Thursday, August 8, 2019
Wednesday, August 7, 2019
Bono and Guggi: A friendship based on art, punk rock and Jesus
Artist Guggi discusses his background and his new show, “My Cup Overflows,” at Arcane Space in Los Angeles in June 2019. RNS photo by Bhushan Thakkar (www.20evo.com)
VENICE, Calif. (RNS) — At the height of Ireland’s sectarian Troubles in the early 1970s, when he was not long out of diapers, Paul Hewson met Derek Rowen, a neighbor boy from a few houses away in their working-class Finglas neighborhood of North Dublin.
The Hewson family lived at No. 5 Cedarwood Road.
The Rowens — all dozen of them — occupied No. 10.
More than 50 years (and two famous nicknames) later, Hewson, aka Bono of U2, and Rowen, the contemporary artist better known as Guggi, remain the best of friends.
As children, they bonded over a shared love of punk rock, mischief making and Jesus.
As men, they have channeled the spiritual, cultural and personal tumult of their youth into art.
For Bono, it became music.
Guggi, abstract art.
Musician Bono, left, and artist Guggi grew up together in Ireland. Video screenshots
“Myself and Bono, we weren’t like the other kids in the street and we knew we weren’t,” Guggi told Religion News Service recently during “My Cup Overflows,” an exhibit of his new works at Arcane Space, a gallery in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles co-owned by Morleigh Steinberg, wife of U2 guitarist The Edge.
“I was seen as an oddball, a freak,” said Guggi, who turned 60 in May and is 362 days older than Bono. “We didn’t know what to say when they would want us to name our favorite football players because we didn’t know any names. We could get beaten up for supporting the wrong team or not supporting anybody.”
One thing they did have in common was an interest in developing their Christian faith.
Bono performs on The Joshua Tree Tour in Indianapolis in Sept. 2017. Photo by Daniel Hazard/Creative Commons
Bono’s parents had what was considered to be a “mixed marriage” at the time — his father, Bob, was Catholic, his mother, Iris, Protestant. Bono and his older brother, Norman, were reared in the Church of Ireland (the Irish iteration of the Episcopal Church).
Guggi was rarer still in the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland, where he was born into a devoutly religious family rooted in the Christian Brethren (Irish cousin of America’s Plymouth Brethren) tradition. He is the second oldest of 10 children (seven boys and three girls).
Guggi brought up his own children religiously in one of Dublin’s Baptist churches. “It just happened to be a Baptist church — I’m not interested in brand names, I just wanted the message as it is in the Gospels,” he said.
His father, Robbie, who turns 86 this month, was and remains something of a zealot.
Bono once told me that the elder Rowen was “straight out of a Flannery O’Connor novel — it was like the prophet Jeremiah lived on our street.”
“I always remember the color of the language he used when he preached at us and the conviction of the words he used,” he told me in a 2005 interview.
Guggi describes his spiritual upbringing as “strict, Puritan,” and says his father ruled his family with an iron fist. And yet he had a genuine faith that has compelled a lifelong generosity.
“Bono came to his faith through my dad. And I came to faith through my dad,” Guggi said.
“Calix Meus Inebrians” by Guggi in France. Photo courtesy of Chateau La Coste
The eccentric elder Rowen was a virtuoso salesman, first for Eveready batteries and later for Raleigh and Peugeot bicycles, with a passionate, if sometimes overbearing, faith. He was also a consummate collector — of motorcycles, boats, “anything with wheels,” and once, a flock of sheep.
Bono’s mother, Iris, died when he was 14. After her death, Bono spent a lot of time at Guggi’s house, where he fell in naturally among the 10 Rowen siblings.
Guggi persuaded Bono to attend a Bible camp when they were tweens.
“My Dad would send us to the YMCA where they had something called the ‘boys department’ where boys went — not boys and girls, just boys — and the boys department went on a camp every year, Guggi said.
It was called “camping,” but it was more like sleeping bags on the rec room floor, he said.
