Complicated. This is how the singer of the rock band U2, Bono, defined the relationship between him and his father Bob, who died of cancer in 2001. As is often the case with complicated things, the only way to find peace is to learn to take them In other words, accept the various complicated situations and learn to live with them.
The 62-year-old singer explains that this was the strategy he used when he discovered in the year 2000 that, from that father, he had had another brother, kept secret until then. This is how the U2 vocalist told it in an interview on BBC radio (on the occasion of the publication of his memoirs, Surrender), saying that he feels “at peace” with respect to this discovery that, without a doubt, has changed what that until that moment was the perception of his life. “I have another brother, whom I love very much and adore, but I didn’t know he had,” he said.
Bono’s brother was a well-kept secret from his father. In fact, not even the mother of the Irish singer knew of the existence of a child outside of her marriage. Iris, who died in 1974 from an aneurysm, was unaware of what was happening outside the walls of her home.
“It is a very united family – Bono continued in the interview -, my father had a deep friendship with this beautiful woman and they had a son. But all this has been kept secret.”
Bono’s first reaction upon learning about his secret brother was to talk to his father. “I asked her if she loved my mother and she told me that she did. And when I asked her how something like that could happen then, she just said, ‘it happens.'”
In that context, Bono said few words about his secret brother. “It wasn’t an apologetic situation… I was just stating that these are the facts. And I’m at peace with all of this,” he said.
Bono achieved a strange peace after a difficult adolescence, which was spent without his mother (she died when the singer was only 14 years old). His brother Norman and his father stayed in the house where he stayed until the death of his mother. In short, the home resulted in “three men who spent the day yelling at each other,” according to the Irishman.
Bono says that he found that peace after finding a new family, the U2 band. “My father was obviously going through something very difficult. His head was elsewhere because his heart was elsewhere.” Focusing on music allowed the singer to accept his father of few words, managing to resolve their “complicated” relationship. And he also meet a secret brother.
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