#2330 - Bono

Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out. The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day. Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. I fucking loved the film. It was really great. You saw it? I watched it last night, yeah. It was cool, too, because I always feel special when I've got to enter in the password, because I know that nobody else has seen it yet. You know, I've got to enter in the email and the password, and I watched it, and I screen-mirrored it on the TV.

It was great, man. And it was almost like a fever dream. It was wild, the way he set it up, all black and white. Yeah, if you get past the first three minutes, even my own mates are like, oh, don't do that. it's like wow and it is like a fever dream yeah that opening but that really happened to me so it was great man it's great and it's also like i love the way you did it like you played the beginning of some songs and you talked about the origin of the songs the thing that i have a heart

believing though is that you weren't a good singer when you were young. Well, you know, punk rock, you're a bit of a shouser. That's really what you do. You just get up there and shout. I'm shouting at God. I'm shouting at everyone. I'm shouting at the band. That scene when we're doing I Will Follow, that's really true. So I'm there.

And we're improvising this song that becomes I Will Follow If You Walk Away, Walk Away, Walk Away. And it's like this one. We're trying to just do something original. And we're really ripping off. The irony is we're really ripping off. Public Image Limited. Johnny Rotten became John Lydon again for this band called Public Image Limited back in the late 70s.

And I'm singing about, you know, it's a suicide note, really. And I'm singing about this, and they're saying, like, what's it about? And I said, I think it's this guy who's going to follow somebody into the grave. You know, they're going to, I think it's about it. It's a child following their mother, missing them so much that it'll follow them into the grave. And then we realize that our rehearsal room, the little yellow house.

is beside the cemetery where my mother is buried and I've never visited her once or talked about her once. And we've been rehearsing there for months. And it's funny. You can deny somebody in conversation. You can deny somebody to yourself. But in the songs, all that shit comes out. Wow.

wow but thank you for watching it that's that's i loved it thank you it was such an interesting way you put it all together i've never seen anybody do that like that like you did like it's like a documentation of your career but in this like very unique way with like talking about things and explaining these moments and then the music plays it's and it's all black and white it was really cool yeah

There's a sort of black and white lens at a kind of clarity. I did this series of shows in the Beacon Theatre in New York. And it was going so well, we thought we should record it. I will tell you, the night before we opened our show in New York, My Mrs. Alley... Sel, I don't think you should do this. Just please, please do not do this to yourself.

in front of a New York crowd, cancel it now, do what most people do on a book tour, get somebody to interview them, and just they'll come anyway, everyone will be happy. And I don't know, I just went for once. I didn't take her sage advice, and I did it. And the difference was, with an audience, it was funny.

And she was like, oh, that's the bit I didn't get in the rehearsals. It's funny. So what was she thinking? It was self-indulgent? It just thought it was dull, self-indulgent, here you are. I mean, all these things are a version of... Here's another great thing about me. No. I was calling it a memoir. Me book, what I wrote myself. It's the memoir. And look, there's something narcissistic.

But it's your material. You know, that's what you get. You know, it's not just your body. Your psychology is the canvas. And, you know, I grew up John Lennon, you know. The Beatles were everything for me. And, you know, John Lennon made a sort of performance art out of his wedding to Yoko and he did a bed in for peace and he was ready to look ridiculous for peace. And, you know, I do ridiculous quite well.

I'm told. So that was my definition, you know, of art, really. Yeah. Was to just go out there. But the thing that being in U2, which has given me everything. took away if it took away anything was you know people don't come along to our shows for a belly laugh you know what I mean right so as a comedian you understand that you know it's it's like I you know I wrote this

A line came out of nowhere. I haven't put it in a song yet, I don't think. But, you know, I think it's laughter is the evidence of freedom. And I don't trust people to talk about freedom now. I want people to be free. If you talk, be it then. Be it. And so I wanted to be that on stage. I wanted to be. I wanted to be myself. I wanted to own up to the ridiculousness of my life, as I've just explained, the madness of my family. But it turns out it's...

Everyone's family is a little opera. And it is a bit of a soap opera, but it's also a real opera. These are big feelings, you know. You're going after your dad. Like a young, you know, elk is a romantic word for it, but it's, you know, you're just taking them on. And this poor man is just, he's lost his... His wife, he's trying to bring up two kids. I'm just an obnoxious kind of thing who somehow psychologically blames him.

for the death of my mother, because as Jim Sheridan says to me, it doesn't have to be actually true to be psychologically true. And that kids feel all these feelings, you know, and they don't have to be...

Logical. And I went after my dad, and by playing him every night in the Beacon Theatre and around the world, I actually learned to... to love him I learned to like him actually I always loved him but I learned to like him that was he made me laugh more so I got humor humor was the gift from that show and and the humor was evident with the audience there

Yeah. But not evident when my missus came, which is why she wanted to pull the plug. Well, rehearsals are hard. It's also hard when someone is too close to you. They're there with you every day. This is true with comedy as well. Like if someone sees your act too many times, like if someone's traveling with you, like if my wife went to see my shows all the time.

There's parts of it she'd be like, oh, don't do that. Oh, don't do this. Like, you get too close to it. Like, she's too close to you. But to see it with fresh eyes, like to see in front of that audience, the joy that they have when the music starts playing. When some of the songs that they love it's amazing like you could feel it in the show It's like pure joy what they get so cuz

The people that came to see it were hardcore fans. Well, what happened was Andrew Dominick, Australian director, and he did some of the shots. without any audience just he cleared them out on a day off and then some of them came in which were hardcore fans as you say and that was in a way that was that was that was the most terrifying

Because I, as a performer, I'm drawn to spontaneous acts. That's... when we started out as a band, I was attracted to performers who I thought might leave the stage and follow me home, mug me, or, you know, tell my... Fortune or, you know, whatever. Wild people. Well, just, yeah. I mean, and I'm still attracted. Iggy Pop, when I was growing up, was the, you know, Patti Smith. Patti Smith used to enter the stage elbowing her way.

the crowd, myself and Larry Mullen drummer and you two, we left stage one night and like when we were like 21, 20 years old, elving our way through the crowd to get out, just got into a taxi in London, fucked off. And we felt a liberation, breaking the fourth wall.

It's been everything for our bands. Trying to smash it by surfing it, you know, by jumping into the crowd. I had the... preposterous moment of going into a crowd in the, in Los Angeles, I forget, the Forum or somewhere like that, with the white flag. Right? The non-violent white flag. The same flag that I'm still on about, the flag of surrender, right, in that show. But back then I'm 23 or whatever and I'm going into the crowd and I see people.

who are, you know, pulling at me and all this. The next thing, I'm throwing a punch. Somebody in our own audience. That's how much nonviolence meant to me. You know, but I'm a... I'm attracted to feral performers, I suppose is a word for it. It's just you're in it and you're not fully in control of it. Right. Mark Rylands is a great one. Daniel Day-Lewis walked off stage one night, saw a ghost of his father, a rumor had it, when he was playing Hamlet. But...

Yeah, so having the crowd in who knew what was going to happen, that unnerves me a bit because how do I surprise them? Turns out by making, I became a sit-down comic. If you're a stand-up, for a minute, a minute, I was a sit-down comedian. Well, what you're doing, and I think what you're saying that you're attracted to is something that's not contrived, something that's pure.

It could be messy. It could be wild. It could be, you know, Patti Smith elbowing people or you running through the crowds. It's real. And there's so much in this world that's not real. There's so much that's manufactured. There's so much that's produced and run through a focus group. And there's so much that doesn't resonate. Like, you don't feel it.

as a piece of art you don't feel it as like a real person pouring out their emotions and their soul but great music you feel it gets into you it gets into your cells you know it's No one can figure out how it works or why it works or why this does and this doesn't. Why does Johnny Cash have such a fucking cool voice? What is it? What is it? But there's something about real. It's like a vitamin. It's like going out in the sun when it's been raining. You soak it in. Yeah, it is.

I mean, there's pretentious ways of describing it. People say we first sang to each other before we spoke. You know, it's like bird song. I don't know who said that. He's probably on drugs, but could have been a scientist. And anthropology might suggest we certainly, that goats are. You go back to Greek tragedy. You had a drum and a voice. So it's very primal. Yeah. And it is the language of the spirit. We...

Somehow there is worship involved, whether it's God, nature, money, an extraordinary woman has just walked across the street. It seems to be that music is where we are creatures of awe and wonder. And, you know, you mentioned Johnny Cash. I had the blessing in my life of getting to know him. And as a believer, I don't know if you know, I'm a believer, I'm just not a very good one, but he...

There was not a pious bone in his body. And I learned about the company he would choose. He got nervous around people who were too self-righteous. And he had this huge spirit in him. you know, prayerful spirit. Myself and Adam Clayton were driving through America, I think around the time of the Joshua Tree, and I'd met Johnny. A couple of years, you know, I found out where he lived. He had a zoo in Nashville. He had a house in Nashville. And we go in to meet June, his missus and Johnny.

And he shows us this table filled with... plates of everything. I'm like, wow, we're coming, just the two of us. He said, no, honey, that's my cookbook. I'm just doing a photo shoot for my cookbook. We're in here, you know, we're having a, so we go into their kitchen. And we sat there, myself and Adam, and Johnny goes, shall we pray? And I'm like...

Adams wasn't a praying type at that time, but he was like, wow, it's Johnny Cash. So, you know, we all held hands and whatever. And Johnny Cash made this beautiful poetic... Blessing. I just thought, like, wow. Of course he's touched. And then he just turned to Adam and just goes, sure missed the drugs, though. And Adam just... fell in love with him you know because he couldn't be pious right he just he had to be himself yeah um years later if it's years later and we really look at that oh wow

There you go. Oh, that's so... Oh, my God. There it is. That's Adam there, yeah. Yeah. He looks like he might have had a few tequilas. And I don't know, but... Oh, wow. And I'm giving it the arty, poetic face. I am a poet, like you are. And I call Coles. I heard he was... I heard he was in trouble. He was very ill. Years later than this. And I called. I called up. And in June...

Answer the phone. Excuse the poor Texas Saxons, all you Texans out there. But she was like, or Nashville in her case. She was like, oh. Bano, wow, thank you for calling. It's so good to hear from you. How's Dublin? How's Ali? How's the Burlington? This is a hotel, right? And I was like, great. And we're talking.

you know, phrases with June. She said, what's going on with this? And I said, look, eventually I said, look, June, I'm just calling because I heard John wasn't well and I just want you to... wanted him to know and I was thinking about him. She said, oh honey, we're in bed. He's right beside me. And he hands me the phone. Or she hands him the phone. He goes, sorry about that. I'm fine. And bless her.

actually June passed away first and and Johnny called Rick Rubin and those American recordings were A result of a conversation he had with Rick Rubin where he said, please, will you work with me? Because if you don't, I will die. Wow. And if you hear those American recordings... Amazing version of Nine Inch Nails. Hurt. Hurt. Yeah. Did a version of One. Also, Depeche Mode's Personal G's. I mean, it's just, what a voice. Yeah.

Are you a fan of Johnny Cash? Huge. I used to have a dog named Johnny Cash. Does the dog bite? No, not anymore. He's dead. He didn't bite when he was alive. He was a nice dog. It's just I had a... Habit of naming my dogs after famous singers. Well, we have a dog called Lemmy.

Oh, wow. Named after Lemmy from Motherhead. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, it's a girl, though. I think she resents it. Yeah, and a dog named Frank Sinatra. And Marshall is named after Eminem. Oh, man. Well, they're two incredible.

people um don't get me started on on frank sinatra because um how long is this by the way as long as we want to go well no because why well just Frank Sinatra there's two questions one of them should be Frank Sinatra because I just I can go on and on I learned so much from him and I got to know him and as bizarre as that sounds He's such a name dropper, Frank. No, but I did. And probably if you're interested in singing, I could tell you one miracle that I learned from...

Frank Sinatra which is a version of of my way and the original version you know it's a boast and years later he sang it and I have a copy of it it's And Pavarotti stars in the film, as you know. I play him for a moment. But it's a version of my way with, I mean, Pavarotti is the greatest singer on earth, but shouldn't sing in English.

