Bono - The Book of Psalms

At seventeen he joined the embryonic U2 with three school-friends. U2released their first record with Island Records in April 1980andhave gone on to sell 87million albums worldwide, gathering sevenGrammies in the US and five Brit Awards in the UK along theway. In 1992their ground-breaking Zoo TV tour was hailed as themost innovative spectacle ever staged. The follow-up, 1997 s Pop-Mart tour, built on that inventiveness, and played to a record-breaking four million people worldwide. In 1994 Bonowas invitedto present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Frank Sinatra at theGrammies. He was the guest speaker at the UK International Yearof Literature in1995. The Million Dollar Hotel, a film based on astory co-written by Bono, is currently in production starring MelGibson and directed by Wim Wenders.

Bono lives in Dublin withhis wife and three children. Explaining belief has always been difficult. How do you explain a love and logic at the heart of the universe when the world is so out of whack? How about the poetic versus the actual truth found in the scriptures? Has free will got us crucified? And what about the dodgy characters who inhabit the tome, known as the bible, who claim to hear the voice of God? You have to be interested, but is God? Explaining faith is impossible Vision over visibility Instinct over intellect A songwriter plays a chord with the faith that he will hear the next one in his head. One of the writers of the psalms was a musician, a harp-player whose talents were required at the palace as the only medicine that would still the demons of the moody and insecure King Saul of Israel; a thought that still inspires, if not quite explaining Marilyn singing for Kennedy, or the Spice Girls in the court of Prince Charles At age 12, I was a fan of David, he felt familiar like a pop star could feel familiar. The words of the psalms were as poetic as they were religious and he was a star. A dramatic character, because before David could fulfil the prophecy and become the king of Israel, he had to take quite a beating. He was forced into exile and ended up in a cave in some no-name border town facing the collapse of his ego and abandonment by God.

But this is where the soap opera got interesting, this is where David was said to have composed his first psalm a blues. Thats what a lot of the psalms feel like to me, the blues. Man shouting at God My God, my God why hast thou forsaken me? Why art thou so far from helping me? (Psalm 22). I hear echoes of this holy row when un-holy bluesman Robert Johnson howls Theres a hellhound on my trail or Van Morrison sings Sometimes I feel like a motherless child. Texas Alexander mimics the psalms in Justice Blues: I cried Lord my father, Lord eh Kingdom come. Send me back my woman, then thy will be done.

Humorous, sometimes blasphemous, the blues was backslidin music; but by its very opposition, flattered the subject of its perfect cousin Gospel. Abandonment, displacement, is the stuff of my favourite psalms. The Psalter may be a font of gospel music, but for me its in his despair that the psalmist really reveals the nature of his special relationship with God. Honesty, even to the point of anger. How long, Lord? Wilt thou hide thyself forever? (Psalm 89) or Answer me when I call (Psalm 5). Psalms and hymns were my first taste of inspirational music.

I liked the words but I wasnt sure about the tunes with the exception of Psalm 23, The Lord is my Shepherd. I remember them as droned and chanted rather than sung. Still, in an odd way, they prepared me for the honesty of John Lennon, the baroque language of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, the open throat of Al Green and Stevie Wonder when I hear these singers, I am reconnected to a part of me I have no explanation for my soul I guess. Words and music did for me what solid, even rigorous, religious argument could never do, they introduced me to God, not belief in God, more an experiential sense of GOD. Over art, literature, reason, the way in to my spirit was a combination of words and music. As a result the Book of Psalms always felt open to me and led me to the poetry of Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, the book of John My religion could not be fiction but it had to transcend facts.

It could be mystical, but not mythical and definitely not ritual My mother was Protestant, my father Catholic; anywhere other than Ireland that would be unremarkable. The Prods at that time had the better tunes and the Catholics had the better stage-gear. My mate Gavin Friday used to say: Roman Catholicism is the Glamrock of religion with its candles and psychedelic colours Cardinal blues, scarlets and purples, smoke bombs of incense and the ring of the little bell. The Prods were better at the bigger bells, they could afford them. In Ireland wealth and Protestantism went together; to have either, was to have collaborated with the enemy, i.e. Britain.

This did not fly in our house. After going to Mass at the top of the hill, in Finglas on the north side of Dublin, my father waited outside the little Church of Ireland chapel at the bottom of the hill, where my mother had brought her two sons I kept myself awake thinking of the clergymans daughter and let my eyes dive into the cinema of the stained glass. These Christian artisans had invented the movies light projected through colour to tell their story. In the 70s the story was the Troubles and the Troubles came through the stained glass; with rocks thrown more in mischief than in anger, but the message was the same; the country was to be divided along sectarian lines. I had a foot in both camps, so my Goliath became religion itself; I began to see religion as the perversion of faith. As to the five smooth stones for the sling I began to see God everywhere else.

In girls, fun, music, justice but still despite the lofty King James translation the scriptures I loved these stories for the basest reasons, not just the New Testament with its mind-altering concept that God might reveal himself as a baby born in straw poverty but even the Old Testament. These were action movies, with some hardcore men and women the car chases, the casualties, the blood and guts; there was very little kissing David was a star, the Elvis of the bible, if we can believe the chiselling of Michelangelo (check the face but I still cant figure out this most famous Jews foreskin). And unusually for such a rock star, with his lust for power, lust for women, lust for life, he had the humility of one who knew his gift worked harder than he ever would. He even danced naked in front of his troops the biblical equivalent of the royal walkabout. David was definitely more performance artist than politician. Anyway, I stopped going to churches and got myself into a different kind of religion.

Dont laugh, thats what being in a rock n roll band is, not pseudo-religion either Show-business is Shamanism: Music is Worship; whether its worship of women or their designer, the world or its destroyer, whether it comes from that ancient place we call soul or simply the spinal cortex, whether the prayers are on fire with a dumb rage or dove-like desire the smoke goes upwards to God or something you replace God with usually yourself. Years ago, lost for words and forty minutes of recording time left before the end of our studio time, we were still looking for a song to close our third album,