“We slept in tents maybe a couple of times, but it was mostly school halls, church halls, that kind of thing, and yeah, myself and Bono went there every summer,” he said.
Like his friend Bono, Guggi tried his hand at music.
As a teenager, he formed a band, The Virgin Prunes, with Gavin Friday (another childhood friend of Bono’s), Dik Evans (brother of U2’s The Edge), and others.
The Prunes, who disbanded in 1990 and still have a hearty cult following in parts of Europe, incorporated elements of goth, performance art, and cross-dressing into their performances.
Guggi left the Prunes in 1984 to focus full time on his artwork.
It was about this time, at his grandmother’s funeral, that he heard a message that changed the way he understood his calling as an artist.
Modern artist Guggi poses with some of his “Broken” paintings at his exhibition, “My Cups Overflows,” in the Arcane Space in Los Angeles. RNS photo by Bhushan Thakkar (www.20evo.com)
“I’ve drawn and painted since I was a child, and I kind of started feeling guilty about it — what am I adding here? What am I bringing to society?” Guggi said. “But then this preacher at my grandmother’s funeral said, ‘If we are created in God’s image, we must in some way be like him. And if God is the creator, we must also be creative.’ That just struck a chord with me — that art isn’t just enough to do, it’s a special thing to do. I feel incredibly privileged to be able to paint, to be able to make pictures and sculptures.”
Now one of Ireland’s most celebrated modern artists, Guggi is perhaps best known for featuring empty bowls, jugs, spoons and other quotidian objects in his work, whether in oil, mixed media or sculpture.
Those works include a massive 15-foot-tall, 7,000-ton bronze bowl titled “Calix Meus Inebrians,” which stands among the grape vines at the Chateau La Coste vineyard in Aix-en-Provence, France.
Guggi with his artwork “Poculum ex Vinea” at the Arcane Space in Los Angeles. RNS photo by Bhushan Thakkar (www.20evo.com)
A 100-pound, nearly two-foot-tall bronze bowl titled “Poculum ex Vinea” (“a cup of vines”) is featured in Guggi’s new exhibition alongside a series of paintings on brown paper called “Broken.” The art historian and poet Kevin Grovier described the work this way: “By salvaging beauty from distress, soulfulness from fragmentation, Guggi creates objects from another world.”
The artist himself isn’t too keen on analyzing his artwork — “It’s not a verbal medium,” Guggi said.
He added that, “artists should be more like Victorian children: seen and not heard.” But he admits there is a spiritual connection to his habit of focusing on vessels and finding the sacred in the ordinary.
“I’m merely a channel, and it comes through me and I’m available for service in that sense,” Guggi said.
He started with portraiture, inspired by photos he took of a peculiar street preacher — a woman who was part of a fundamentalist Catholic sect.
“She would have a child’s glove in one hand and some literature or something in the other and she’d be waving it around,” Guggi said. “She was quite bonkers, but she did have a great face.”
He made countless abstract portraits based on the woman’s face until he realized what he was drawing wasn’t the curve of her face, it was a bowl.
“That was what led to taking simple, common, everyday objects that we walk past all the time, and we don’t notice are there, that are functional. I started painting these objects, and I never stopped,” Guggi said.
U2 on stage during the opening concert of their global The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on May 12, 2017. Photo by Nick Nidlick/Reuters
During the recording of U2’s “The Joshua Tree” album in 1985, Bono summoned Guggi and Gavin to their local pub, known as The Gravediggers, to ask a favor.
“He said, ‘Look, I want to paint. We’re putting this album together, we’re making this record, but I need to get away from that,’” Guggi recalled. “Bono always loved painting, and we painted together as children, as teenagers.”
Bono set aside a room in the large manor house where the band was recording “The Joshua Tree” and asked Guggi to fill it with art supplies, which he did.