Friends, I know it now. You don't want that. And so I have a version of it without the greatest singer in the history of the world, Pavarotti, on it. It's just Frank singing 20 years after. He'd sung my way as a boast. Same key, same text, same arrangement. And now it's an apology. Wow. And that's a... That's the thing about singing, and Johnny Cash had that. I wish, I aspire to the place where my voice, to try and answer your first question, when I become a singer that can do that.

Sinatra, most people don't realize, had a completely different voice when he was younger. His voice when he was younger was very high-pitched and beautiful and had so much flexibility to it and so much tone. And then probably all the cigarettes in Jack Daniels over the years sort of hardened his voice. Skinny kid. He used to swim underwater to get his lung...

expanded so he could get those bigger, bigger, bigger. Really? Yeah. And we have his mugshot out there. He got arrested. He was like 125 pounds. Wow. Yeah, he got arrested for, what was the term? Seduction? I think it was seduction. I think he seduced a married woman. Oh, my Lord. Yeah, there he is. Oh, look at that. Well, he said, I'm the only... He said, you're the only... I don't know if he said cat. Certainly he didn't say dude. He said...

You're the only something who wears an earring that I'm ever going to like. You're the only cat with an earring that I'm never going to like. And I did. I had a... If we're going to talk about singers, you have to talk about Sinatra. I had extraordinary times with him. He used to send me gifts every year. gold and sapphire Cartier watch he sent me. Oh, wow. With Francis Albert on the, you know, I got, just every year he would send stuff. And, because we did it.

a duet together on his first duet album i've got you got you under my skin um although our we had a our management received i hope this is not i'm not being I'm in awe of Japan, so please don't take this as a... That's a cruel joke, but we did get it. It was a fax back then from Nippon EMI saying, we hear that Bono has done a duet with a Mr. Frank Sinalta. called I've Got You Under My Chicken. And that's just the great surrealist anthem of all time. But yeah, for me, that was an unusual...

And if I ask myself why I would go after these great singers that perhaps people of my own generation had moved on from. But I hadn't. There was a part of me that wanted the blessing of the older generation and probably the male. I didn't really by now. bit of age, I realized I didn't have the sense to go after the same with women, but I was looking for my father in them, you know, whether it was Willie Nelson, you know, whether, you know, Bob Dylan, Frank Sinatra.

Pavarov, all these people. I mean, I became their students, really. And the band would be like, yeah. And I'm going, yeah. And there's so much for me to learn from these people, so much for all of us to learn. These are extraordinary for a reason. Sinatra had, you know, incredible sense of humor. And great timing. What I learned from him was he read the text of the song like an actor. So he would learn it as...

An actor would learn a part. Then he would, on the piano, he'd kind of roughly, with his pianist, he'd figure out where to be in the bar and all of that. And then when he went into the orchestra... to meet them, you know, Nelson Riddle or whatever, you actually hear him. You hear Frank Sinatra hearing the song in its full arrangement for the first time as he's singing it.

And that's, it's fresh paint. You know, it's like any painter will tell you. That's just, it's like Francis Bacon. It's just that first stroke or first touch football. The great. where the ball lands at their feet. They don't stop it and pass it. They pass it as they stop it. It's really a very high level of artistry. And he had that. I learned that from him. I learned lots of other things. I also tried to drink with him on a few occasions, which did not work out well for me.

Was it surreal when you were a young man and you were just starting to achieve success to encounter these people that were essentially heroes?

be embraced by them and hang around them you know a lot of people feel imposter syndrome like they feel just it's bizarre to be around these legendary human beings like they're right there like i i still kind of get weirded out by it even when i met you today i'm like oh that's bono like it's still weird you know it's still weird to meet people that are like hugely famous and when you were a young man when when you two

just blowing up was it strange that the transit like to accept the fact like this is where we are we belong here well you you you got it right the first time there is a part of you that doesn't think you belong right And then when you're younger, you're not admitting that to yourself. And I have a few annoying... More than a few annoying aspects, depending on who you're talking to. But if I have an annoying gene, part of it is when I'm at my most vulnerable, I give it.

the most swagger. So we were playing the Super Bowl. We walked on just after 9-11. Big emotional moment. And we're... You've got eight minutes or whatever to switch over. And I've got my ears in because the only way I'm in touch with what's going on. And we're walking through the crowd. We've got the crowd on the... on the page, I think one of the first times that was ever done. And somebody goes, yay! And they, boom! And I can feel my ear come out. And that will mean I'm all fair.

And if you look at the film, as I've had to, of us walking up to get on stage... I am giving it so much chin. You just go, who is that obnoxious Irish fucking... Why does he get that attitude? Here it is right here. Oh, there it is. I think I'm singing there, so if you just go back a little bit, you'll get the real... That's the chin. No, just before there. But look, not a care in the world.

I mean, bullshit is a word for it. Swagger is another word for it. It's a shield. It's a shield. And as I get older, I... You know, part of the film was taking off my armor and just dropping the sword, dropping the shield, taking it off. And now in that moment, you wake up. It's a bit like the dream. where you're naked in front of the whole school, and it's really cold. And then you realize, yeah, your life, as you are realizing yourself now.

oh, how did this happen to me? And how did I get to meet these extraordinary people? And so that's why I wrote the book, Surrender. That's why I did it, because it was just starting to... When I was younger, I was like, yeah, you know. Bob Dylan once asked us, I was 24, and he says he was recording there. I was going to interview him.

And he said, do you want to go on stage or whatever and do a song? And I said, well, he said, Leopard Skin, Pillbox, that's an amazing song. I said, oh, the lyrics are loud too. And I've been learning to improvise as a singer. And I went out on stage. And he said, you know, blowing in the wind. I said, I probably got that one down. But I didn't. And I just walked out.

on stage, and I could see it was a home crowd, Ireland, people, oh, wow, one of ours is up there with Bob Dylan. Oh, it's Bob, wow, okay. And he's going to sing, oh, my God, he can't sing. Oh, he's changed the melody. Oh, he's changed the words. And he could just see, I mean, go down in flames. And afterwards, I see Bob and I say, look, I'm sorry about that. I'm just...

It's just the way we've been working at the moment is just kind of improvising stuff. And he was like, it's okay. You know, everything. I make them up all the time. And he was generous about it. Nothing's fixed in time. Something like that. That's a great Bob Dylan impression. One of my favorite moments in the film was when your bandmates were concerned that Pavarotti was going to show up with a camera crew. And he showed up with a camera crew. He did.

It was just funny. It was a really well-timed moment. And when you said it on stage, it was so well-timed. Because it's like, here you're honoring this man who's this incredible, fantastic singer. But your bandmates... They've got a good instinct. Like, this is going to be a big press-op as well. Like, this is part of the reason why he wants to do this. And then that's not going to be fun because it's going to be weird. And then boom. Yeah, one of the great...

One of the great arm wrestlers, emotional arm wrestlers of all time. It's interesting that there was a generosity there which he wanted. opera because opera was kind of the punk of its time. Classical musicians looked down on opera. These are stories from the street. They're too accessible. Really? Oh, yeah, yeah. That's crazy. I would have never imagined that. Opera was much rougher. And he instinctively...

And he was constantly trying to make relationships that would cross the divide and make sort of opera popular. And so... To the point where, yeah, he did, he used to call our house and say, you know, at first it was with me, but then when he would haunt our housekeeper, Teresa, and say, like, is God at home? will tell God he is late on the song or, you know, he'd do this kind of carry on. And I, again, these figures in my life, I knew that I was...

on sacred ground when I was near him. I knew this. But the band, they didn't have the relationship with opera. Well, actually, Edge's dad was into opera. But my dad... I was using Luciano Pavarotti to get to my dad. That was the real thing. So as you see in the film, I play my father just by turning my head. And I become him. And I was trying to impress him. I'd be in Finnegan's pub.

where we'd be sitting, not speaking to each other, and I'd try something and I'd go, what do you think about Luciano Pavarotti calling the house? And he'd go, did he get a wrong number? You know, all that. And so, yeah, there was an emotional through line because our house was an opera. Unfortunately, my dad, what was going on in him's life was operatic. But it's also funny. Yeah. Yeah, and it's also this...

You are both celebrating the brilliance of this incredible singer and also you're taking the piss out of this whole cult of celebrity thing that comes along with it. And Princess Diana. The best line... The thing with your dad and Princess Diana was hilarious. Because Edge's mother and father are from Wales. So... So we're with Pavarotti in Modena, I think it was, and so the Princess of Wales is meeting the great tenor and he is offered to meet.

anyone who wants, you know, they're just family because they're from Wales to meet the princess of Wales. And he says to me, look, does your dad want to go? And I, of course. know the reason. I know the answer and the reason for the answer. But he says, well, just ask him. So I ask him. I just go, Dad, listen, we wouldn't want to...

Go meet Lady Di, you know, the princess. What? What? Why would I want to meet a member of the British royal family? That's like asking me, do I want to meet the winner? Of the lotto. And I'm like, okay, got it, got it, got it. And then later, she comes into our dressing room and melts him. Just by reaching her hand at how... Do you do? And he's like, oh, very well, thank you. And as I say, 800 years of oppression. Gone. In a second. And if you...

wonder about the reasoning for having a royal family, and a lot of Irish people do, I would say that's the reason. The weight of it. The weight of it overcame him. Yeah. It's a very bizarre relationship, though. I'm one-quarter Irish. Oh, boy. The relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom and England, it's complicated. Were you... I've read that you got into martial arts because you felt picked on at some point. Is that true? Yes. Yeah. So you don't like bullies? No. No.

No, I don't like that at all. It's the weakest inclination of the human spirit to pick on the weak.

terrible it's uh it's a terrible instinct that humans have from probably from the time where you had to ostracize weak people because you lived in a tribe of people barely surviving and you couldn't tolerate any weak links in the chain i mean it's essentially probably where it came from it probably came out of a survival Darwinian yes where everyone was barbarians and you had to force people to be the hardest version possible because otherwise the genes wouldn't survive

Yeah. The survival of the fittest, which is the world we live in. Yeah. I mean, this is one of the things that attracts me to Christianity, is the idea of the first... we'll be last, the last will be first, is so radical. And it's literally the opposite of the survival of the Philistines. Right. But America, why I love America is... It has, I mean, the British Empire bullied it. And it stood up. We were coming here, I was asking someone in the car about the Declaration of Independence.

You know how many Irish signatures there were? It wasn't that many. I can't remember what there were. But they were all committing treason. They were putting their lives, they were pledging their lives, their fortune, and their sacred honor. So America, the very essence of America, is this idea of sticking it to the bully. Yeah. And I know America can be a bully. We all have our moments and all that. But it's the essence of who you are. And it happened again with the...

The geezer with the tash. The geezer with the tash. That's a great way of calling Hitler. You know, you weren't having it. Right. And I... You know, as an activist, which we can talk about later, but the, you know, I remember going to, it's only a few hours from here, but as in... Lincoln, Nebraska and Warren Buffett came to one of our It's called Heart of America Tour. We're raising awareness on this pandemic, this AIDS pandemic that has killed just, you know, 30 million people at this point.

Why might America be interested? And I'm very Irish and given a lot of that. And afterwards I ask the sage of Omaha for any advice. And he gives me two pieces of advice. Well, the one was don't ask people to do something simple because they won't trust you. He said ask them to do something complicated. What do you mean by that?

He said, what are you asking people to do here? And I said, well, I'm asking them to, we're asking them, the one campaign, we're asking them to send a note to their local congressperson. He said, no, no, no, no, don't. No, don't do that. Too simple. Make them do something more difficult and they'll trust you. Maybe 10 postcards. It's harder to do. I was like, okay. And anything else?

And he said something which really changed my life and changed my conversation with this country of yours. He said, don't appeal to our conscience of America. Don't do that. Appeal to the greatness of America, and you'll get the job done. Americans want to be great. That is true. I think it is true. Because in Ireland, we work with guilt.

