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Happy Birthday, Bono! (by Kyle Anderson)
It's a big day in the life of the man born Paul Hewson, who is one of the most famous and iconic rock stars in history. Of course, he's known to the world as Bono, the singer for U2 and a full-time activist. He turns 50 years old today, so we at MTV News wanted to wish him a very happy birthday.
Really, considering how much he has accomplished, it's incredible that Bono is only 50 years old. His band first broke out way back in 1980 with their debut album Boy, which contained their first hit "I Will Follow" (he called himself "Bono Vox" then, which translates to "beautiful voice"). Their sound began as a hybrid of punk rock agitation, New Wave beauty and Eno-esque soundscapes. Over the course of the 1980s, they gradually morphed into one of the biggest bands on the planet, with MTV staples like "New Year's Day," "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" accosting the charts. In fact, their 1987 album The Joshua Tree is largely considered to be the finest album of the 1980s and one of the best ever made.
The '90s saw U2 expanding outward both sonically and socially. Their triptych of albums — 1991's Achtung Baby, 1993's Zooropa and 1997's Pop — toyed with electronic instruments, dance music, dub, prog rock and all manner of genres in between, all while still maintaining their core identity and knocking out hits like "One" and "Discotheque." All the while, they went on huge stadium-filling tours and worked more and more on charity projects and on worldwide outreach, with Bono leading the way in addressing the AIDS epidemic and third world debt relief.
The past decade has seen the band find their roots again, and they saw their anthemic epics providing the soundtrack to important moments in history (most notably "Beautiful Day," which became an unofficial theme song of survival following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001). They continue to produce incredible music to this day, as their 2009 album No Line on the Horizon delivered a handful more hits and another huge, envelope-pushing tour.
And The Daily Maverick (South Africa)
Bono's first 50 years: the music, the politics, the sunglasses(By Mandy de Waal)
Hard to believe, but Bono’s already burned through his first 50 years on Earth. Don’t let those fresh looks fool you though. Having achieved godlike rock status he’s on to his next job: Saving Africa, ending poverty and the scourge of Aids. (The post of President of the Earth hasn’t been established just yet.)
As Bono turns 50, spare a thought for a man you’ve probably never heard of before. His name is Richard “Dik” Evans. In 1976 together with Paul David Hewson (Bono), Adam Clayton, and his brother David Evans (The Edge) he’d answer a newspaper advert stuck on a bulletin board calling for members for a new rock band. The four would audition, but soon after in a key moment of separating fortunes, Bono and friends would abandon doing cover songs in favour of writing original material and move on to form a group called U2. Dik Evans would choose to leave just before the formation of U2 to join a band called The Virgin Prunes.
The rest of the story is rock history. Dik would fade into obscurity, his only fame by proxy of his brother The Edge. Bono would become an overachieving legend. Not happy with global domination as frontman for one of the greatest bands of all time, or with being arguably one of the biggest singer-songwriters of his time, Bono, like Geldof before him, would put Africa on his list of “things to save”.
When he was 14, Bono suffered a significant trauma when his mother collapsed and later died after suffering a cerebral aneurysm at her father’s funeral. The pain of this loss is evident in many of his songs, including “I will follow” which the group have played on just about every tour, becoming U2’s most frequently played number.
Winner of 22 Grammy Awards, Bono pens most U2 songs which have ranged from the early inspired religious themes, to political statements to the more recent personal and self-deprecating. In 2005 with the rest of U2, Bono was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Three years later Rolling Stone magazine would list him as one of the greatest singers of all time. Having sold more than 150 million albums, U2’s latest are less remarkable than the earlier hit spinners like “The Joshua Tree”, “War” and “Achtung Baby”.
Nowadays Bono’s focus is increasingly geared toward solving the problem of poverty, saving Africa and championing the fight against Aids. Like Sir Bob before him Bono travelled to Ethiopia after 1985’s Live Aid concert and was reborn as a self-styled superhero with the view that “every human life has equal worth".
This has spawned a number of pop-styled Bono movements to end Africa’s woes including “The Campaign to Make Poverty History” and Product (RED). The latter is a consumerist-type fundraising campaign that encourages people to buy, buy, buy designer branded products to raise funds for Aids drugs in impoverished Africa. As Bono once said: "Rock stars always want to do two things. They want to have fun and change the world. If you can do both at the same time you're okay.” Bono has won way too many humanitarian awards to mention here, but the bigger ones include being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 and an honorary knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II in 2007.
Thanks to his humanitarian efforts, Bono is now rubbing shoulders with global leaders, speaking at world economic forums and addressing political and economic heavyweights at platforms such as Davos. Nowadays the songwriter with “good voice” is telling world leaders how to be good and save the world.
How will the rock god celebrate his half-century? According to the Irish press, he’ll be having an intimate do with a few close friends in New York. Oh, for a look at that guest list.
source:newsroom.mtv.com//www.thedailymaverick.co.za
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