The trio — Bono, Guggi and Gavin — joined by a fourth friend, Charlie Whisker, who would go on to direct videos for U2 and Bob Dylan among others, would gather on Wednesday nights to make art. A year after the album came out, the friends hosted a group exhibition of their work at a Dublin art gallery called “Four Artists, Many Wednesdays.”
The exhibit also included photographs Bono had taken on his first visit to Africa during the Ethiopian famine in 1985.
Modern artist Guggi, right, speaks with guests during an opening for his exhibition, “My Cups Overflows”, at the Arcane Space in Los Angeles in June 2019. RNS photo by Bhushan Thakkar (www.20evo.com)
Like most longtime friends, over a lifetime the men have shaped each other. For instance, both are fathers — Bono has four children, Guggi has five (all boys) — and have sons named Elijah. Bono’s oldest son is Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q Hewson.
When the lifelong friends speak, sometimes you can hear whispers of one in the other.
“I am a believer, 100 percent,” Guggi insists when the conversation circles back to matters of faith. “I’m not a very good example of one, but you’re either in or you’re out.”
Bono, whose lyrics are laden with spiritual and biblical imagery and who in recent years has been quite open about his Christian faith, has famously said, “I’m not a very good advertisement for God.”
On U2’s perhaps most autobiographical album to date, 2014’s “Songs of Innocence,” Bono dedicated a song to Guggi called “Cedarwood Road.” It says in part:
“I was running down the road
The fear was all I knew
I was looking for a soul that’s real
Then I ran into you…
Symbols clashing, bibles smashing
Paint the world you need to see.”
Guggi’s show “My Cup Overflows” runs through the end of August, by appointment, at Arcane Space.
Thursday, June 13, 2019
Bono: "Anger is a source of energy"
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of the French magazine Paris Match, Olivier Royant interviewed Bono in Belfast, Ireland.
"...A little by surprise, he entered the room and already tames the space. Bono left the rugby match he was watching in his suite with his wife, Ali, to meet me. Immediately, we are seized by his benevolence and immediate contact, so far removed from the image of a global rock star. This Elizabethan-style palace, with walls adorned with aristocratic portraits, overlooking Belfast Bay, seems a bit pompous to talk about rock and politics. Through large windows come the laughter of a wedding cocktail under a gray sky. Son of a Protestant and a Catholic, Bono shows me on his cell a picture of the olive tree in pot that Pope Francis recently offered him. "He is the symbol of the three religions," he told me. Plant it anywhere, it will grow. "
Paris Match. How do you react to this wave of hatred that has invaded world politics?
Bono.: Our generation grew up thinking, like Martin Luther King, that the world was moving toward more justice, civil rights, gender equality. Here in Ireland, a wall fell. Elsewhere, democracy prevailed, apartheid was defeated. This luminous parenthesis of humanity is nothing compared to ten thousand years of history. Our grandfathers are no longer here to remind us of the tragedies that Europe has known. This wave of alarming elections marks the death of our innocence. Faced with this decline, a tip: stop lamenting, organize yourself!
Do you recognize in these spontaneous movements young people who mobilize for the climate?
It reminds me of our beginnings, when I listened to Public Image Limited songs and felt anger rising up against injustice. Anger is a source of energy.
In your concerts, you hoist the European flag. You have faith in what Churchill called "expanded patriotism": to be simultaneously Irish and European ...
Yes, it's a romantic idea and it's the most beautiful of all. All these different languages to form a single voice. Being European is a thought that must become a feeling. Europe has been transformed into bureaucracy. It must change, reform from within, but it must not be left.
"...A little by surprise, he entered the room and already tames the space. Bono left the rugby match he was watching in his suite with his wife, Ali, to meet me. Immediately, we are seized by his benevolence and immediate contact, so far removed from the image of a global rock star. This Elizabethan-style palace, with walls adorned with aristocratic portraits, overlooking Belfast Bay, seems a bit pompous to talk about rock and politics. Through large windows come the laughter of a wedding cocktail under a gray sky. Son of a Protestant and a Catholic, Bono shows me on his cell a picture of the olive tree in pot that Pope Francis recently offered him. "He is the symbol of the three religions," he told me. Plant it anywhere, it will grow. "
Paris Match. How do you react to this wave of hatred that has invaded world politics?