You know, you can guilt people. It's a lot of countries. You can work them just, you know. But Americans, it's not. Give them the chance to be the cavalry. Yeah. And they'll, I mean, Omaha Beach, the heroism of Omaha Beach. Lives poured out, you know, and just to save Europe from tyranny. And that's who America is. And, you know, I gave it the Joshua tree. Because I, you know, it's not just as an Irishman, but probably more because I, as an Irishman, fell under the spell.

America even as kids you know coming here a lot of the Cooler bands would just play the coasts, you know, the cooler UK bands or European bands. But I wanted to be all over America. I mean, we played, we opened for... wet t-shirt competition in Dallas. What year was this? 81. I was a freshman in high school. Wow. We in... And Austin, I don't know if anyone can remember, but it was called the Club Foot. It was a bad pun, but there was no AC. I remember it was a tin roof.

and for irish people we were just being boiled but i really really great memories of just busing it through this sort of mythical landscape, you know, there's nowhere, nowhere in this country I would want to fly over. But I do now. You know, we got the plane, you got the this, but I... I just remember thinking, this is, there's so many Americas. Yes. But they... the mythology of America. I was reading, you know, Sam Shepard. I was reading, you know, On the Road. I was reading, you know...

all these great writers and just opening up my imagination. That's where the Joshua Tree came from. And yeah, it's a mythology. But then, can you imagine, I get to discover that in my case, it's not just a mythology. I was part of something. That was extraordinary. So former governor of Texas, George W. Bush, conservative, starts... to lead the world in the fight against the AIDS pandemic, the greatest health crisis in 600 years since the bubonic plague. And I'm like...

And people say, that's impossible. It's just not going to happen. And he does. And it becomes a bipartisan thing, and 26 million lives are saved. So it's strange, the way you see things. I had this, it wasn't a naive sense of America, but it was a sense that everything... could be possible here. Somehow the landscape of America was a little more magical than everywhere else. It wasn't just a country, America. It was an idea. Yes.

Yeah. At its greatest, that is what America is. At its greatest, it's an idea. And it's an idea that was, like I said, was founded. with the concepts behind the Declaration of Independence. And those men who wrote that, the men who signed the Bill of Rights, they were so young. They were so young. Some of them were 18 years old at the time, which is so crazy. Jefferson was 32 or 33 when he wrote that. He's an old codger. And then, by the way, years later...

He's in France. I think he's in France. And he loved wine. I found this out because I saw a signature in a book. I was on some... I like to drink red wine. I've never been to Bordeaux in my life, but I went with some people who knew their way around wine, and they asked me to sign a book in this particular... posh kind of vineyard, but this was across the road from the big name sort of thing. And I asked, I said, can I see the first book? There's Thomas Jefferson's name.

in the first one i thought wow this guy's dreaming up america on some very fancy red plonk yeah not plonk actually some really But, you know, I know there's lots of contradictions in America. And I know there was slavery still and that he had slaves. And I understand. But I'm encouraged. That America perhaps doesn't exist yet. That it's still been written.

If you think about it as a song, you think about it as a piece of music, it's not finished. Right, right. It's still being written. They started at those signatures. Yeah. You, and if you let people like me stay... You know, you're writing it. I'm not writing. I'm the annoying fan who follows America into the bathroom. And with the liner notes, which are the declaration, going, didn't you say this here? And get out. Who followed me into the bathroom? It's like, but I...

Yeah, I like the idea that this is far from finished, this composition. Yes. And for some people, the America that is available to you and me doesn't exist yet. But it will, and it can. And, yeah. We hope that every election cycle, like, this will be the one that finally makes us what we truly believe we are. But the country is just so co-opted by this. First of all, you have this genuine issue with the fact that it's essentially a popularity contest to see who gets to be running the government.

You have a popularity contest that's fueled entirely by special interests and the military-industrial complex and pharmaceutical drug companies, and it's all the opposite of an authentic song. Right. The thing about an authentic song where it makes your fucking goosebump stand up. You're like, God damn. Are you saying it's an AI composition? Can I tell you a story?

A long time ago, probably 25 years ago, I was on Mushrooms with a friend of mine, and we were laying on the side of this hill overlooking this canyon, and we played In God's Country. Oh, wow. And it was just the peak of the mushrooms and the songs, the melody, the way that song hit. It just...

It gave me this insane appreciation for things like at that was like this very unique Fusion of the beauty of the music and the love of the experience like that mushrooms bring out this like loving like communal quality like happiness and and joy and just lying in this field looking up at this canyon and hearing that song it was like this is what what music does it takes these moments

And wherever they're at, it breaks them through the membrane into this new place. Like this moment, it broke through this membrane and brought me to this. I think about it all the time. I think about that particular experience all the time. We need the line. In that, when I'm singing it, is a line that doesn't just apply to America, but applies to us personally.

wherever you are, is, you know, we need new dreams tonight. And you can't be living on... We can't be living on second-hand dreams. And that's, I think, the renewal. I think is what we're all looking for. And, yeah, it's something to be protected. And I... Not protected. That sounds like it's... I think you're right, though. But I think America's more vulnerable now.

than it's ever been. It feels like America's fallen out of love with the rest of the world. I don't think the world wants to fall out of love with America. It just feels like... And, you know, I've had 25 years, and I'm just... tiny cog in, I suppose, you know, people look at personalities or, you know... Even luminous ones are ones that have ideas way above their station and think that might change things. But social movements always change things.

What happened back then with that Heart of America tour was mind-blowing because I learned a few things that I wasn't expecting. Like I had grown up with... a couple of more than a few bumps um with evangelicals you know like whoop it's like yeah because you know how do you you can't approach the subject of god without metaphor So literalism is by its nature anti-metaphor. And Jesus, all we know is that he spoke in parables because they're not literal. How do you explain these as poetas, music?

And I found it really difficult to be around evangelicals because they were so, you know, just literal about everything. And then on that same tour where I met Warren Buffett. I ended up at a college called Wheaton College, which is like a big, in Chicago, it's a big evangelical thing. And they were like, they were really helpful. And they were like, I realized that these were kind of.

And this is not to be at all dismissive of some incredible people. But it was like, I felt there was sort of narrow-minded, sort of... What would I say? The vision, if I could just open the aperture of their vision just a little bit wider, that they could be the most incredible force. for good because they just worked harder. They didn't tell lies. They were just great people. And I think they led part of this movement that ended up saving 26 million.

lives, you know, and it's called PEPFAR that George Bush started and Obama continued. Then I'd go to Catholics. I'd end up in Notre Dame. I had a few bruises with the Catholics over the years too. And I'm meeting these people and they're like, no, no. We believe in the value of human life. If we can do this, how much does this cost? And I'm like, well, you know, all of foreign aid.

is probably just less than 1% of government spending. But the part that keeps people alive is half of that. So it's like half a percent. Now, it's not my money. It's up to you if you want to do that. But they did. And lots of people came together. It was priests and punks. It was the wildest collection of people. And just recently...

Like in the last three months, and this is not about politics because I've worked with conservatives, I've worked with liberals. I don't care. I don't have those. I'm Irish. I don't have a chance to vote. All of that was torn down without a heads up, without any notice, because...

People thought foreign aid was like 10% of the budget or 20%, and it was doing things that it shouldn't have been doing. And I'm sure there was some waste. But I can tell you as a person who saw what the United States were doing. around the world and saw this... I saw America display itself at its finest. And I remember being in the Oval Office with...

President Bush and these antiretroviral drugs. I said, paint them red, white and blue, Mr. President. These are the best advertisements for America they'll ever be. And he's looking at me thinking I'm taking the piss, but I'm not. And he wasn't, as it turns out. And he spoke about the least of these, which is a wild concept. I don't know if you know this, but it's like the...

It's in Matthew, I think it is. It's the only time that Jesus speaks of judgment. It's not like what's going on in your pants. It's not like what's going on over here or over there. The first time Jesus Christ speaks in kind of force of judgment is the way we treat the poor, the poorest of the poor. And he says, well, in the way that you're treating these. the least of them, the sick, the blind, the people who are suffering from malnutrition. That's how you treat me. I am them. And so now...

When we cut to the people, like you went to Boston University, you taught at Boston University. I taught martial arts there, yeah. So just recent report, it's not... But their surveillance enough suggests 300,000 people have already died from just this cutoff, this hard cut of USAID. So there's food rotting in... boats in warehouses. This will fuck you off. You will not be happy. No American will. But there is, I think it's 50,000.

tons of food that are stored in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai, and wait for it, Houston, Texas. And that is rotting rather than going to. Gaza rather than going to Sudan because the people who know the codes are for the warehouse are fired. They're gone. And so this, I don't know, I just... And what do you think? What is that? That's not America, is it? Well, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Right. This is the problem. The problem is...

For sure, there have been a lot of organizations that do tremendous good all throughout the world. Also, for sure, it was a money laundering operation. For sure, there was no oversight. For sure, billions of dollars are missing. In fact, trillions that are unaccounted for that were sent off into various that they don't even know where because there's no receipts.

The way Elon Musk described that he said if any of this was done by a public company, the company would be delisted and the executives would be in prison. But in the United States, this is standard. When Biden left office. When it was clear that Trump won in the 73 days, they spent $93 billion from the Department of Energy on...

Just radical loans just throwing money into places and there's no no oversight no receipts like the whole thing is it's there's a lot of fraud a lot of money laundering but also We help the world. And when you're talking about making wells for people in the Congo to get fresh water, when you're talking about food and medicine to places that don't have access, like. No way that should have been cut out. And that should have been clear.

before they make these radical cuts. Like there's got to be a way to keep aid and not have fraud. And you can't say we're going to kill everything so that there's no fraud. But then you're killing all the good and you're doing it without letting...

anybody know it's going to happen so no one's it's not like they had three years to prepare let's build a new infrastructure let's make sure that everything's set up they wanted change and they want to change quickly and do the nature of american politics they have about two years before the midterms right

So everything has to get done as quickly as possible. You have to show a growth in GDP. You have to show that the economy is booming again under these ideas. Make America first. Terrorists for the world. Bring back American manufacturing and this mad rush to do it all as quickly as possible.

while cutting out as much waste as possible. But the ironic thing is, even though Elon Musk has proposed all these things and the Doge Committee has proposed all these things, they've made no cuts in terms of the budget. They've cut nothing. They vote against him. It's such a tiny part. I mean, if it's big government or whatever, people want to shrink. I get the instinct. But...

This, the life-saving part, it's like the little finger of the giant. Right, exactly. I mean, and I've met all these people. And I'm sure there's part of it, you know, there's... I think about 10% of it goes to things like governance and, you know. human rights organizations, you might say that's political and we shouldn't be involved in that. And there's reforms, I imagine, that might have been necessary. But have the reforms. But to...

to destroy, to vandalize. I mean, it felt like with glee, these life support systems were being pulled out of the walls. And I was reading today, you know, it's like... I think it's in Christianity Today, and they're just talking, I think it's called Christian Relief, one of these organizations.

And they're dealing with malnourished kids. And they are having the conversation now about we don't have the funds. We have to choose which child to pull off the IVs. And it just seems to me like a kind of... I don't know if evil is a strong word, too strong a word, but what we know about pure evil is it rejoices in... the deaths, you know, the squandering of human life, particularly children. And suffering. Yeah, it actually rejoices in it. And I just, you know, whether it's...

whether it's incompetence, whether it's unintended consequences. It's not too late for people. Like, I had conversations with Marco Rubio. He's convinced people aren't dying yet. I don't know who's telling him, or not telling him, rather. But his instincts are correct. He wants to. He used to wear a one-campaign armband. Americans, no matter what political color, they just... They just, you see them just, the size, sort of, they just...

grow in stature when they know they're being useful. I had a truck driver on that same tour. He had tattoos all over his head and whatever, and he was just saying, can I drive? I heard 50% of all truck drivers in Africa are going to die. Is that right because of this disease? I said, yeah. He said, can I give you my number? I will drive. Like, that's America. And, yeah, the bureaucracy, the pen pushers. I get it. I get people's frustration for it. But I just want to remind Americans of the size.

of their country. And I'm not talking about the geography. The impact. I'm just the size of the idea. You know, it's just an extraordinary thing. It's an idea. I think big enough to fit the whole world. And when it becomes a continent, you know, when it becomes an island rather than a continent. i think it's a subcontinent what is it i should have should have gone to geography uh lessons more but you know you know what i'm talking about when it shrinks

America seems to stop being America. And I know you don't want to get into wars and you shouldn't. But that don't concern you. But there's... This word freedom, land of the free. Yeah. Bats and the brave. This is who we look to you for. And we look to you for these qualities. And I believe they're everywhere, and I don't believe any one party has a hold on them. on these qualities but you know it's a funny one for me one of the reasons I came on the show I wanted to on the show was I

I wanted to interview you. I wanted to... I just wanted to get your take on where America is at the present time because you're talking to everyone. You know, this isn't... This is a compliment to you. But my book, you know, wrote this book, Surrender. And sort of, if there's a point to it at the very end, it's just, I'm...

