Bono describes the tensions of campaigning
Rock star Bono today spoke about the tensions caused within his group U2 by his high-profile campaigning against global poverty.
And he said that at one point he feared his commitment to the anti-poverty cause might force him out of the band.
Bono was one of the figureheads, alongside Bob Geldof, of this year’s Make Poverty History campaign and Live 8 concert, and frequently makes on-stage statements about global poverty during U2 concerts.
He today admitted that his campaigning activities had “raised eyebrows” among his fellow band-members.
“They are hugely supportive spiritually and financially of the work I do, but they are in a rock’n’roll band and the first job of a rock’n’roll band is not to be dull,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“So we have to be very careful about just letting me go too far.
“When I do my rant on making poverty history, I have got Larry Mullen, our drummer, behind me looking at his watch, timing me.
“There was one point when I thought ‘I’m going to be thrown out of the band for this stuff’.
“People just openly jeered and I felt like I was a weight around my band’s neck for doing this kind of work.”
But he said that he now felt the other band-members recognised that U2’s audience appreciate what he is doing.
“I thought we would wear our audience out, but it hasn’t happened,” he said.
“People are smart out there. They know what you are doing, they know the compromises you are making, they get it. Our audience feels like they have a stronger voice through me, and the band can see that.”
U2’s line-up of Bono, Larry Mullen, guitarist The Edge and bassist Adam Clayton has remained stable since they first played together as schoolboys in Dublin in 1976.
Looking back on the anti-poverty campaigns of 2005, Bono said that the agreements on aid and debt cancellation reached by the world’s most powerful nations at the G8 summit in Gleneagles in July were “a very big step” towards achieving the Millennium Development Goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015.
But he said he was “completely gutted” by the outcome of this month’s World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong, which failed to make a breakthrough on fairer trade for developing countries.
“There has been no progress on trade and the US play silly buggers on subsidies and the EU on tariffs and it just goes on and on,” he said.
“All these trade rounds, it seems that the poorest of the poor are always last in the queue for any breakthrough.”
It was vital that campaigners kept pressure up on world leaders to deliver on the pledges made at Gleneagles, said Bono.
“Politicians like to sign cheques, but they rarely like to cash them,” he warned. “We have to keep them to their promises.”
