Latest news with #GemmaDoherty
Extra.ie
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Fans thrilled as Bono drops new EP on same day as film release
Bono has released a new limited edition 3-track live EP Stories Of Surrender , accompanying the Apple Original Film titled Bono: Stories of Surrender , also available today. The EP features live recordings of three U2 tracks Desire, The Showman and Sunday Bloody Sunday taken from Bono's one-man stage show of the same name, itself inspired by his bestselling memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story . The Stories Of Surrender EP sees Bono joined once again by musicians Gemma Doherty (Harp, Keyboard, Vocals) and Kate Ellis (Cello, Keyboard, Vocals), as well as Musical Director Jacknife Lee. The film Bono: Stories of Surrender received its worldwide premiere at this years Cannes Film Festival, where it received a seven-minute standing ovation. It includes footage from Bono's solo shows at New York's Beacon Theatre in 2023, as well as spoken word passages from his book. The Stories Of Surrender EP is out now digitally and on 7″ black vinyl. Find the full tracklist below: 1. 'Desire' (Stories Of Surrender Version) 2. 'The Showman' (Stories Of Surrender Version) 3. 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' (Stories Of Surrender Version)
Irish Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Bono: Stories of Surrender review: A punch-to-the-guts stage show once you get past the Bono-ness of it all
Three chords and the truth? How about three chairs and a punch-to-the-guts stage show instead? That's the bare-bones approach Bono takes to his new documentary. In Bono: Stories of Surrender (Apple TV+) the man behind the tinted shades wants to tell you about a life so rose-tinged even he sounds slightly abashed to be calling it to public attention. 'Writing a memoir is a whole other level of navel-gazing, but here we are,' he says in this scripted show adapted from his 2022 book, as he stands on stage by a table, some chairs and a few musicians: the arranger Jacknife Lee, the harpist and vocalist Gemma Doherty and the cellist Kate Ellis. Filmed before a rapt audience at the Beacon theatre in New York in 2023 by Andrew Dominik, the footage, delivered in Anton Corbijn-evoking black and white, offers an austerity and authority that suggest a truth for the ages: Bono as monolith, vulnerable and yet totemic. Is it overreaching? Is that a ridiculous question to ask about the U2 frontman? READ MORE [ Bono defends taking honour from Joe Biden and questions 'competitive empathy' over Gaza Opens in new window ] As he begins talking, you feel it, the familiar Bono-induced wince. Clad in a waistcoat and blazer, a string of beads looped around his neck, he speaks with a phrasing that is part preacher, part soothsayer, part professional Irishman, and it's all at first just a little too much, Bono. But soon he begins weaving a kind of magic, telling you about his songs, his upbringing, his campaigning and his friends, family and bandmates, summoning them up through anecdotes and conjuring their voices. Bono has said he struggles to be concise and yet here he is spare, stark and effective. 'Fame is currency,' he tells us, speaking about U2's skyrocketing early career. On fighting poverty, he says: 'Injustice is often disguised as bad luck.' On personal ambition, he says: 'There's a selfishness implicit in the desire to be great at something.' Bono understands there's little less appealing to audiences than having a wealthy and famous man blather on about his wonderful life. How to solve this totes-awks narrative dilemma? Enter Bob Hewson, Bono's father, who had a complex relationship with his rock-star son. As Bono takes a seat, an empty chair opposite is occupied in his imagination by his late father, sitting with him in Finnegan's pub in Dalkey. 'Anything strange or startling?' Bob would say to Bono when they'd meet, and Bob definitely didn't want to hear about celebrities. 'Mostly we sat in silence,' Bono says. 'I spent most of my life trying to figure out the opera that plays in my dad's head.' When Luciano Pavarotti calls Bono, and a thrilled Bono tells Bob, his father says: 'Why would a great tenor be calling you?' You realise, belatedly, that Bob prepared Bono well to have his life and work skewered by pundits. Bono also tells us about his mother, Iris, who took ill and died at her father's funeral, when Bono was just 14, and how, afterwards, his father never spoke of her again. Home from then on, Bono tells us, was full of 'rage and melancholy'. [ Bono at Cannes: 'You wrote this story. The Edge wrote this story. Adam and Larry wrote this story. McGuinness wrote this story' ] At times the three empty chairs on stage represent the absent members of U2, and Bono takes us through a potted history of the band. You feel a little sorry for the Edge when Bono shares that the U2 guitarist had designs as a youth on Alison Stewart, Bono's lifelong love, whom Bono married at the tender age of 21. ('It was said that they were the smartest in their year, that he had a crush on her, that they might have gone for walks.') Ali has a lot to contend with, as Bono admits, speaking of the conflict between artistic ambition and family. 'You might want an audience more than you want a family.' So much ambition for one man. There's a suspicion occasionally that Bono is again trying to sign up for the competition of being in the best band in the world. He recently hinted at a new U2 album in the works. In large part this 'quarter-man tour' succeeds not simply because of the vamping honesty on display, or the humour that sometimes rises to the surface, but because of how spine-tinglingly thrilling the U2 songs are, performed in beautiful fragments and unplugged arrangements. Bono's voice is supple, vibrant and full of soul on classics that include Vertigo, Where the Streets Have No Name, Desire and I Will Follow, and the band is simply wonderful. You can watch this documentary, but you can also just listen to it – and it will pay rich dividends.