I'm shouting at God. I'm having my wrestling match with my maker. And you just get this thing of, and you probably picked it up by now, shut up and listen. And I need to listen more. You are. an amazing listener. And I don't know who it was who said, listening doesn't grant the other side legitimacy, but it grants them. their humanity and restores your own. And you sit in this room and you listen to everybody. And that makes you very valuable to the country.

And I wanted to just get your take on it. What would your advice be to me and people like me who are not part of the big... industrial complex. We just want to serve the idea of America and the people who depend on that idea. What was your advice to me? I would give you zero advice. I don't know if I'm qualified to give advice. But I would say that America goes through these great periods of overcorrection.

It goes these great periods of like you saw it during COVID, during the lockdowns and the authoritarianism. And we fell into a kind of state of tyranny where there was just massive oppression of free speech, including. government sponsored oppression. They were contacting different social media platforms and banning legitimate doctors and scholars because they had.

different opinions about how things should be handled. There was a wide scale censorship, a push for a changing of the First Amendment. The First Amendment needs to be overhauled. The First Amendment doesn't apply to hate speech or to disinformation there was all these like new ways of talking about censorship in this country and condoning censorship and it's very dangerous because it's all about money it had nothing to do with protecting people that's what i worry about

The argument about free speech is that it seems to be sponsored by a lot of people who you sense don't really respect it so much, but it is a very economic. for them to not have to live with the consequences of a story. I think, is it the communication? I think it's the... It was 1996, this was a long time ago, Communications Act, Decency Act. That meant the Internet did not have to apply by the same rules as...

the rest of the media. Right. So we could say anything we wanted. And at first that felt like liberation, but I'm not so sure anymore. And so, I mean, you can tell me more about this. I'm... I am not a free speech absolutist, but I do believe in free speech. But I'm nervous that the people who are supporting... free speech and using their bots and their own activists are people from countries who would not at all respect.

are your mind ability to express ourselves. And that's what I worry about, is I think the old interweb. He's being played like a harp. Unquestionably. Like an orchestra. And the people behind the curtain would surprise us, I think, if we knew. I think it's worse than that. I think it's programmed like an EDM concert. I think it's not even an orchestra. I worry, and this has been substantiated by data, that more than 50% of the interactions going on on the Internet and social media are not real.

There was a former FBI analyst that said it might be as much as 80%. It's bots, as you said. And this is a problem with the concept of free speech. completely wholly in favor of free speech, just like the ADL was back in the day when they let the Ku Klux Klan march. They, like, look, you've got to, the way to combat bad speech is with better speech.

find out whose arguments are correct is to let them debate in the marketplace of free ideas and expose these people for what they are and have the people that are on the sidelines that are letting these great thinkers have these discussions say okay this guy makes sense

This guy is clearly a grifter. This guy has ulterior motives. This guy has an ideology that's very toxic, and he's trying to push this on the whole world for control, for power, for money, to benefit the special interest groups that he's a part of or whatever.

it is that the problem with Free speech is you're also going to get a lot of ugliness because there's a lot of ugliness in the world You're gonna get a lot of people that say horrible things And I think the only way we sort through all that is you have to let them and then you have to let people rise up that those horrible ideas and those people become heroes. Those become the Martin Luther King Jr.'s. Humor helps.

Humour helps. One thing we know about the Ku Klux Klan is if you mention the silly costumes, they don't like that. It's like they want you to be afraid. to be nervous but it's like dude look at the stage gear you're in ghost it's like come on do you know who daryl davis is no daryl davis is a musician who um he's was a traveling blues musician

And did some shows where afterwards he met some people that told him that they were in the Ku Klux Klan. And he was like, are you kidding? And the guy shows him his fucking Grand Wizard ID card. or whatever the hell it is he becomes friends here's my card daryl's black right daryl's a black man and becomes friends with this guy goes to his house meets his family the guy throws the robe away

gives up his membership in the KKK, renounces his membership, and gives Daryl the ropes, says, I want you to have this. Daryl has done that personally. The last time I talked to him was a few years back. He'd done this personally to over 200 people. Just by being an amazing human being, by being a brilliant artist and hanging out with them, just being kind and as an example of just a great human. And they were like, I guess I'm wrong.

I guess I'm wrong. This idea that black people are inferior and the white man is a superior race, that can't be true because I love this guy. And so they would just quit. Yeah. They'd quit. And he has a stack. It's not the smartest theory. It's a terrible theory, but if you're in a place with only terrible theories, and that's what you grow up, there's Daryl. And they give him all his ropes.

You know, good man. He's a great man. Good man. And he's a kind, like, very peaceful. Like, when you speak to him, he's real. He's amazing. One of your, you know, again. One of the reasons I'm here is I think there is a sense that people just want to be part of something. And when we were growing up, there were clubs you could be a part of. There's people you could hang out with and you knew where that was going.

But if you wanted to belong and have a sense of purpose, you ended up there. And so I think that it's okay. for men to admit that in this moment they are probably we're a little adrift. I hear this from my daughters. I hear this from my wife. And it's like this feeling of being dislocated. So you're attracted to these simple ideas. you know, the concept of the gang. Or America, like it's a team sport between the Reds and the Blues. America's the team. That's all. Yes. And...

And this thing, look, I'm vulnerable. We are all, especially when you're growing up, teenagers, you know, you are very vulnerable to those points of view. Yes. you know, early on we had sort of, yeah, I would say I had a, I got close to what you might call fundamentalists. And... This is all versions of fundamentalism. It's all a very narrow view. And, you know, what you see going on, right, in Gaza is you see...

Palestinian people being held hostage by Hamas. It's not just Israeli that are being held hostage by Hamas. Palestinian people and the fundamentalists. in Israel, in the cabinet, these far-right fundamentalists. Because at a time, you remember a few years back, everything was kind of wishy-washy and kind of the new age and whatever you have in yourself. and now these strong, clear points of view have arrived. It's the great overcorrection.

It's the great overcorrection. Yeah, there's a real problem with ideology and there's a real problem with fundamentalism and there's a cowardice in it. And there's a cowardice in I'm the only one that's correct. There's a cowardice in not listening to any other idea.

not listening to any other positions. And we're being played against each other in this country. The thing about the bots and the social media stuff is it just accentuates this divide between the left and the right, which I think is mostly bullshit. Most people are... good people most people just want

to be happy and healthy and have friends and family and do what they want to do for a living and have the freedom to pursue those things. Most people aren't trying to victimize people. Most people aren't trying to destroy other people's lives and destroy society. want to live their life but they're being sucked into one side or the other that which is radically opposed to each other the great overcorrection did you think that president zelinski was being bullied

in that meeting in the Oval Office. Just think about it as a playground. This is a guy, his... Maybe his life depended, but certainly the life of many, many people he knew would depend on. And he had to listen to that. Well, the whole thing is strange, right? I mean the argument in the White House of like you don't have the right hand of call. and just the fact that this is all being done publicly is very strange. There's cameras and photographers. I don't like live podcasts.

Sometimes I've done them before, but there's something about having an audience where you're playing to an audience. Conversations should be just a couple people in a room. That's what I think. I think that's the ones that resonate with me the most. I just think it's the best way to do it, the way that resonates the most. I think the kind of conversation that you're going to have with a world leader shouldn't be performative. It certainly shouldn't be with a bunch of...

People snapping photographs and pointing cameras and then pushing each other back and forth. You know, you don't have the right hand of cards. This is not cards. You are playing cards. And it's just a crazy way. And each calling. each other disrespectful it's a crazy way to handle any world events it's just terrible platform for it yeah just think of again i think of america the americans of omaha beach the people who

Like the level of courage. Yeah. And I think of these people on the front line in Europe. I mean, I haven't really spoken about Europe with you. But if America is the melting pot, I would say Europe's the mosaic. It's all these different people who speak. with a different language, but are trying for one voice in Europe, which can sound like cacophony. They call it Eurobabble in Brussels. But I've really...

I'm really now realizing how romantic it was, you know, with the Enlightenment, with the Renaissance, you know, we've got a lot to offer. And Europe has, Europe's under threat. And those bots, every election now where this candidate is pro-Europe and pro-European unity, they are just getting a shitstorm of disinformation. And I just think, wow, but it's... I think Europe is an America. I just...

sexier than these people. Is that a trite thing to say? But it's like they're so kind of unsexy. You know, that's, I mean, that's... Sorry, I have trivial. Unromantic. Unromantic. That's right. It's just these very dull, not funny people. Right. And are trying to take over the world. They're not. Funny. Lukashenko of Belarus. That dude is not funny. We don't have to go further. We don't have to go further. Who do you think is the funniest world leader? Oh, my God.

Yeah, that's a really good question. It's got to be Trump. He's the funniest. Well, he has a thing that a lot of stand-up comedians have, which is he can say the thing in... the room that no one else is going to say. Right. And that generally creates a laugh. But I also think he mightn't be able to take a joke. Well, he's not good at that.

He doesn't enjoy a joke coming his way. No, he doesn't. I mean, Zelensky's actually a comedian. Right. I met him before he became president. Played piano with his penis on television. It was quite a piano. I mean, it's funny to go from playing piano with your penis to becoming the president of Ukraine. Becoming the president of the United States, by all accounts.

But he came to Ireland as a comedian. He told me. I didn't know. And he played like small towns. I think he played Dundalk or Drogheda somewhere in the east coast of Ireland. But comedians can read a room. I mean, performers. I think comedians are at the top of the food chain because you don't have a band. You don't have a fucking tambourine. You don't. You just have the reader of the room and the material has to be really funny. I use this sometimes with our band.

A lot of our music is just experimental and innovative. We improvise and then we try to turn it into songs. But sometimes we'll write a pop song and we'll end up with a pop song. And I'll say...

Well, the thing about a pop song is it is empirical. It's like it either is or it isn't. It's like a joke that doesn't have a punchline. It's like a comedian does not walk out on stage and tell... a joke and if people don't laugh go they just don't get it it just means the joke isn't funny so i it's not a popular theory in our band by the way but i hold on to it very tight i just say

If you can't go out and play this song and it just connects, then it's not a pop song. We only do a few pop songs every decade probably. because a lot of what U2 does is a different kind of rock and roll. But I do think there's something empirical about some songs are better than the others. Yes. I witnessed a... I think it's one of the most ridiculous moments in my life, but it was kind of funny. Oasis, do you know Oasis? Sure. They're amazing bands. Love them. Just love them.

And so I witnessed this. It couldn't be a more childish fight between two of my friends. Liam Gallagher was a friend. at that point. I know Noel better now. And Michael Hutchins, who was the singer of In Excess. And they really were doing the... My song's better than your song. Oh, no. No, no, what about, no, no. And I was thinking, I was laughing to myself. And then I thought, oh, it's interesting.

Both of them have a point. That song of theirs might be better than theirs. And I started to think about it. And comedians don't get a chance to be... Subjective. It's not like Prince walks out and plays a whole new album and can go, they just don't get it. It's like you're either funny or you're not.

