Latest news with #StoriesOfSurrender
Irish Daily Mirror
2 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Daily Mirror
U2 is true democracy, says Bono
U2 frontman Bono has described the band as a 'democracy'. The 65-year-old rocker explained how the iconic group – which also comprises The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr – all chip in with ideas for new music. However, the Beautiful Day singer added that it is usually the lead guitarist's suggestions that are given preference. Asked how U2 work after more than 40 years in the industry, Bono said: 'Bloody democracy. Thom Yorke from Radiohead says, 'A band is like the United Nations, except I'm America'. 'But U2 is an actual democracy. We all listen to each other, and then do what Edge says.' Bono takes centre stage in the new Apple TV+ documentary film Stories Of Surrender which documents a one-man performance he gave in New York in 2023 – although he doubts that his U2 bandmates are that interested in the project. He said: 'I think Larry only likes Westerns, Adam said he liked the moonwalk, so I think perhaps he was looking at a different film. Edge is always there. He's so supportive, especially when he sees me be open or be vulnerable, which is our definition of art.' The Dubliner describes the film as 'very intimate' and revealed that he took inspiration from the late Beatles icon John Lennon for the project. Father-of-four Bono explained: 'It was always, 'Break open the ribcage, show what's the heart, let it bleed'. 'That was the John Lennon way. So it starts with heart surgery.' Meanwhile, the singer recently teased that he wants U2 to make 'the sound of the future' on their next album. The With Or Without You artist said on Jimmy Kimmel! Live: 'We've been in the studio and you've sometimes got to deal with the past to get to the present, in order to make the sound of the future. That's what we want to do.' Bono also insisted that U2 continue to be very ambitious despite their long and successful career in music. He said: 'It's the sound of four men, who feel like their lives depend on it. I remind them, they do. 'Nobody needs a new U2 album unless it's an extraordinary one. I'm feeling very strong about it.'
Forbes
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Forbes
‘Bono: Stories Of Surrender' Is Now Streaming – How To Watch U2 Singer's Documentary
Bono in "Bono: Stories of Surrender." Apple TV+ Bono: Stories of Surrender — a documentary featuring U2 frontman Bono — is new on streaming. Directed by Andrew Dominik, Bono: Stories of Surrender held its world premiere on May 16 at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival in the South of France. The official summary for the documentary reads, 'Bono: Stories of Surrender is a vivid reimagining of Bono's critically acclaimed one-man stage show, Stories of Surrender: An Evening of Words, Music and Some Mischief… As he pulls back the curtain on a remarkable life and the family, friends and faith that have challenged and sustained him, he also reveals personal stories about his journey as a son, father, husband, activist and rock star. 'Along with never-before-seen, exclusive footage from the tour, the film features Bono performing many of the iconic U2 songs that have shaped his life and legacy.' Bono: Stories of Surrender is now streaming exclusively on Apple TV+. Viewers must subscribe to the streaming platform to watch the documentary. Apple TV+ offers ad-free programming, which costs $9.99 per month after a seven-day free trial. Bono: Stories of Surrender to date has received a 76% 'fresh' rating from Rotten Tomatoes critics based on 29 reviews. The RT Critics Consensus and Popcornmeter score is still pending. Among the top critics on RT who give the documentary a 'fresh' rating is Owen Gleiberman of Variety, who writes,' Watching [Stories of Surrender], you come away knowing a great deal about Bono, feeling like you've touched his soul a bit, and that's mostly a captivating journey. But you're never convinced that he's on a mission larger than the song of himself.' Steve Pond of The Wrap also gives Bono: Stories of Surrender a 'fresh' rating on RT, writing, 'It's bombastic, extravagant and melodramatic at times – but I don't use those words as pejoratives, because in the hands of Bono and Dominik, it's also pretty glorious.' Bono: Stories of Surrender also earned a 'fresh' review from Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian, who writes on RT, 'It's a confident, often engaging mix of music and no-frills theatrical performance, with Bono often coming across like some forgotten character that Samuel Beckett created but then suppressed due to undue levels of rock'n'roll pizzazz.' Kyle Smith is one of the top critics on RT who gives Bono: Stories of Surrender a 'rotten' review, writing on RT, 'If Bono is melodramatic, Mr. Dominik is an enabler.' Tim Robey of the Daily Telegraph (UK) also gives the documentary a 'rotten' review, noting, 'Bono may be his own worst enemy in the one-man show Stories of Surrender, but only just. His second worst is Blonde director Andrew Dominik, who has turned it into a more excruciating film than you might even have surmised.' John Nugent of Empire Magazine also slammed Bono: Stories of Surrender, writing in his 'rotten' review on RT, 'Strictly-for-fans-only. Bono is a charismatic chronicler of his own life, but the self-conscious storytelling concept is a harder thing to stomach for non-enthusiasts.' Bono: Stories of Surrender, featuring U2 singer Bono — whose real name is Paul David Hewson — is streaming exclusively on Apple TV+.
