has in spades. The racism embedded in these practices has produced a backlash against Western aid, so current and future activist efforts must consciously work to avoid these pitfalls by involving the governments and people receiving aid in every step of the activism process.

(Shortform note: Because of the negative associations Bono discusses, many modern charitable nonprofits put local and indigenous activists front and center when promoting their causes. British-based Oxfam International highlights the work of West African artists and entrepreneurs in fighting inequality and promoting civil rights. Likewise, the Climate Reality Project emphasizes the importance of African youth who advocate environmental sustainability. According to the Fund for Global Human Rights, indigenous activists in many countries are leading charges to promote democracy, fight hunger, and stop violence against women.)

Expressions of Faith

Bono’s guiding star through all the issues in his life—his activism, music, and his role as a father—is the Christian faith he’s nourished since childhood. Bono’s spiritual life isn’t limited to any one branch of Christianity but instead draws from his life experiences and the people he’s connected with over the years. Throughout his memoir, Bono discusses his faith in terms of his journey through doubt, compassion for those in need, and ceding control of his life to God.

Bono explains that doubt is an essential part of his faith. He’s annoyed by overly showy religious figures and leaders who place restrictions on anyone who joins their congregations. For him, religious certainty is antithetical to faith. He sees God as something that can only be seen through symbols, music, and art. For this reason, he doesn’t write overtly Christian lyrics, instead choosing to imbue his songs with messages about searching for truth, rather than claims of having achieved it.

(Shortform note: During the ’80s, when U2 was first gaining popularity, Christian rock music established itself as a genre of its own with the success of bands such as Petra and Stryper. Though U2 was occasionally marketed as a Christian band in the US, the religious doubt that Bono describes having woven into his lyrics helped U2 avoid being stereotyped. A literary parallel to this distinction is the difference between the authors C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Like contemporary Christian music, Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia contains overt Christian messages and allegory, whereas Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is based on a foundation of Christian subtext that, as with U2’s music, the reader—or listener—must interpret on their own.)

The other key component of Bono’s faith is love, which he argues can’t be found in the confines of religion. Instead, love—which he equates with God—is found in everyday interactions, especially with those who need love most. This kind of love isn’t just a warm, fuzzy feeling but instead is an active engagement to help others. This is the root of Bono’s call to activism—caring for the sick, the hungry, and the poor is the closest you can get to finding God. After all, Bono points out that when God chose to embody himself as a human, he did so in the form of Jesus—a poor, hungry child born in a place for housing animals.

(Shortform note: Despite the traditional nativity narrative that Bono cites, theologians argue that the place of Jesus’ birth was most likely a guest room in a local family’s home—but still alongside the family’s livestock. Nevertheless, Bono’s point stands—in Christianity’s core texts, Christ is born in the most humble circumstances. Furthermore, when looking at what the Bible says on poverty, it goes beyond giving to those in need, and also says that Christians must defend the poor’s rights and help give them a voice, actively engaging with them as neighbors and human beings. Above all, the scriptures teach that the focus of your faith should be on God and others, not on glorifying yourself—a tendency that Bono addresses in his memoir.)

Bono writes that the heart of spirituality lies in being able to surrender your ego, and he wonders if something like that is beyond him. After all, as a rock star, he’s drawn to the limelight. As an activist, he’s clung to the notion that he, personally, has the power to save the world. Both those personas hide his true self behind a mask of importance, one that he would have to let go of to uncover his authentic self. Bono believes that growing out of that shell would require giving up his sense of self to a higher power—be that God or love for others. He doubts if that’s a level of surrender he can reach, but then again, doubt and love are the roots of his faith.

(Shortform note: Atheist philosopher Sam Harris might argue that Bono’s conception of spirituality doesn’t require a belief in the divine. In Waking Up, Harris describes a secular mode of spirituality based on exploring your consciousness while giving up—or surrendering, in Bono’s words—your illusions of ego and individual selfhood. To Harris, spirituality is about transcending the limitations of existence and freeing your awareness from the constant treadmill of anxiety, longing, sadness, and pain. Harris argues that having a spiritual experience doesn’t require faith in a higher power but can be achieved by practicing meditation.)