U2’s Bono on the Power of Music

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Early in his career, Bonner once told an interviewer about his plans for a ban. called U2.

He said, if we stay in small clubs, we'll develop small minds, and then we'll start making small music. Now that turned out not to be at all a problem. In the course of a decade, U2 went from playing gigs in small places in Dublin, Ireland to being one of the biggest bands in the world. And Bono, the fearless and sometimes shameless leader of YouTube, became among the most definitive rock stars of the modern era, conquering arenas and stadiums around the globe, singing out, and often holding forth.

Bono is out with a new documentary now on Apple Plus called Bono, Stories of Surrender. And I spoke with him at the New Yorker Festival in 2022 before his memoir was released. When you talk to People who have been in bands when they're 16, no matter what their destiny was, they have no expectations other than to play in a bar, to maybe be the best blues band on in London like the Stones or whatever. What was the ambition that was fired up in you pretty quickly once this band sort of took shape?

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (33 minutes, 4,317 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.