Right. You're going down in flames. Have you gone down in flames? Oh, sure. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What was your worst gig? Oh, I've had so many. Especially in the early days. You're trying to figure it out. The thing about material is material is essentially like like a calf that's newly born and it has awkward legs and it has to develop.

into a bowl, but it takes a long time. It takes crafting. You have to sit with it. You have to go over the... Some ideas come to you in full form, and some ideas, you have to believe in them. You know there's something there, and you have to dig. and, you know, trust the muse and find it. And, you know, sometimes those bits would just fucking bomb. And you have to just like go, gosh, I abandoned this. Should I keep working on this? Do you have a team of writers? No.

Wow. No, I just write everything myself. You're kidding. No, always. Yeah, always have. My view on stand-up, the kind of stand-up that I do, is supposed to be here's the world through my eyes. This is how I'm seeing things. From the most ridiculous... awestruck and laughing at everything perspective. And it has to be through my lens. Wow, that's amazing. I mean...

Because I've seen, you know, on Saturday Night Live when we do her, I've seen some of the talks, I see these geniuses, you know, crunching jokes and... Coming out with material. That's a different thing. It's a different thing. Yeah, like a Saturday Night Live monologue or a Tonight Show monologue or any of that kind of thing. That's a different thing. The real stand-up is clubs.

I went with Dave Chappelle to a club. He brought me to... It was amazing. Are you still friendly with him? Oh, real good friends. Yeah, I love him to death. yeah he's he's he's incredible that's jazz yes he's a real artist he can go there but well you know it's like yeah no i i

I think, why am I talking about this? I'm talking about this, oh yeah, because people can't take a joke. Right. And some people, I mean, we don't need belly laughs out of our leaders. No. We just need vision. You need vision and kindness. But to deal with... The Ku Klux Klan? Humor helps. To deal with the fascists or whatever. I mean, certainly Hitler in the late 30s was getting rid of the...

and the surrealists, because the language of fascism was to fight back. But they liked that language. And, I mean, the language of resistance against... You know, Hitler was to fight back. But that suited them. They did not like being laughed at. Sophia did not like being laughed at. Well, because if you can mock something, like you can have a position or an opinion on something and someone can disagree.

But if they make everyone laugh at that position now you're now they've made a real point because it's actually an opinion that you might not have even agreed with has caused you to belly laugh like oh god like that's how you really get because if you go on stage and just have a bunch of opinions and just lecture people there's people in the audience

They go, well, fuck you. I feel differently. But if you could go on stage with that opinion and make people laugh at something they know they shouldn't be laughing at, like, oh, my God. And you're like – then you're introducing ideas into a person. It's a – full of sugar that helps the medicine go down. Yeah, no, you're certainly the... Because with rock stars, and again...

I honestly feel like I'm just impersonating one. I don't think I am the material, really. But people, when they see me coming... They sit in their wallet. You know what I mean? They're like, here he comes and he's going to have a sign up. Whereas comedians, people are much more open. People will... People are just more open. I think it's a responsibility, but it's something to be valued. I was saying to somebody recently,

I'm not sure I trust people anymore who aren't a little bit funny. Yeah. I mean, funny and not the funny peculiar. Right, right. There's a place for that, too. Right. But, you know. People who make you laugh are open. Yes. And also the contradictions of the world and how bizarre things are. It's just ripe with humor. And if you don't ever pick up on it.

Like what are you focusing on? Like you don't ever see the hypocrisy and the ludicrousness of just this existence, this temporary existence on a spinning orb hurling through the universe and concentrating on who gets to you. use what bathroom like is this like you know i mean it's like we're weird we're very weird and if you don't see that you're not paying all attention you're not all in you're certainly not balanced

Those mushrooms were working very well for you. Yeah, I'm telling you, man. In God's country. That's the ticket. That's beautiful. Wow. I'm so touched. That album. You know, a lot of the songs on that were, you know, very vulnerable, you know. And I don't know if you know, Brian Eno produced it. invented ambient music and worked with David Bowie, Talking Heads, you know, and recently Coldplay and other people. But he had a profound influence on us.

Because we didn't go to art college. All like the Beatles, the Stones, they all went to art college. We went to Brian Eno. And he had this... incredible musician in partnership with him for the production of that album called Daniel Lanois, one of the greatest musicians you'll ever meet in your life. And some songs come really quickly.

But some are just like what you're saying. They're like the foal. The legs are going around. And the one that was like that was where the streets have no name. And so... We were working on it for what felt like weeks. And Brian Eno came in and he just said, I am not having us to spend one more minute on this song.

And he went to wipe it. So he was literally going to wipe it. And so there's no other copies. And Pat McCarthy, who was our engineer, went on to... producer R.E.M. and Madonna great dude he physically blocked Brian from it and but that song for me and it's it's not the lyric that I'm most proud of or anything because it's Brian was just saying to us just go with your first sketch remember talking about paint on canvas yeah but I'm saying but it's not it's not that clever

Don't let it be clever. Just, that's what you said, that's what you meant. And it's the strangest thing, Joe, because we go on stage and... I sing that song. We sing that song. We play that song. And it's like, what the fuck? We're the streets of Notre Dame? What's that about? I started it in Africa when I was... with my wife when I was a kid, and you were 25, something like that, maybe 26. She was 24. And it was about the devastation that was happening in the Ethiopian famine.

And I just couldn't explain it to myself. There was other inferences about the song. But none of them matter as much as this question to your audience. which is, do you want to go there, to this place, a place of imagination, a place of soul, a place of that other place? Do you want to go there? Do you want to go there together? And everybody feels it. Because we all want to be...

outside of ourselves at a certain time. And we all want to have that experience, that meeting with some call it the universe, some call it God, some call it themselves, whatever. But it's music now. I think all art as far as to the condition of music. But I was saying, we go to church in the dark. That's what rock and roll is. And we're just looking for little...

shards of light. We find it in an audience. We find our transcendence together. With the movie, we also go to church in the dark in cinema. You're in a dark space and it's projected light telling other people's stories. And somebody said cinema is like being born. Like you go into the womb. It's like you're floating around in the, as Jim Sheridan would say, he's my hero, psychological genius, Irish director, my left foot, the boxer, some great films.

He'd say, yeah, you're in the amniotic fluid. You're inside the mudder. And you're about to come out into the light. That's cinema. Great cinema is that journey towards the light. And I love that. I love that. But it's the same for some people. Their cathedral is a hike, the natural world. Yeah. Have you ever heard of Richard Rohr? No. R-O-H-R. He lives in Albuquerque. He has a thing called, it's called the center of, the center of...

Action and contemplation. And I really love it that it's that way around. And he's a Franciscan friar, but very otherworldly thoughts about... the natural world and finding the divine in it, as well as just in each other, but just seeing it in the world around you. I think you didn't... Enjoy him. He's worth a read. If Rogan... Is it Irish? Is it Catholic Irish? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Okay.

You might enjoy him. I'm sure I would. Yeah, he's a real beauty. He's got a little hermitage. And, yeah, he's good. He's great on the Enneagram as well. Do you know the Enneagram? No. It's a sort of archetypal thing. It goes back to Sufi, I think early Sufi, and then the Christian Fathers. what they call the Desert Fathers in the 4th century. But it's a way of recognizing archetypes and our own... It's not a big thing for me or anything.

archetypes but I think my daughter Eve's an actor and she said a lot of writers are interested in it and she said in some of the clever schools they teach. this the enneagram he's anyway richard was an expert in this i think oh here it goes oh enneagram three centers looks like a cult of intelligence the mediator, peacemaker, so the perfectionist, reformer, the giver, helper, supporter, performer, achiever, romantic individualist, the observer, thinker, the loyal skeptic, the trooper.

The epicure, enthusiast, generalist, and the protector, the leader of the boss. What would you say you are? Oh, Jesus. I don't know how you could tell. I wouldn't. I think I just keep on keeping on. I try not to pay attention to me as much as possible. I think there's a thing that happens, what you're talking about on stage, where everyone...

achieves a higher state of consciousness through a song. I think that's where it is really like a church. That's where it is really like a religious experience. When a great song... is playing that like really like when people hear it like ah you know maybe it's the first couple of bars of sunday bloody sunday they hear it and they're like yes it's like this

Thing that washes over everyone collectively we're all experiencing it together and it takes you away from yourself You know everyone's caught up in their own struggle and there's their self and how they exist in this world and all the problems of reality and

then there's something about these moments of divine inspiration where they impact people in a very profound way. And I think that's one of the reasons why people are so deeply drawn to music, and especially live performance. Because music is wonderful.

yourself is great. I love listening to music in my car. I love listening to music, period. But music, when you're in a live setting, when everyone's experiencing it together, it's a religious experience. There's something attuned to it. There's a reason why they sing in church. right? To achieve very similar results. Yeah, I miss that. You know, when we were kids growing up, the tunes weren't that great in the church. And I said to my...

I mean, no offense to whoever was there. I agree. But, you know, I was like, I said to our kids, you know, and they were all, none of them were baptized. Protestant or Catholic, because my father was Catholic, my mother was Catholic. I just said, you want to be Christian, you want to be Christian, but you decide. I never got religion rammed down my throat. I'm certainly not going to put it down yours.

So we'd go, and sometimes you just get a feeling in a place. I said, just trust that feeling. And they might say, well, tunes aren't that good. And I'm like, it's okay, but... But I remember when I was really young, walking in and hearing, like, the Salvation Army band and people singing, and I remember getting the shivers, just thinking, these are... These hymns, these ancient songs, they really connect us. And I miss that. And I think people would return to religion.

if if religion wasn't so fucked up yeah and and i think people you know the the church has to serve the people and and not the other way around. And, you know, the church presently, I don't know how many churches you'd have here in Austin, Texas, but I'd probably say... If there's 276 different kinds of churches, you know, it's just one church. It's just in 276 bits and pieces.

It feels sometimes like it's at odds with science, but it's not. Science is the pursuit of truth. And so these are pilgrims too. The great scientists are trying to crack the code of the physical world. The great theologians are trying to crack the code of the metaphysical world. Nobody knows. That's the thing about literalism, you know, that beautiful thing in...

You know, everyone has it at their wedding. Love is patient. Love is kind. We can roll over you. Love is this. Love is that. And then it goes faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. And I remember talking with somebody and I was saying, well, why is love more important than faith? Why is love more important than hope? And the clue is a few verses later where it says, we see through the mirror darkly.

but one day we'll see face to face. We know now in part, but one day we will know fully, as we ourselves are known. I cannot be a fundamentalist and not understand that that is an explanation to just realize that you can have faith. You're going to have hope. But love means you need love. We need love because we cannot be sure. Our certainties, our certainties, that's the scary thing.

And, you know, I trust a feeling as a musician. I trust it when I'm going, you know, to sing or to improvise. But they're not certainties. They're instincts. Yeah. And I love that you feel that music... is still a communal place. Our festivals are amazing. And people are deprived presently of a place where they feel comfortable. I'm comfortable in the back of a cathedral. I'm comfortable at some, what's your friend, the blues guy, or a gospel church. Daryl Davis, yeah. I'm just...

I'm just looking for the spirit wherever I find it in a conversation. I can feel it when it's happening. When we're having an honest conversation, you feel it. It's a thing. And I can put down my salesman. And just have a conversation. Because the three on that Enneagram is probably my number. Because it's so excruciating. But it's the salesman. I sell ideas.

as well as songs. And I sometimes just have to just shut up and listen. Yeah, I think we're all those things, just to varying degrees. And I think the spirit of the thing is what you're talking about. this intangible moment where everybody realizes they're in it, whether it's in a church where they're singing. One of my favorite moments with you was on the Jimmy Fallon show, singing Ordinary Love.

Oh, wow. I loved it. We played it on the podcast. When it happened, the next day when it got out on YouTube, I brought it in here and I go, you've got to listen to this. This is just such an amazing rendition of a song because it's just... you sitting on these chairs and Jimmy Fallon is next to you on the table. Like this is it here. What a beauty. We played this. I want to listen to it. Let's put this on. Put the headphones on. I fucking love this version. I love this part. Oh, come on.