Bono.: Our generation grew up thinking, like Martin Luther King, that the world was moving toward more justice, civil rights, gender equality. Here in Ireland, a wall fell. Elsewhere, democracy prevailed, apartheid was defeated. This luminous parenthesis of humanity is nothing compared to ten thousand years of history. Our grandfathers are no longer here to remind us of the tragedies that Europe has known. This wave of alarming elections marks the death of our innocence. Faced with this decline, a tip: stop lamenting, organize yourself!
Do you recognize in these spontaneous movements young people who mobilize for the climate?
It reminds me of our beginnings, when I listened to Public Image Limited songs and felt anger rising up against injustice. Anger is a source of energy.
In your concerts, you hoist the European flag. You have faith in what Churchill called "expanded patriotism": to be simultaneously Irish and European ...
Yes, it's a romantic idea and it's the most beautiful of all. All these different languages to form a single voice. Being European is a thought that must become a feeling. Europe has been transformed into bureaucracy. It must change, reform from within, but it must not be left.
You were in Paris on November 13, 2015, the day of the terrorist attacks. How did you live these moments?
Sheltered in our golden cage, our hotel rooms, where we watched television while gunshots rang around the Bataclan. At twenty-four hours, our show Bercy could have been the target of terrorists. I thought, "More than anything, these men hate what I love most in the world: music and women."
Find all of this interview in the exceptional anniversary issue of Paris Match
www.parismatch.com
translation:@mysteriousdistance
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
'Bono's A Life-Changer': Bullied Teen's Turnaround Inspired by Encounter With Singer
Chloe Howard loves telling young people how Bono changed her life.
After, that is, first telling them who Bono is.
“I won’t assume you know,” Howard recently told an assembly at Union Middle School in San Jose, “but he’s basically the biggest rock star in the world.”
A chance encounter with the lead singer of U2, Howard says, is the spark that helped her transform from a depressed, withdrawn victim of assault to an inspirational speaker in demand around the world.
“Bono’s a life-changer, man,” Howard said.
Howard, a 19-year-old college freshman, was born with a severely clubbed foot. It was a condition that required multiple surgeries, months in casts, and long stretches on crutches to deal with. Even with those hurdles, Howard says her supportive parents helped her be at peace with her disability.
Unfortunately, that peace was shattered her freshman year of high school in Marin County.
On Nov. 20, 2014, a couple of high school bullies decided to hold her down and rip off her shoes and socks, exposing her feet for anyone within view of the assault to gawk at.
“Seeing all the scars and the permanent discoloration and all the spots on my toes where toenails should be but weren't,” she said. “I saw this foot for the first time in my life as something that was ugly. That wasn't an image that I could erase from my mind.”
The assault left Howard with a new scar, but not a physical one. She fell into a depression, isolating herself from friends and family. This was her “sweatshirt phase,” as she called it.
“I started wearing these massive sweatshirts to school in hopes of hiding myself,” she said. “I started suffering from PTSD, quickly diagnosed by my therapist.”
But then came hope for Howard, in the form of a massively successful international rock star icon.
Howard’s father won a contest where the prize was backstage tickets to meet Bono. Howard said she was shy, but worked up the courage to tell Bono the story of her clubfoot and subsequent assault.
“Bono looked at me and he said, 'Chloe, what happened to you is an injustice, when you use your voice, when you speak out and tell your story, you're speaking for those who can't speak for themselves',” she said.
Howard said Bono’s words were so meaningful, she knew she had to be that voice to speak for others that might be going through similar situations.
“I wanted to believe my story was going to continue, my assault wasn't the end of Chloe Ruth Howard as the world knew her,” she said.
One year later, Howard was standing on a stage in Santa Barbara, sharing her story in a TED Talk.
