'This is who I am': U2 frontman Bono tells his tale in Stories of Surrender 

“I feel a bit of an imposter, if I’m honest,” Bono, legendary frontman of Irish rock band U2, says with a wry smile from an interview room at the Cannes Film Festival.

“I’m here impersonating an actor, but they’ve let me away with it.”

Bono — born Paul David Hewson in Dublin, Ireland — is at the prestigious film festival promoting his feature-length documentary Bono: Stories Of Surrender, a recording of his one-man theatrical event inspired by his 2022 autobiography Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.

The production traces his life from humble beginnings in the Irish capital to achieving international fame with U2, chronicling his relationships with his parents, his experiences of The Troubles and the wider conflict in Ireland and Northern Ireland, his relationship with childhood sweetheart Alison Stewart and, as the title suggests, his battle with what it means to surrender.

The 65-year-old vocalist and lyricist explores in intimate, albeit theatrical, detail the intricacies of his upbringing after losing his mother, who died after suffering a ruptured cerebral aneurysm at her father’s funeral in 1974, and the fraught relationship he had with his father, who he felt didn’t always believe he had what it took to make it as a musician.

It is, he says, the story of “a man still confused about who he is, who might have begun to know who he was, but who certainly has a clearer knowledge of where he came from”.

Despite the fact that he is a self-described ‘exhibitionist’, Bono found himself being something of an enigma. Bold, brash, outspoken — particularly on issues of politics, non-violence and religion — he found himself wearing a public-facing mask, one that was partly self-crafted and partly thrust upon him.

“I think when you get a bit famous, it’s easy to fall into caricature, really,” the rockstar muses.

“And maybe it’s easier — more easy for some of us than for others — but you get drawn in very, very bold, brassy colours, and I certainly drew myself like that over the years, and I just wanted to get the pencil out and bring back some dimension to my life, and try and figure out actually the commonness of my story, or the ordinariness of my story, rather than the extraordinariness.”

From that feeling came his memoir, then the one-man stage production, and now a documentary film based on his theatrical show.

While the production is something of a theatrical autobiography, one that sees Bono portray versions of himself at various points in his life as well as his bandmates the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr., and his father, the narrative is interspersed with pared-back renditions of some of U2’s biggest hits.

While songs like Vertigo, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, and Sunday Bloody Sunday are well-known in the public consciousness, it’s interesting to consider them as markers of Bono’s headspace as he wrote them, as reflections of the world he inhabited at the time they were created.

“In the film and in the stage play, I chose those songs, yes, because they were well-known U2 songs, but more because they pushed the story forward...” he says.

For example, he adds, “Sunday Bloody Sunday is a great chance for me to talk about non-violence growing up in Ireland, which, you know, we were nearly in a civil war there for a while,” and he reflects upon his long-standing connection to the concept of non-violence, famously exemplified in the anthemic track about the 1972 Bloody Sunday incident in Derry, and the band’s ode to civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. in Pride (In the Name of Love), among other examples.

“Talking about non-violence and that white flag... It’s preposterous, of course, waving a white flag here on the red carpet in Cannes is not exactly courage...” he says, adding that standing up for non-violence begs the question: “How much do you believe in these concepts, and are you prepared to look ridiculous for them?”

“And I’ve always said yes to that question,” he concludes.

Thus comes the theme of surrender, a theme which is applicable not only to non-violent alternatives to brutality but also to self-reflection, to acquiescing to the things we can’t control, to the paths our lives take.

Bono says he wanted to explore the notion of surrender “because I’m not very good at it”.

“I named the book after a concept that I really needed to understand better, for just my own personal development.

“I struggle with surrendering to my band mates, surrendering to my family, to my missus... It’s a practice that I just, it’s something that I find difficult, but wish to proceed with.”

“But, you know, the world has never been as close to war in our lifetime, to a World War,” he adds.

“Though this word surrender does look even more preposterous, I think it might be even more important that we understand what non-violence means.

“And again, naturally, it’s just not who I am. Unless I’ve had some serious counselling, I’m much more likely to throw the punch!”

It’s evident that the rockstar has gone through an intense period of self-reflection, holding a mirror up and examining all of the things that have made him who he is, that have defined his artistry, his career, his values.

“You lift the stones, and you do find some creepy crawlies,” he reflects.

“I had a lot of, I suppose, armour on — as I say in the film, I was born with my fists up a bit. You’ve got your sword, your shield, your armour on, and at some point you do have to just sort of take it off and just say: ‘Look, this is actually who I am’.

“And if there were reasons you didn’t like me before, let me give you much more! Let me give it to you in detail!” he laughs.

“This is who I am, in all the mischief and all the fun and all the seriousness and all the earnestness. I think in the film, we managed to sort of distil it.”

• Bono: Stories Of Surrender comes to Apple TV+ on Friday, May 30.