Washington Post
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Bono's memoir gets a third iteration, this time on the small screen
'Writing a memoir is a whole other level of navel-gazing,' the eponymous navel gazer tells us at the top of the new Apple TV+ release 'Bono: Stories of Surrender.' What, then, is a concert film of a stage show adapted from a memoir?
Extra.ie
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Extra.ie
Film Review: Bono
Bono talking. That familiar voice opens over a blank screen. 'It is preposterous to think that others might be as interested in your own story as you are.' Is he being disingenuous? Surely Bono knows better than anyone that people are interested in and even fascinated by his story – and that's probably as true of the league in the wings with slings and arrows at the ready as it is for admirers. U2's last three albums have been all about telling their story, and even the Vegas residency looked into the past, albeit in the most futuristic way imaginable. More specifically, they've been telling Bono's story with songs like 'Cedarwood Road' and 'Iris'. Maybe it was the brush with mortality, coming at an age when looking back is the natural inclination. Maybe it's the lingering aftershocks of the loss of his father. Or maybe it's even a deliberate clearing of the decks before the new album they keep talking up finally arrives. Whatever the reason, we've had Bono's big book, then the audiobook, the backwards glance of the Songs Of Surrender do-overs, and the solo 'book tour' – so now here's the movie of the tour of the book. The Stories Of Surrender jaunt started in New York's Beacon Theatre in November 2022, made several stops across America and then came to Europe, including Dublin's Olympia Theatre. I offered up my immortal soul for a ticket, but there were no takers. Turned out I was diagnosed with COVID the day of the show. Would I have kept schtum and gone anyway, putting the health of Ireland's glitterati, which had just reminded me I wear the wrong trousers, at risk for the sake of a rock n' roll show? We'll never know. Bono returned to The Beacon for a six-night run (where most of this film was shot) and then finished up at the Teatro San Carlo Napoli in Naples, more of which anon. Filmed in glorious monochrome by director Andrew Dominik, because as U2 discovered around the time of Rattle & Hum, everything just looks better in black and white, Bono: Stories Of Surrender is populated by the ghosts of both the living and the dead as the man in the shades confronts the past to take him back to his present. He nearly turned fully incorporeal himself back in 2016 and speaks candidly about the heart problem that could have closed up the shop. He's back on the table in Mount Sinai Hospital, having his (war) chest opened up to save his life. He can't breathe. He calls the names of his God, but for the first time, his God isn't there. How did he get here? Look at that bare table and the chairs that, apart from some fancy, if subtle, lighting, which is still a long way from Vegas, constitute the set. Who does that remind you of? There's a distinct bang of Beckett, with Bono as Krapp listening back to his old tapes, and then there's the influence of the man Friday. Speaking to me for this magazine, Gavin Friday (who is there in the end-credits as the show's creative director and, no matter what they're paying him, a raise should at least be considered) said, 'Give me a bentwood chair, a bulb, a cigarette and a microphone and that's theatre.' Friday employed it in Vicar St last month, and Bono has taken his old friend's maxim to heart, using the sparse furniture to great dramatic effect throughout this theatrical, musical memoir/confession. 'The most extraordinary thing about my life is the people I'm in relationships with,' he tells us, and the chairs fill in for those people who aren't there. There's the ghost of his mother, Iris, scolding him for making a show of himself when that's all he wants to do with his life, who enters and never leaves. Her name wasn't spoken in the house that became an opera after she died, the house where older brother Norman threw the young Bono a lifeline, a guitar, another voice to pray with, which lead to his first proper song, written on his 18th birthday, 'Out Of Control' – and the realisation that he could do this. There's the rest of U2. The suspicious Larry Mullen, who, when he loves, loves completely. Adam Clayton, a true rock n' roller who had everything even when he couldn't play. And the genius of The Edge, who, apparently, used to go for walks with a young Alison Stewart. Another reason to keep an eye on him. The best 'band' scene is the creation of 'I Will Follow' where Bono takes the Gibson Explorer off The Edge and starts making sounds. Go on, says Edge, I'm not sure I like it, but go on. Edge takes it back and turns Bono's graffiti into 'Some fuckin' Raphael Mother and Child' while Larry and Adam are burning down the gallery. Playing just a snatch of the original recording is masterfully effective. 