That is without a doubt, hands down, my favorite performance ever. Ever on a talk show. Ever. Because it was so... First of all, it starts out so relaxed. You're sitting on the couch and you're singing it and you're just so... on it you're so on it that everyone just gets captivated by it and then the music builds and then you bring in roots

phenomenal and that's so like that is what we're talking about that's like this moment that elevates people it takes people out of their life and just this joy of expression all happening simultaneously with everybody in the crowd and every and then when you stand up and you start dancing and roots are playing it just washes over everybody that is it's hard that you should bring it up because I'm sitting at a table with a couple of journalists

A friend of mine, this economist called David McWilliams, you'd love him, by the way. He's the guy who says the poor think in minutes the rich. thinking years you know they're kind of one of the one of us close anyway sitting with a bunch of people and they're from london and this guy's going yeah he says mc williams here

He's all about you too. He's all about you, yeah. He hasn't got any of your fucking records. I have your records. I've got all your records. I've fucking gone off you, right? Gone right off you. That fucking song. Ordinary Love Nights. He's got a glass in his hand. And he's getting the Dutch and the British courage and the Irish courage. And he's going, that song about Mandela and all that. I'll listen to it. It's like, fuck.

Nothing. And then I was watching Jimmy Fallon, you played the same song. And he said, I was in tears. He said... It's just something happened. Yeah. So I look at it and I'm going dodgy haircut on the singer. But I am also... being defensive because I can feel something too. There is something going on. That is the thing. And you two, you know, we're making an album at the moment and it has to be framed around that. Not that song.

Not that even style of songwriting, but that thing, the thing, the moment. The spirit. Whatever that is. Yeah. And the conversation you're having with your audience, with somebody. A deep listener. By the way, that same woman who said about listening, she said, deep listening is an act of surrender. And...

So it's coming full circle for me. If you're in that audience, there's an act of surrender, for sure. And if you're an actor, if you're singing it, you have to. And everyone recognizes that. That's why it resonates. So, I mean, I...

I just think if we're a rock and roll band with four people in your band, there's nobody who sounds like Adam Clayton. You know what I mean? There's nobody who sounds like Edge. There's nobody who sounds like Larry Mullen. And there's nobody who wants to sound like me. No, no. I can sing. I can sing. And I'm becoming the singer I am. And that's the reason I'm still in a band, because we all have to answer that question, don't we?

Why would we still be in a band? We've got to feel that it's our best album that's going to come. If it is, it's going to be because we frame it around that moment. in the room, when that happens. Yes. I promise you, I can't deliver, I promise you, for every song on the album, I'll come back, if you'll have me, and I'll play you some of the songs, but...

But for the live rock and roll pieces, it has to have that. I recognize that. You can come back anytime you want, by the way. Oh, thank you. Anytime. But yeah, that's what everybody wants out of entertainment, out of...

celebration. That's what everybody wants. These moments. And that was a real moment, man. That was a real moment that resonated through the television. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to be in that room. And I was thinking that, like, God, I wish I was there. Because, you know, you see Will Smith.

and will smith's in the corner you see him just taken over by the music like nodding his head like oh my god just in that moment it was so strange strange resonance i don't know if it was mentioned but He played Nelson Mandela. No, he played Muhammad Ali. He played Muhammad Ali. Right, right, right. I got that wrong. That just would be funny. That would be funny. Yeah, but it was, that's what everybody's looking for.

that's what everybody's looking for out of art out of religion out of just love and community we're looking for these moments that elevate us above everything else and there's a moment when a a great performance like that just when everyone in the audience realizes what you're doing and we're all in it together and people at home are in it like that was so powerful it's everything through the television is like 60 of what it is in person

At the most. You know, we used to avoid TV because it's actually Bruce Springsteen advice years and years ago. He said, be careful being on TV because people can turn you down. They can go off to the kitchen and make coffee. He's kind of right about that. It can take away the mystery. But that studio that he's in... Jimmy, that's a historic place. The Beatles or whatever. Think of all the artists that have been in on the... So there's something going on there. Oh, yeah. And...

And he's a very beautiful spirit. He just really is. He seems like it. I don't know him, but he seems like a real sweetheart. I've been out late night with him. I've been, you know, in... in all kinds of situations, and is just really a see-through heart, you know, transparent person. It's just you see. You see what he's thinking. Now, how he does that night after night, I will never know. Yeah. Like, I'm...

I'm terrified going on those shows. This is easy for me because I'm talking. I don't do full stops and commas. You know, I don't have to. You're not asking me to. I'm just having a conversation. to be sharp and be on it. I don't know if I'm going to be sharp or on it. And part of being in U2 is I have to be true to my mood. And then I have to allow the... the song to take me somewhere else. And, yeah, it's a funny thing, you know. Yeah, there's performing. There's not much psychology.

written about being in books about the psychology of a singer. Probably there is for comedians or actors. No, there's barely for comedians. I think the problem is that only the people that can truly do it understand it.

Right. That's the problem. And then what you're talking about, confinement for the talk show format, that's... also what makes that moment so much greater is because you realize yes it's just it's it it's it doesn't belong there that That format is for hollow platitudes and selling a new television show and getting in and out before the seven-minute commercial break.

It's the worst way to have a conversation where you're going to get the most out of people. Because when you have time constraints on conversations, you immediately feel under the gun. So you're kind of like tense and you're pressured and you don't know when.

And then the audience is staring at you, and then there's bright lights. Everything is wrong. Everything is opposed to the way normal... comfortable human conversation and connection works it works with silence around you and just people talking or in a pub or wherever you're at you know in a living room with friends at a party like that's the real human connection where it's open-ended and you're just talking.

as soon as you like lock it down and then you know you have to lock it down for commercials and you you have to button this up and there's a new person coming in in five minutes so they gotta shuffle you out the door and hold up your album and tell everybody to buy it and then you leave

was that good i guess it was good it's like you know what i mean it's i never liked doing them i always felt confined and i would never do stand-up on them i was always asked to do stand-up on them like that's not where stand-up belongs like

But if someone can pull it off, like there's been great comedians that pulled off incredible Tonight Show sets like Richard Jenny and George Carlin. Yeah, who's your favorite? I mean, apart from me, I'm not going to ask you about your mates, but people that you, we were talking earlier. about singer people that I just looked up to. Who were the ones that formed you? Well, when I was a child, I was probably, I guess I was 15 or 16. My parents took me to see Live in the Sunset Strip in a theater.

And it was Richard Pryor. He performed. He did a concert special in the theater, and I think it's his greatest performance. And when... I was there in the theater. I was laughing so hard. And I remember very clearly looking around at all these people and they were falling out of their chairs laughing. People were just falling back, slapping each other.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Like, they couldn't breathe. And I remember thinking, this guy is doing this just talking. And I remember all the funny movies that I'd seen, like Stripes and all the great comedies, Animal House, funny comedies. Nothing compared to this. And this guy's just talking.

it was an incredibly profound moment for me i remember i got obsessed with richard prior i started buying richard prior cassettes i would buy like whatever i could you know you could find them i found a bunch that were like you had there were like weird printings

of him at Red Fox's Comedy Club. I actually found them in a truck stop once. They were selling these cassettes. I was like, what is this? And then I bought them, and there were incredible performances with like 15 people in the crowd, and he's just ranting and going on these like...

unhinged rants about things and just having fun and being really loose and I just couldn't believe that someone could do that that he could just by talking this theater filled with people were just falling down laughing They're just blown away. So that was probably my first thought about stand-up comedy, my first real thought. Just how, what a...

Crazy power to have. Like what an unbelievable thing to be able to do with just your words. Yeah. I saw Robin Williams do that a few times. I was in a room with him. And he just could not turn it off. And it was wild. He was certainly not in control of it. Right. There's a genius comedian called Tommy Tiernan. I don't know if you've seen him. Sure, I've heard.

again when he goes out and he doesn't go out often because I think it scares the shite out of him what he's going to say next yeah and so that is the thing of having the material and then being able to let go of the material. That's, I think, must be part of this, is it? Yeah. I mean, I don't know.

Yeah, that's part of it. These ideas, they come to you and you just have to decide whether to embrace them or not. And you get yourself into such trouble. Yeah. Because you just, you say the thing that you thought of. But the art is in fact. being able to say the thing you've thought of. It's a strange one. I didn't truly realize that, and I never had any aspirations of comedy whatsoever when I was young. When I loved Richard Pryor, I just loved it as a fan, just like I loved rock and roll.

want to be a singer i just loved it and then i saw kenison and i think that was the first moment where i went oh this is comedy too wow okay what is comedy you know because everybody else had been like telling jokes or with prior it was like these stories of life that was so like revealing and so vulnerable but also hilarious like deeply fun, just like so accurate in the caricatures of people. And then there was Kinison.

I was like, okay, this is comedy too. And the first thing I ever saw of him, I was actually introduced to him by a girl that I worked with. A girl that I worked with at a gym. I worked at the Boston Athletic Club. I was a trainer. I was teaching people how to lift weights. And there was a lady who was a volleyball.

player who I was friends with that worked there she worked the front desk and she was like I saw HBO last night this comedian was so funny and in the parking lot of this gym that we worked out she did Sam Kinison's bit of homo Homosexual necrophiliacs paying a bunch of money to be with the freshest male corpses. Have you ever seen the bit? I have. So the bit is the guy, he goes, imagine this, you're at the end of your life.

You know, you're lying now. You're like, well, I guess I'm dead now. I'm going to be alone with Jesus. And that's going to be great. I'm going to be in heaven. And hey, he starts rocking backwards. What is this?

It feels like someone's got a dick in my ass! I mean, life keeps fucking the ass even after you're dead! It never ends! It never ends! She's... doing this impression she's lying on the parking lot on her stomach going back and forth and i'm dying laughing i was like i gotta see this so my first introduction to kinnison was this friend of mine

Her doing it on the concrete. That was good. It was amazing. No, no. You're doing her doing him. Oh, yeah. She did a great job. She had me howling. Who else? Well, he was a huge one. Eddie Murphy, for sure. That was a huge one. But then again, that was also like, I still didn't think I was going to do stand-up until I saw Kinison. When I first saw Kinison, that was when I was like...

Maybe I can do it because I had friends telling me to do it. But it was friends that I did martial arts with. So we would have to – from the time I was 15 until I was like – 21 22 all i did was travel around the country competing and i was with this such a wild combination if you don't mind me saying it's just like it just The martial arts seems so unfunny. It's very unfunny. You know, you were fighting for your life.

It's very scary. So when it's terrifying like that and everyone's nervous, that's when gallows humor comes in. And I was the guy who – I always needed attention when I was young. So I was getting my attention from being really good at fighting. But then I was also getting my attention around also the people that were really good at being funny. So when we were all like –

You know, a bunch of fucking crazy people. Their hobby was to travel around the country trying to kick people unconscious, right? So this is the group that I'm hanging out with. And, you know, most of them were older than me. I was the youngest because I was in high school.

the time most of these were grown men and I was competing against grown men while I was in high school which is another crazy thing my instructor was hardcore and he threw me to the grown men when I was 16 it was terrifying but because it was so terrifying i developed this way of releasing steam and so my friend of releasing my way of releasing steam i'd make fun of different guys that we trained with having sex like how he probably does it and this and that and we were

always just i was just always trying to crack people up and i had one friend that i'm still really good friends with to this day my friend steve graham who talked me into doing stand-up and I never thought – I'm like, you think I'm funny because you like me. I go, but you're crazy too. Like you're a fucking psychopath as well. Like you think I'm funny because you're doing the same thing that I'm doing. Like we're nutty people. We're not normal. Other people are going to think I'm an asshole.

When you walked out, though, tell me, was he there when you walked out on stage? The first time? Oh, yeah, he was there the first night. Yeah. So can you paint me the picture? I was at a comedy club. I was terrible. I went to open mic night. I did like five minutes. It was horrible.

But I got a couple of laughs. I got a couple of chuckles. And I was like, I got off stage. I was like, I think I could do this. The weirdest thing was, like, I had probably, at that time, I was 21 years old, I had probably fought at least 100 times. And I was way more terrified of doing comedy.

