Bono: 'At 14, after my mother died, I spent food money on records and lived on Smash'

Extra.ie​

16-07-2025

As one of the most successful rock stars in the world, Bono isn't short of a penny or two, but it turns out that life for the U2 frontman, who is said to be worth €575million, wasn't always so easy as he revealed he resorted to eating instant mashed potato and left over aeroplane food after his mother died.
The Dubliner, 65, said that as a teenager, his brother used to bring him surplus food from the airport where he worked. He added that he spent the money he would have otherwise used for food to buy 'far more important' things, including records.
Bono's mother, Iris Hewson, died in 1974, aged 48, after an aneurysm, when he was 14 years old. Speaking on podcast Ruthie's Table 4, the singer, who has been married since 1982, said: 'After my mother died, I would usually return home with a tin of meat, a tin of beans and a packet of Cadbury's Smash [instant mashed potato]. Bono in 1985. Pic: Pete Still/Redferns/Getty.
'Thinking back to being a teenager, food was just fuel. I would spend my food money on things far more important, like Alice Cooper's Hello Hooray. The house was two miles away from the runway where my brother Norman worked for Aer Lingus.
'He had talked them into allowing him to bring home the surplus food from the airline. This was highly exotic fare.
'Gammon steak and pineapple, an Italian dish called lasagne that we'd never heard of or one where rice was no longer a milk pudding but a savoury experience with peas.' Bono's parents. Pic: File
The singer, who grew up on Cedarwood Road, Ballymun, north Dublin, added that he doesn't remember much about his mother but could picture the kitchen of his childhood home 'very well'.
He told River Cafe owner and presenter Ruth Rogers: 'Sadly, I don't have many memories of my mother cooking or otherwise. After my mother died, we just didn't speak her name. So it's hard when you do that to recall these things.
'We certainly had kitchen table dramas, three men arguing a lot because the woman of the house was gone. And I remember my relationship with food changed.' Bono. Pic: Anthony Harvey/REX/Shutterstock (15305839ad)
Asked about his experience of travelling the world and trying new food after joining U2, Bono said: 'We were blessed with the gift of getting a manager who loved food and wine as much as he did music.
'Record companies would give us per diems, which means they pay for you to stay in a hotel up in Manchester or wherever after we had played.
'But we wouldn't stay in the hotel and we would drive back and save up our per diems and use them in nice restaurants.'
The rocker, whose real name is Paul Hewson, added that he usually avoids drinking alcohol before a performance due to the notes he had to sing.
'I have only ever had alcohol twice before going on stage,' he told the podcast. 'Once because I had a wedding, and another was that my father had to put me to bed in Paris in the late 90s. You can't sing well if you drink before. If you sing those big notes, you have to be careful what you eat and drink before.'