'What a complete fucking eejit I was,' Bono admits and calls this his quarter man show because he knows he'd be just another drowning man without the other three. And there's the other band, The Jacknife Lee Ensemble, who take the music of U2 and reshape it around a never more exposed Bono, whose voice is at just the right soulful and expressive juncture to handle it. While every track hits in a way that Songs Of Surrender only promised to, there are stand-outs. The beautiful harp on 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' ('religious art meets The Clash' and 'a way forward for U2'), and 'Pride', the song that allowed Bob Geldof to forgive Bono for the mullet, as if he can talk, and secured them a Live Aid slot that changed everything, morphs into the soulful prayer that it always really was. It reminds me of John Legend's version, recorded, appropriately enough, for a History Channel celebration of Martin Luther King. It's also worth mentioning that the stately 'rehearsal' version of 'The Showman,' which plays over the end credits, all plucked cello double-bass and finger-snaps, knocks the take on Songs Of Experience into the bin. There's Paul McGuinness, asking his baby band if their God wants these young men in doubt to renege on legal contracts. And there's Alison Stewart, the girl he asked out the same week he joined U2 and the woman who wrote part of this story, suffered the 'selfishness implicit in the desire to be great at something', saw to him by seeing through him, and knew what he had before he even had his name. There's even a revealing, fourth wall-breaking section where Bono's ego is placed in the chair for examination. Is all this saving the world carry-on just a child-like desire to be at the centre of attention? Well, yeah, probably. Will such an admission silence his critics? No, but it shows an awareness of what drives the Bono Is A Pox crowd demented. Bono spoke of 'competitive empathy' with Brendan O'Connor on RTÉ over the weekend ('I feel this wound more than you!') and while it's a valid point, his relative silence – until the Novellos – over Gaza and his acceptance of a medal from Joe Biden at the worst possible time did not make for good optics. 'I'm used to this,' he told O'Connor, so in one way it might be water off a duck's back – but here, and remember this was recorded some time ago, he offers another answer to his detractors. He's aware of his hypocritical status, the over-compensated rock star telling others what to do, but in the end, 'What does it matter? Who cares? Motives don't matter. Outcomes matter.' Will this bring the anti-Bono brigade over to his side of the fence? Not a hope, but again, he's got a point. Floating above it all, however, is the ghost of Bob, Bono's Da, whispering in his ear. Like every son since Cain and Abel, Bono sought his father's approval and understanding, and when he didn't get it, he sang louder, which in the end gave him the life he has, so he owes him thanks for that at least. Armchairs represent the Sorrento lounge in Finnegan's Pub out in Dalkey, where father and son would meet up, although they'd mostly sit in silence. 'Anything strange or startling?' the father might ask. 'How about Pavarotti calling the house?' Bono offers, thinking that surely a call from the great man would impress this lifelong opera fan. 'Why would he be calling you, did he get a wrong number?' 'Pavarotti wants me to write him a song, now who's the fuckin' eejit?' There's an undercurrent of potential violence in that last line, something every father and son who ever butted heads, i.e. all of them, will understand. 'He is,' replies Bob, defusing the situation. Bono takes Bob to Modena, and there's a gas encounter with Princess Diana where 800 years of oppression disappear in 8 seconds. Back in Dublin, Bono wonders if the son is starting to make sense to the father. 'I wouldn't go that far,' says Bob. 'But I heard your song 'Pride' on the radio and I may have felt some.' Just when Bono feels his father might be giving up some answers, he gives him the slip by dying, and there's the realisation that comes from imagining this story from his father's perspective. Maybe he was protecting his son all along by telling him not to dream because dreams, in most cases, only lead to disappointment. You realise too late that your father was your friend. The film ends in the aforementioned Teatro San Carlo Napoli in Naples. The Bay of Sorrento links back around to Finnegan's lounge. Bono's Father had left one of his favourite melodies to haunt his son, 'Torna A Surriento', Come Back To Sorrento, a Neapolitan song sung by everyone from Caruso to Pavarotti. You can hear its melody at the start and at the end when Bono belts it out unaccompanied, the baritone having finally become a tenor, as a hymn to him. You know it even if you think you don't, because Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman adapted it for one of Elvis Presley's best-selling singles back in 1961, before Bono was even a year old. What did they call this song, which connects rock n' roll and opera and The Boy with The Bob, the reason the opera is in him in the first place? Surrender.