Way more scared. I imagine. Way more scared. Like, fighting was scary, but I was like, I know it just has to start. Once it starts, I know what to do. Like, the real fear of comedy or of fighting was before the fight. It was all the demons. Yeah. Why am I doing this? Why are you doing this to yourself? That's what you're really fighting in the end. That's what you're fighting. You're fighting the fear.

But I knew once it started, I wouldn't be scared at all. Because you don't feel fear when you're fighting because you're so in the moment. You're in the moment. You're zen. You almost don't exist. You have to, to operate at the highest level.

to have instantaneous reactions and to be able to manage your pace and all these different things. You can't think about yourself or how you look or how you feel or whether your girlfriend's mad at you or whether you're going to fail out of high school. You have to be locked into what you're doing. So I wasn't afraid of fighting. I was afraid of everything before fighting. I was afraid of feelings. But that's where the comedy came from. The comedy came from alleviating that.

Right, so there is a symbiosis there. There's a thing in it. A task, a very complicated task. The way I describe fighting is it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. That's what it really is. You could call it fighting. You could think it's brutish and aggressive. To say that again, it might be the title.

a new album. High level problem solving with dire physical consequences. So as far as like sport. I just put meta in front of the physical consequences. Yes. We got ourselves an album. Yes. It's the most consequential. of all sports because when someone beats you, they don't just beat you. They take away everything you are as a man. When someone destroys you in a competition, you are not a man anymore. You are significantly decreased.

your value, everything about you, you feel terrible. You are as good the day you walked in there confident. And you still feel like shit. Where you felt like you could take on the world, you have the same skills. You're as good as you felt when you could take on the world. And now you feel like utter dog shit. And yet we know... that failing is how we succeed. You know, the Samuel Beckett lines, fail, fail again, fail better.

I may have failed to get the quote right, but that's it. Fail, failure and fail better. That pain is fuel. The pain of failure is the most... potent fuel the most potent inspiration known to man and the more terrifying the failure whether it's failure in stand-up comedy or it's failure in that's very high stakes if you think man i'm just thinking this through the second

Both your chosen passions entail the risk of humiliation. Yeah, you have to have that. That's the only way you get better. That's the only way you really get better. That's tricky. Yeah. Super tricky. I grew up my best mate since I was three years old. He gave me my name. Bono. He gave us all names. And his family names.

genius really painter became his painter's father there was tough stuff going on on our street in their house and he He grew up, well, the father used to, he was kind of religious, extremist, let's call it that, used to humiliate the kids by putting a bowl on their hair. on their hair and cutting their hair so they'd walk around with these putting my hair so everyone would be like around and be like ah they were just so fast they were all they could all look after themselves

Like the Boy Named Sue. It is the Johnny Cash song, Boy Named Sue. And so Guggie, my mate, so I grew up sparring with him. This is literally how we grew up. And his, so we watch all the boxing matches, all the obvious ones. And he just really went into, his obsession became mixed martial arts. So he wants his kids. He's, you know, they're going down to the gym. And then my godson, okay, his name is Noah. And he comes, this is not a joke. This is not a joke.

So Googie, my mate, since I'm three years old, comes up and he goes, oh. He says, no, he wants to give up fighting, you know, cage fighting. And I said, oh, that's okay. I said, what does he want to do? He wants to be a doctor. And I'm like, Googie. This is a really, your kid wants to be a doctor and you're disappointed, but he could be such a great fighter. And I said, Gookie, he wants to be a doctor. By the way, he became a doctor. This story, that's how it ended.

But I said, he was such a good fighter. I said, why did he give up? He said, well, he's down the gym. He said, I can't even beat the best guy in the gym. If I can't beat the best guy in the gym, there's no point in me having a... big career he said the best guy in the gym was Conor McGregor and he was a few years older so it's and then two of his other kids are fighters now Wow. So I've grown up around it because of my mates and his kids. But that thing of combat...

Being comfortable in combat is a thing you need to be careful of because you can end up there. And sometimes I do... Well, you... It's because it's a... art form for you it's a it's a it was a you know profession it was a it's different but people like me fight or flight is a problem because sometimes fight is on and I And there is no fight. Right. So that's part of the shut up and listen instructions I'm receiving, which is I'm kind of born with my fists up.

And from every way, just growing up and being around what I was around and experiencing what I experienced, I have that. And even in the band, I'm a bit like that. And so... I've got to be careful because it's not always somebody coming around the corner who wants to take you out. And they might actually just want to take you out. And it's not becoming. to be combative at all times. So I'm learning to put my fist down. I'm learning to spend those times in the morning.

thanking God that I'm alive because I had a heart surgery, as we talked about earlier, and just waking up is great. Just like, wow, I've just woken up. What a thrill. And I'm trying to get to that place. Not with the world, but with myself. I've not made peace with the world. I certainly have not. But I am making more peace with myself, which is sometimes a bit harder. And the family and listening to them more.

Yeah, that's that's that's it. This combat thing is is interesting. Were you in the neighborhood? I asked you earlier, but were there people? Is there people you can remember? Sure. Like us being... Like on you. Compatite? On you. Oh, on me? On you. Not from the time I started training. Once I started training, I got very good very quick, and I became kind of known for it. Because I was doing it at a crazy time.

way it wasn't as simple as like oh he takes karate it's like no he on the weekends he's traveling around the country and fighting in tournaments you know and I I was winning them you know so I was it was I found a thing very early on that I could excel at that was scary. And I realized through that thing.

You can get good at anything. You just have to put your attention and focus to it. And, well, when do you put your attention and focus to something the most? Well, when your literal health relies on success. It was so scary that you couldn't half-ass it, which is like... I have a problem with things that involve too much personality and charisma where they could mask truth. And I think this is the problem with.

evangelical preachers this is the problem with politicians and it could be anybody but it's like there's this siren call that will lead you to the rocks and it's believing your own And fighting was, it didn't matter what your personality was. It didn't matter. It's empirical. Yeah, nothing mattered. It didn't matter how many people liked you. If you get kicked in the head, you get fucked up.

On the flip side of it, I used to love when I would go to someone else's hometown and they had all these people beating, like cheering for them. All these people like, you know, you're going to fuck them up. All these people cheering in the corner. I would love that. It was my favorite thing.

My favorite thing. I was like, they can't help you. Do you have rage? Me now? No. I'm just – when you're fighting, I mean, obviously my – What we do in music is we try to turn rage into something beautiful, and that's what rock and roll is, the sound of, you know, I think it was Neil Young who said it was something like The Sound of Revenge.

But whatever, it's rage for sure. There's rage. That's what separates certain bands. You want to know what the difference between a pop band and a rock and roll band? Rage. It's rage. Rage against the machine. And you bet. Fuck you, I won't do what you tell me. Yeah. And we had that. And that was coming through me. And I had to... So I'm just wondering where you... Where did you get that rage from? Or maybe you didn't have it. I mean, I'm told by some people that it's...

Like Mike Tyson had rage. But some boxers, they didn't. They thought it made them weak. Well, it gets in the way of clear thinking. And, you know, I had this guy named Yuri Prohaska on the podcast recently. He's a brilliant fighter who's in the UFC, who was the light heavyweight champion at one point in time.

and is still one of the top light heavyweights in the world. And we were talking about anger and rage, and that it leads you down a bad path of decision-making when you're fighting. It interferes with the flow. It interferes with the way. And like I was saying before, when you're...

competing, you know, I've never competed at that level. When you're competing at a world championship level, anything that fucks with your mind, anything where you're doubting yourself or talking to yourself or all that is resources.

that is being allocated towards something that's completely useless as opposed to being like completely in the moment and in the zone if you get taken out of it for a moment if they feel for a moment that you're thinking like you're looking for a way out you're looking to quit you're gone you're done like when your friend was saying that his son didn't want to be a fighter anymore this is my advice always whenever someone says I'm thinking about stopping fighting I go quit quit right now

Because somewhere out there, there's someone who's not thinking about stopping at all. They're going to fuck you up. They're going to come for you. It's going to be terrifying. You're locked in a ring with Mike Tyson and you've been thinking about getting a regular job. Like, yeah, you're fucked. You're fucked. Because there's all in people in my opinion. I love fighting But I think only all in people should be fighting and the moment you're not all in get out

You've got to get out because the difference between an all-in person and a one-foot-out-the-door person is enormous. It's enormous. Even if skill level is similar. The person who's all in is a terrifying person. All they want to do is this one thing, and they're completely focused on it, just being the best in the world, this one thing. They're going to find holes in you. They're going to find your weaknesses.

They're going to push you in a way that maybe you didn't push yourself as far in the gym. So come the second round, come the third round, you start breaking down. And they're not breaking down at all. They're breaking you down. It's a terrifying place to be when you know you're not all in and the other person.

It's all in. So anybody, if that was my son, he's like, I'm thinking about quitting. I'm like, good, quit. That's what I'd say. Quit. Find something else you love. Find what you love. You don't have to do this. But if you're going to do this, you've got to only do this.

this has to be your fucking life right your fucking life i mean i don't want you to be a rock star and a fighter shut the up you can't be both yeah it's not possible if you want to do that thing that thing is your whole life there's a I don't have any tattoos, but if I did... Kind of amazing you got this far without no tattoos. I know. If I did, it's... I have a... There's a quote. It's from Nietzsche.

And I wouldn't normally quote from Nietzsche. I'm not that interested in Nietzsche, but he's written some aphorisms that I like and whatever. But... In our summer place where we go to, there's a little trail called the Nietzsche Trail. And he apparently came up with this line, which is for anything truly great to take place. there requires, and this would be my tattoo, a long obedience in the same direction. Ooh, that's good. That's so accurate. And I think of edge when I think of that.

I don't think of me. I'm sort of, I'm just, my curiosity just takes me into a place I shouldn't be. That long obedience in the same direction, that's what you're talking about. Yes. Does it apply to people, to tickling? I always wondered, would it be great if you're the biggest fighter ever and just a little tickle?

And it's like, maybe that's... I don't think that would work. I think people would have already tried that. Come on, man. Totally unaffected. You've got to do it. You're so filled with adrenaline when you feel tackles. Yeah. You're sparked out. There was a comedian called Ken Dodd. I remember from Liverpool. He had a feather. He used to just tickle people. I'll get the tattoo. You get the feather. The feather's awesome. It is a funny thing. That quote is so accurate.

It's one of the greatest quotes of all time. I think it's a strong quote, and it's a person who's, he was pushing away higher, even the concept of higher consciousness for a lot of his life. And yet, in managing to bump into it, there's a quote of his, I swear I had read, but...

When we were doing the book, we couldn't find it anywhere, so I might have made it up. But he was, because that's the history of that in our family. Jamie will find it. Well, it's not. It's a, Jamie, it's about friendship. And I don't think it's Friedrich Nietzsche. I don't think so. But the idea is that friendship is deeper. kind of wider, it's less dramatic than, you know, romantic love. But it is, it's somehow...

The essence of great relationships is actually friendship. I think that's Nietzsche. But we couldn't find it, so I may have just made it up. Though love be deeper, friendship is more wide. Oh, I'll take that too. Something like that. Thank you, Jamie. I'll take it. My dad was funny. He used to quote this playwright, Irish playwright, called Sing. He'd say...

Because he was suspicious of nationalism. Because in Ireland, you know, you would be. Because the country was nearly at civil war and along sectarian lines. So he used to say, Ireland! What is Ireland but the land that keeps my feet from getting wet? So that's a great quote of Sings. So when we did the book, Surrender book was on Knopf. So they went off, couldn't find it anywhere.

You couldn't find the quote anyway because he made it up. Wow. And it's a great quote. And I think it's okay. If you say something three times, it's yours, right? Yeah. So, you know, I'm in a band. with my friends. And that friendship is pulled and pushed and it's difficult and at some point one of us is usually trying to break up the band. But...