She labeled her story, “Stand Beautiful,” and now speaks to groups all over the world, sharing the message of against bullying and for self-acceptance.
Kids these days need to be reminded that they have a purpose in life, said Howard. This was something she shared with the students at Union Middle School.
After her assault, Howard told the kids, the perpetrators were put on trial and found guilty of battery.
“That process was exhausting, so hard and so overwhelming at ages 14, 15 and 16 going through all of this,” she said. “No one has the right to touch anyone without their consent, ever.”
Many kids in the audience stuck around after Howard’s speech to share their own stories of bullying and express their gratitude for Howard’s ability to embody the phrase, “Stand Beautiful.”
www.nbcbayarea.com
After, that is, first telling them who Bono is.
“I won’t assume you know,” Howard recently told an assembly at Union Middle School in San Jose, “but he’s basically the biggest rock star in the world.”
A chance encounter with the lead singer of U2, Howard says, is the spark that helped her transform from a depressed, withdrawn victim of assault to an inspirational speaker in demand around the world.
“Bono’s a life-changer, man,” Howard said.
Howard, a 19-year-old college freshman, was born with a severely clubbed foot. It was a condition that required multiple surgeries, months in casts, and long stretches on crutches to deal with. Even with those hurdles, Howard says her supportive parents helped her be at peace with her disability.
Unfortunately, that peace was shattered her freshman year of high school in Marin County.
On Nov. 20, 2014, a couple of high school bullies decided to hold her down and rip off her shoes and socks, exposing her feet for anyone within view of the assault to gawk at.
“Seeing all the scars and the permanent discoloration and all the spots on my toes where toenails should be but weren't,” she said. “I saw this foot for the first time in my life as something that was ugly. That wasn't an image that I could erase from my mind.”
The assault left Howard with a new scar, but not a physical one. She fell into a depression, isolating herself from friends and family. This was her “sweatshirt phase,” as she called it.
“I started wearing these massive sweatshirts to school in hopes of hiding myself,” she said. “I started suffering from PTSD, quickly diagnosed by my therapist.”
But then came hope for Howard, in the form of a massively successful international rock star icon.
Howard’s father won a contest where the prize was backstage tickets to meet Bono. Howard said she was shy, but worked up the courage to tell Bono the story of her clubfoot and subsequent assault.
“Bono looked at me and he said, 'Chloe, what happened to you is an injustice, when you use your voice, when you speak out and tell your story, you're speaking for those who can't speak for themselves',” she said.
Howard said Bono’s words were so meaningful, she knew she had to be that voice to speak for others that might be going through similar situations.
“I wanted to believe my story was going to continue, my assault wasn't the end of Chloe Ruth Howard as the world knew her,” she said.
One year later, Howard was standing on a stage in Santa Barbara, sharing her story in a TED Talk.
She labeled her story, “Stand Beautiful,” and now speaks to groups all over the world, sharing the message of against bullying and for self-acceptance.
Kids these days need to be reminded that they have a purpose in life, said Howard. This was something she shared with the students at Union Middle School.
After her assault, Howard told the kids, the perpetrators were put on trial and found guilty of battery.
“That process was exhausting, so hard and so overwhelming at ages 14, 15 and 16 going through all of this,” she said. “No one has the right to touch anyone without their consent, ever.”
Many kids in the audience stuck around after Howard’s speech to share their own stories of bullying and express their gratitude for Howard’s ability to embody the phrase, “Stand Beautiful.”
www.nbcbayarea.com
Friday, May 31, 2019
A U2 biopic?
U2 could follow in the footsteps of Queen and Elton John as the latest pop icons to get the big screen treatment, according to bassist Adam Clayton.
The recent box office triumphs of Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman have sparked a rush in Hollywood for the next big rockstar biopic – with films about everyone from Arethra Franklin to Boy George and even Creation Records boss Alan McGee reportedly in the works.
