‘We became close friends after he passed… I didn't think I was a very good son' – Bono on relationship with father Bob Hewson

Irish Independent

24-05-2025

His memoir Stories of Surrender, which has now been turned into a movie, largely tells the story of Paul Hewson and his father, Brendan Robert Hewson
"My father Bob, who I played every night, just by turning my neck and then I would have his voice,' he told the Brendan O'Connor Show this morning.
"I always loved my father but I really learnt to like him. I realised how funny he was and how I might have missed some of his humour in my teenage years.
"And then there is this other father, which I am now and the fear of becoming a father because I didn't think I was a very good son,' he said.
The Ballymun native, who hit superstardom with U2 in the 1980s, told he how became close friends with his father after he passed away, which he described as 'not so smart'.
"But we got on great in one sense. We would go to Finnegan's and sit there and not speak to each other but there were looks and glances exchanged,' he said.
He said that he felt his brother was closer to their father and more useful to him as he got ill.
However, the Live Aid performer and philanthropist said that he feels he now 'has his father's approval' and that he can 'move forward' with his life.
"I have always felt the blessing of my mother and I still get memories, even though I was 14 when she passed.
"It's amazing the amount of people in Rock n' Roll who lost their mothers as a teenager, whether it was Paul McCartney or John Lennon,' he said.
He said his father was very clever, but was taken out of school and later got a job in a Post Office.
"He had all these other dreams but he just put them aside because in Ireland at that time, it just was dangerous to have those kind of dreams.
"People would leave Ireland to follow those kind of dreams and we forget this. My mother was totally non-ambitious, she would tell him to take more time off.
"We were just not materially very ambitious and that's very impressive. They put their friends first,' he said.
He added that his father 'really lived his life' and 'laughed a lot' . "He had this beautiful voice and he had the Coolock musical society,' Bono added.
When asked if he thought his father was jealous of his life, the U2 singer said: 'I don't think so, I just think he couldn't say, 'wow you got to do all the things I wanted to do'. He just couldn't say that,' he said.
The Dublin artist also spoke of a third father, after his own father and himself as a father.
That is his faith, represented through a father in heaven, or God, which he said he is still involved in a conversation with.
"It gets more and more fascinating. I am more and more in awe,' he said.
"The Americans have ruined it with awesome, we have all ruined it. But awe is an extraordinary word.'
He described his father as a 'very courageous man', who was a catholic, that married a protestant woman against the wishes of his family.
"His own family did not turn up at the wedding. He raised us, me and my brother Norman, in the Church of Ireland, if that's what my mother wants,' he said.
The 65-year-old recalled how his father would drop them at a protestant church and would then walk 100 metres up the road to attend a catholic church.
"I have found myself completely comfortable around Catholicism, with its mysticism… genuinely this sense of awe and wonder. And I love that aspect of Catholicism.
"And yet I also feel really comfortable in the Evangelical world, particularly a black church in America where people are up freestyling scriptures, the poetry of them, they are conversant with those scriptures.
"I need them. I'd be comfortable in a Synagogue, or in Islam with Sufi singers really take me.. I am in that sense a religious person,' he said.
"And if I don't look like one and you bump into me late at night and I'm not acting like one, I would understand you being dismissive of my faith, but it is everything to me and our family share it.'