Yahoo
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
U2 Legend Bono on Why the World Has Forgotten What Freedom and Democracy Mean
A lifelong storyteller, Bono continues to take audiences to that other place. The longtime frontman for U2 is the focus of the Apple TV+ documentary Bono: Stories of Surrender, which just got a special screening at the Cannes Film Festival. More from The Hollywood Reporter 'Orwell: 2+2=5' Review: Raoul Peck's Dynamic Look at Big Brother and Other Tyrants Richard Linklater's 'Nouvelle Vague' Receives Electric 10-Minute-Plus Cannes Standing Ovation 'Renoir' Review: A Delicate and Touching Tokyo-Set Portrait of a Girl's Loneliness He tells The Hollywood Reporter about the film and that potential U2 series. In the film, you discuss the strangeness of not having your band with you. Did this process allow you to connect with your songs in a new way? Absolutely. If you change the key, you're already changing the mood of the song. If you slow down the tempo, you're already changing it. In the case of Stories of Surrender, it has to drive the story forward. So 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' is involved, not just because it's a song that U2 fans like, but because it illustrates and hopefully illuminates a period in time when a song about nonviolence mattered in Ireland. It was even ridiculed at the time in Ireland. I used to introduce it as, 'This is not a rebel song,' because it was an anthem to nonviolence. 'Pride (In the Name of Love)' in the '80s was another anthem to nonviolence. But these songs were chosen to develop how I developed and how the band developed in that part of who we are, that militant pacifism. Later, there would be songs like 'With or Without You,' which turns into this meditation about marriage and what we put each other through and the compromises we ask each other to make, and you end up with this mad definition of love where you discover love is the realizing of another's potential, realizing of your own potential. And if it's perfectly balanced and reciprocated, you get through it — not just in a marriage, but in a band, in a family. It ends up in a very intimate place. But in the end, [this project is] about the family I was born into and all the families I ended up in. You mention that the song was ridiculed. We're currently in a moment where our world leaders can make it feel that wanting to change our world or express empathy are worthy of ridicule. Can popular artists still be a voice for change? The world has forgotten what 'freedom' and 'democracy' mean. These are words we never thought we'd ever question, but they are being questioned right in front of our very eyes. 'Maybe democracy is not the right way to deal with climate change.' 'Freedom is for people who are of a certain level of education.' This is wild. In my whole lifetime, the world has never been closer to all-out war. Here I am, on the Croisette, at the red carpet of Cannes, with a film called Stories of Surrender at a time when the word 'surrender' has never seemed so absurd, and everyone's got their fists up. I started writing this book [that was adapted into the stage show] because I thought it was just me. We're getting through it — sorry, we're not getting through it. I have hope and faith that we will get through it. You know Dr. [Martin Luther] King's great line about, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice? I don't think that's true anymore. But I think we have to bend it. And so we owe a lot to the Beatles. We owe a lot to Bob Dylan. We owe a lot to Aretha Franklin. We owe a lot to these great writers and poets who brought in what we now can refer to as a kind of renaissance in the '60s of peace and love. I'm ever more respectful of that generation. They came out of a World War. They knew what that was. They knew the cost of when you put a load of egocentric men in charge of weapons of mass destruction, what can happen. You named a few artists who have received the biopic treatment or, in , soon will. I know that U2 fans were excited that a Netflix series about the group was in the works with J.J. Abrams. Any progress you can share? No. We'll know it when it's right. We'll know it when it's ready. The U2 story is a bizarre one. It's a high school drama, really, slash Stranger Things. [Stories of Surrender] is the end of a four-year process of addressing the past, lifting stones, discovering a few creepy-crawlies underneath them, dealing with them, and now we move on [with new music]. I hope that whatever I've uncovered in my own little opera, if it's of use to people, then I'm thrilled. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Goonies' Cast, Then and Now "A Nutless Monkey Could Do Your Job": From Abusive to Angst-Ridden, 16 Memorable Studio Exec Portrayals in Film and TV The 10 Best Baseball Movies of All Time, Ranked
