Nearly 50 years into career, Bono still divides opinion

The measure of a rock star isn’t merely the music they produce, it’s the cultural image surrounding them. 

The cultural image of Mick Jagger or Keith Richards? The party boys who defied death and still tour well into their 80s.

The cultural image of John Lennon and Paul McCartney? The two friends who changed the face of popular music but had it all burn down as quickly as it arrived, and could never capture the same magic when apart.

The cultural image of Bono? Well, that depends on who you ask.

This week, the cult of Bono goes under the spotlight in the new Apple documentary Bono: Stories Of Surrender.

The full title is Bono: Stories Of Surrender: An Evening of Words, Music and Some Mischief, but we refuse to call it by that title. We have some modicum of respect for our readers.

Airing on Apple TV+, the documentary sees Bono explore the various chapters in his life from his early years in Dublin, U2’s initial rise to fame in the 1980s and superstardom that followed, his charity work and ultimately, what the man himself thinks about himself.

U2’s story is firmly etched in rock and roll myth; the 1976 formation at Mount Temple Comprehensive School on the Northside paved the way for decades of cultural dominance, which has only now started to show signs of slowing down.

21 number one singles, generous airplay on Radio Nova and RTÉ Gold, and their likeness on display at the National Wax Museum is the kind of immortality a rock band can only dream of.

So what if U2 haven’t had a top 10 single on the Irish singles chart since 2009? Their recent Las Vegas residency more than makes up for it.

Nearly 50 years later, it is to be fully expected that the biggest rock star of the last half century wants to sit back and take stock of what he’s achieved.

To some, Bono is the greatest ambassador a country can ask for; he came from modest Northside roots to champion causes such as poverty in the developing world and has the phone number of people who can move nations with the click of a finger.

To others, Bono is a pompous caricature who only speaks out on social issues when it doesn’t have a direct impact on his bottom line and introduced a corporate element to rock music that went against the ethos of the punk rock movement that spawned them.

In a 2001 interview with shock jock Howard Stern, Henry Rollins described U2 as “the weakest rhythm section ever known in a multi-platinum band. The drummer can’t drum, the bass player can’t play, and the guitar player has one riff.”

And what of Bono?

“He’s an utter, buffoon who should be in a bar, crooning.” 

The Black Flag frontman was speaking right around the time All That You Can’t Leave Behind defined U2 as the number one band of their era.

That was nearly 25 years ago, and the Bono of 2025 poses an interesting question: what exactly does he mean to the younger generation?

As mentioned, U2 haven’t been bothering the pop charts in the era of Spotify and Taylor Swift, but Bono may well be recognisable as just a celebrity, like how a new generation of football fans just know David Beckham for being a famous man instead of the great footballer he was.

In 2015, Bono made an appearance on the English Leaving Cert exam, with his appearance on the exam paper becoming a minor meme among people who sat the exams that year, a secret handshake among a certain exam cohort like how the class of 2002 had to sit an exam during Ireland’s 2002 World Cup match against Germany.

Of course, the last time U2 really made a cultural splash was in September 2014 when their album, Songs Of Innocence, was added to the library of every person with an iTunes account (which, as it turns out, was a lot of people).

It has been forgotten that the album itself was quite good – a meeting point of their post-punk sensibilities of their early years and their evolution to a stadium rock act in the 2000s – but people only remember that people were so annoyed about the album being downloaded onto their phones that Apple had to release a guide on how to remove it. 

The one stick that people love to beat Bono with is his image as the man who rallies for change but is more than happy to facilitate and enable the capitalist status quo.

It’s no secret U2 have always been political, but it’s the manner of their politics that rubs people the wrong way.

Their 2006 decision to move the music publishing side of their business affairs to the low-tax Netherlands, for example, is commonly used as an example of their “do as I say, not as I do” brand of social progressivism.

When asked about the arrangement in 2015, Bono stated, “it’s just some smart people we have working for us trying to be sensible about the way we’re taxed, and that’s just one of our companies, by the way.”

In comments transcribed by The Guardian, Bono was quoted as saying, “we pay a fortune in tax, just so people know, we pay a fortune in tax; and we’re happy to pay a fortune in tax, people should.”

“But that doesn’t mean, because you’re good at philanthropy and because I’m an activist, people think you should be stupid in business, and I don’t run with that.”

More recently, Bono plugged his documentary at the Cannes Film Festival with his pal Sean Penn and members of the Ukrainian armed forces.

Accepting an award at this year’s Ivor Novello Awards in London, where U2 received a fellowship award, Bono used his stage time to criticise the Israeli government.

He called for Israel to “be released from Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right fundamentalists that twist your sacred texts.”

“Peace creates possibilities in the most intractable situations,” he told the crowd, adding, “lord knows there are a few of them out there right now. Hamas release the hostages. Stop the war.”

His old boss, Brian Eno, has put his money where his mouth is; he has donated the money he earned from composing the Windows 95 start-up to victims of the ongoing war in Gaza and has called for Microsoft to divest from Israel.

The real test of the U2 legacy will come when the generation coming through now discovers the band and examines their place in rock history; will they remember their place as Ireland’s unofficial cultural ambassadors, or as the band who turned rock music into the corporate machine it once raged against?

We put the question to readers of Northside and Southside People – what did they think of Bono?

One reader, Steven, simply commented, “Bohno.”

Another reader, Hayley, commented, “I adore him. I think he’s a phenomenal storyteller and one of the most open-hearted human beings.”

Finding out what people really think of Bono? That is a question where we still haven’t found what we’re looking for.