U2's Bono Opens Up About Addiction and Faith in New Book
(CNN) -- While Bono was touring the U.S. following the release of U2's fifth studio album, he stopped by the Nashville home of country music icon Johnny Cash, who along with his wife June had invited him for lunch.Cash was a popular performer in Bono's native Ireland, and the two singers had already formed a friendship, bonding over music and their shared faith.
Cash, who had struggled with addiction to alcohol and barbiturates, was a devout Christian.As Bono sat at the kitchen table, he listened as Cash delivered "the most poetic grace I've ever heard." Then Cash, "smiling under his breath, as if June couldn't hear or see," ended his grace with, "Sure miss the drugs, though.""For all his deep faith and conviction, he could never be the pious type, and maybe that's why so many are drawn to him," Bono writes about the lunch in his new memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. "Johnny didn't sing to the damned; he sang with the damned, and sometimes you sensed he might prefer their company."Some of this description could apply to Bono as well.
Born Paul David Hewson in Dublin, Ireland, Bono is a global rock star, an activist and an entrepreneur who is currently touring the U.S.
to promote his memoir. All those facets are covered in an entertaining and occasionally hilarious 500-page book that vividly recounts passages from Bono's life that he only hints at in his songs.Bono's book, though, is more than a rock star's memoir.