Speaking to Chris Moyles on Radio X today, 59-year-old Clayton said Bono and the boys would be more than happy to have a movie made of their lives.
After the Irish musician announced the latest leg of U2's Joshua Tree world tour, Moyles asked him: "How long do you think it’ll be before you boys get a little movie made about you?"
Clayton replied simply: "Let's say we're open to offers".
Even if it was to become a reality, any future U2 biopic wouldn't actually be the first time the band have been depicted on the big screen.
The 2011 musical comedy Killing Bono tells the story of young Irish rocker Neil McCormick and his younger brother Ivan, who attempt to become pop stars but can only look on as their secondary school friends U2 hit the big time.
All four band mates – Bono (Martin McCann), The Edge (Mark Griffin), Adam Clayton (David Tudor) and Larry Mullen Jr (Seán Doyle) – were depicted in the film, which was based on McCormick's 2003 memoir Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelgänger.
Formed in Dublin in 1976, U2 have released 14 studio albums and are one of the world's best-selling music artists in history – having sold an estimated 150–170 million records worldwide.
The recent box office triumphs of Bohemian Rhapsody and Rocketman have sparked a rush in Hollywood for the next big rockstar biopic – with films about everyone from Arethra Franklin to Boy George and even Creation Records boss Alan McGee reportedly in the works.
Speaking to Chris Moyles on Radio X today, 59-year-old Clayton said Bono and the boys would be more than happy to have a movie made of their lives.
After the Irish musician announced the latest leg of U2's Joshua Tree world tour, Moyles asked him: "How long do you think it’ll be before you boys get a little movie made about you?"
Clayton replied simply: "Let's say we're open to offers".
Even if it was to become a reality, any future U2 biopic wouldn't actually be the first time the band have been depicted on the big screen.
The 2011 musical comedy Killing Bono tells the story of young Irish rocker Neil McCormick and his younger brother Ivan, who attempt to become pop stars but can only look on as their secondary school friends U2 hit the big time.
All four band mates – Bono (Martin McCann), The Edge (Mark Griffin), Adam Clayton (David Tudor) and Larry Mullen Jr (Seán Doyle) – were depicted in the film, which was based on McCormick's 2003 memoir Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelgänger.
Formed in Dublin in 1976, U2 have released 14 studio albums and are one of the world's best-selling music artists in history – having sold an estimated 150–170 million records worldwide.
BY: Aidan Lonergan for www.irishpost.com
Thursday, May 16, 2019
Bono chats books and Harry Potter on “Open Book”
Bono shares his favorite books, how he fell in love with reading and which books he read to his girls, all on this episode of “Open Book With Jenna Bush Hager.”
www.today.com
www.today.com
Monday, May 13, 2019
Adam Clayton at Tommy Tiernan's show in RTE One
U2's Adam Clayton was the latest guest on The Tommy Tiernan Show and it was another candid interview.
Clayton opened up on the negative impact the band's worldwide fame had on him as well as his battle with alcohol.
“Success very much went to my head,” he said. “I think if you get everything your heart desires by – really we were making records by the time we were 20, by the time we were 25 and 26 we could pay our rent no problem, we owned cars, we could travel, and by the time The Joshua Tree hit we could buy a house – anyone I’ve met who’s experienced success and fame in that way in those years it takes them a long time to recover from it, and that sounds like a complaint but that’s just what happens.”
He added: "You lose your sense of yourself you lose a sense of reality. I was kind of very unhappy so I drank and I drugged and got myself in tabloid newspapers, and embarrassed kind of everyone I knew, and myself, but you know you come through it and you learn from it and maybe that’s what young men do anyway.”
Clayton said he has to “work really quite hard at keeping my sanity on and off the road, and my thinking can take me to bad places, my thinking is not always reliable," adding that it was a big plus having his bandmates around to "check" him.
Clayton said he's happiest during his time on stage with U2 when he can focus on nothing but the music.
Source of the video:Ultraviolet FanClub Brazil
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