It's a very deep bond. Can I say something about that? Yeah. I thought it was really great about the film as well. When you went into the fact that it's a true democracy in your band. It's annoying, isn't it? But it's... But I would expect nothing less from you. When you said that, and I wasn't aware of that, I was like, of course. Of course that's how you would set it up. Well, it's fine to be a democracy, but we share things also.

the economics yes that's where exactly exactly and and we had a manager Paul McGuinness for most of our life and it was one of these things he said just don't ever be fighting about whose song it is and Because in the background, it's like, I want my song on the album. Just get rid of that. Just share everything and make sure that you all feel a stake in each other. Yes.

And so the arguments in U2 are never about, well, this is my idea, so you're really stepping on my toes. We've developed, I would call it, a sort of band ego. bigger than individual egos. Even an ego as big as mine. This is bigger. This is even bigger. And it's the quiet ones. But yeah, I think we've learned to just... We don't argue about what's very good. Sorry, we do argue about what's very good. We don't argue.

about what's great so if we're talking about is that good that chorus now that guitar yeah but it's all for a purpose we're all just talking about it we never but when it's great people just back off We just know. It's like greatness has its own, what's the word, has its own, brings with it a certain acquiescence to that thing. And then you learn.

That very good is the enemy of greatness. It's not even next door neighbors. Like we used to be with you two. We were really crap or great. But then we got very good. Very dangerous. Being very good is not helpful because there's a chasm between what is very good and great greatness. What you were talking about there, Buck. on Jimmy Fallon. That's a moment of greatness. It's not, which is different from saying we were great. It was great.

And very good could be just sitting there playing the song. It's a very fine song. And these are very fine players. could just be very good. It didn't make that moment that resonated so deeply with me that I brought it up. We played it multiple times on this podcast over the years. I'm really happy you did. And that's what the... My friend, I forget his name, or my friend that I just met for the first time at the kitchen table, who had the guts to say...

He's so disappointed because the recording of that song was just very good. That's really what he was saying. Yes, yes. You hadn't captured like... But I think that unique moment of the way you guys did it is what made it so special. It's because...

Jimmy Fallon's sitting there, Will Smith is sitting there, and you're just... on these chairs and you're singing on the chair and so you're moving on the chair and then eventually everything picks up and you're standing up and dancing and the whole crowd like felt it it was like this build-up to it it all flowed together but it just

I haven't seen that back, by the way. Really? No, no. I haven't seen it. I probably saw it on the night or the next day. Oh, wow. So I haven't... I sent that to everybody. I sent that to all my friends. As soon as it came out online, I was like, you've got to see this. This is incredible. Thank you for that. But there might be something to do with the fact that the four...

members of that band feel equally involved in that song. There might be. And that the democracy, which is such a pain in the hole. is actually one of the reasons that when U2 walks onto a stage, people tell me even if they're not bands, you know, they just come along as guests. The hair come up in the back of their neck. And I explain, actually, that happens to us, too. It's a strange thing when we walk out. And it seems to me that I haven't figured this out, that...

The whole universe conspires to break up great relationships, right? You fall in love, it's romantic. This is families now. This doesn't have to be... Your partner in life, your wife, your husband, your families, kids, everything. It's just the whole world just seems set against them. It just pulls at us. It's like gravity itself. You're resisting. And so when you manage to get through it...

And you're standing there, the forest, and there's something going on that feels like you've resisted gravity or whatever the forces that pull you apart. there's something about it and some nights it's really not easy and but i mean not the music but the the friendship and But we're through it right now, and you'll feel it in these recordings. And you'll feel us, in a way, rediscovering each other. That's amazing. I haven't been playing for you.

We just played in London acoustically at the Ivor Novellas Awards the first time in five years the four of us played together because Larry had a back injury. But yeah, there's something in the chemistry. Well, there's also the fact that you guys continue to create, because one of the things that happens to great bands is they become a prisoner to their old songs. Yeah, you've got to be careful there.

Yeah, a lot of bands. Ordinary Love, that's what's so beautiful because that's in the last... Is that... That's like 10 years old or something. Something along those lines. Which is a mere minute if you've been around for... We'll be around... I think the first time we met in Larry's kitchen is... It will be 50 years next fall. In the kitchen. Wow. Drummer wants musicians, whatever. We're literally... And in the film, you know, we've got the kitchen table.

We got the chairs, you know, because I'm on the road with, you know, 250 Mack trucks and a space station and whatever else with you too. But here you could put everything into a station wagon. It's like a... Literally a table and chairs. And the chairs are Edge, Adam and Larry. And I've got to... I use the kitchen table as operating theatre, so it starts with the heart surgery. It's the hospital bed where my father says goodbye to me with the expletive.

And it's the kitchen table where all operas really begin in the kitchen, don't they? It's like you're sitting there in an art case. It would be me, my father, my brother, mother's past, and it's just male rage in its different shapes and forms. So I get to be on the road. With a table and chairs. But then I get to bring out the chair. There's Larry. Yeah. There's Edge. There's Adam. I introduced them as chairs. And it was...

It was amazing for me to have that experience of doing things and telling their story. If their memoirs come out, I'm fucked. No, I really am. It's over. And I'm done with the past. I'm not sure the past is done with me, but I'm doing my very best. to deal with the past in order to get to the present, to make this the sound of the future. So the songs on the next album, when you are...

Whomever you're with or your kids or whatever are out at the Joshua Tree or wherever it is, park or at the lake here in Austin, Texas. And you're listening to our new album that we will take you somewhere because it has to be, these songs have to be, they have to be everything or what's the point? Right. What is the creative process for you when you...

when you have a concept for a song, when you have an idea? How does it work? Do ideas just come to you? Do you sit until they come to you? Do you sit in front of a pad and write them down? That has never been... an issue like edge of myself with the sort of song starters and and I mean he is I think we were counting them up the last time, like 526. He said 526 songs I have here. I said, Edge!

They're not songs, they're ideas. And he goes, this one's a song. And I go, oh yeah, that might be. And I will have and have stuffed in my phone and... paper and Air India sick bags and wherever else I've written my life and the glimpses that you get. And I don't write out of misery. which is great because I know some people have to be really miserable before they write. I write out of joy a lot of the time. Sometimes I'm writing my way out of a situation.

but most times I'm riding my way into something and especially with this next album I just think the world needs It needs some wild guitar music, but it also does not need the blues. Right. We're in the blues right now. Yeah. But we're in danger. We're in danger. But you did say on one of your recent podcasts, you were saying, hold on a second, still...

More people got access to water and heat and air conditioning in the history of the planet. So we just don't want to lose that. Perspective. And we don't want to... You know, this incredible thing in 20 years, if you think about it. I mean, maternal mortality halved, more than halved. and people coming out of extreme poverty. Some of this is China, some of this is capitalism, some of this is that. But I don't want to lose the sense of...

The next chapter could be our best. And that's going to need vision. Yeah. And I'm not talking about U2's new album. But that is part of it, because art... changes the collective consciousness of a civilization. And songs that really deeply resonate with young people that have a...

that are great songs that also have a message and carry with them conversations that people have about the songs and about what's going on in the world, it shifts consciousness. It shifts consciousness in a positive way, and those young people may grow up. to become people that aren't corrupt politicians, that aren't corrupt congressmen, that don't.

give in to the lobbyists and the special interest groups, but really look out for their constituents and they get into it for the right reasons because everybody's going to be co-opted if you don't. You're right. Yeah, we better be good then. And for me, the go-to group was Beatles. And I had this moment where Paul McCartney... picked me up at John Lennon Airport. He was driving the car and brought me and kind of showed me where...

the different neighborhoods of the Beatles, which was an amazing experience. And he'd stop and he'd say, oh, this is where this happened. And he'd say, do you mind me telling you this? And I'm like... Are you kidding me? And then he stopped at the traffic lights and he said, oh, yeah, that's what I had, like, our first real kind of conversation, you know, with me and John.

I said, hold on a second, I'm a bit of a Beatles student. Didn't you have that when you were in the Quarrymen? He says, no, no, no, no, it was a different level. He bought a bar of chocolate, and after the war, you know, chocolate was really... Hard to come by, you know. It was kind of a real luxury. And he bought the bar of chocolate and he didn't give me a square. He broke it. Cadbury's milk chocolate broke it in half.

And I said, oh, so you're into sharing too? He said, yeah. And he says, I don't know why I'm telling you that. And he drove on, and I just thought, oh, I know why you're telling me that. greatest collaboration, not just in music, in the history of music, maybe the greatest collaboration in the history of culture started with half. Wow. They shared. They gave it. My mate, Googie, who I just spoke about, who knows all about you and knows all about your sport, he taught me everything he had.

And they came, it was tough at times, as I told you, in their house. He just gave me half of it. Whatever he got, just half. So when I... We were in U2, and our manager, McGuinness, says, you should share everything. I was like, yeah, I've been sharing everything. I've been sharing everything anyway. And even now, Edge and myself were sitting.

In our house, we share this place in the south of France. We've been there for 30 years. All our families have kind of grown up there. French are too into themselves to bother us, which is really the way we like it. And we sit there. And we think the real owners are going to come. Right. You know what I mean? Because we still don't really believe this has happened to us. And you know what? I think that's probably right.

because we don't really own this stuff. You get it for a short period and then you hand it on. I think something about the four and the way we share. is in the sound of our music. I think so too. No, no, no, I think you're dead right. I think that when you, you know, and Larry's just standing there with a little tambourine that Jimmy found. But it's him playing the tambourine.

And, yeah, there's something. Again, there's not much scholarship about this type of stuff that you can read up on. But it resonates, right? You can feel something. Yeah, I believe it. I think there's something to it. You've made decisions that have sort of affirmed this commitment to a higher goal. It's not a hierarchy of... you know, who's the lead singer? Who's this? Who's that? It's not who's the big star. It's just we're all together to do this thing. I'm in a band where every...

member of the band thinks they're the leader. I think that's every band. And I voted for this. And it's sort of great. I think it's worked out, you know, and you guys are still together, you know, which is also a giant win, you know. I mean, that's one of the most difficult things. You never know, you could run down the road any minute, but whilst we're running down the road...

It's a thrill. I think that's also what makes you great is the same feeling that some of the real owners are going to come. Like you never really buy into it even though it's you. And that's real. I think we all should have that. And I think if you lose that, you're in trouble. I think we should all have that. I think that's right. I'm going to learn some of this from my wife. She used to say, don't look up to me. Don't look down at me as a woman. Look across to me. That's where I am.

And there was a lesson in that about horizontal relationships rather than vertical ones. Right. I don't have a boss. I don't want to be a boss. Yes. I mean, I have that relationship with the band that is equal. I have it with my mates. And it's just... It's just the way I know it to be the most efficient. And, you know, the boss is the boss. I mean, Bruce, it's an amazing thing what he does. And it's his...

And he's found a team around him to help him realize his vision. It's like you going out on the boards. You write your own material. It's your point of view. That's not... I'm part of... I think, isn't there two stories they say in the cinema? There's the gang and the man against... Stranger Comes to Town. I think it's one. And then there's The Stranger Goes Off in the Odyssey. But usually there's a gang. That's a different story. That's a third story, maybe. I'm in the gang. Yeah.

Comedians are in a gang, too. We're in a gang at a club. We're in a gang together. We're all convened together. I mean a gang in terms of a collaborative gang, too. We work together. We work on ideas together. We talk about bits together. Especially at my place at the Comedy Mothership, it's set up like that. The whole club is set up entirely for comedians. Completely different pay structure than any other club. Pays way more than other clubs do. The comedians get most of the money we get.

Most of the – we get the money from liquor essentially. Liquor and a small percentage of the ticket sales. But most of it goes to the comics. And the –

The vibe of the place is not that it's my place. The vibe is that this is our place. I paid the bill, but I shouldn't have... have that much money in the first place it's ridiculous like the whole thing is crazy like that you could do something like this and if you could do something like this you're supposed to if you're the person that for whatever reason the universe has blessed you with a lot of zeros throw it at something fun let's do And so it's ours.

And so there's, there's that in comedy too. You can't, it sounds glib actually, as I said, but you know, I've lived, you can't out give God. No. It's like, you know, you just, the more you, the more you, that's, and that's what I'm saying also about. the blessing on America. You know, one of the things I do like about some of these churches is not the ones that put pressure on you, but you know, people will give some cash every week to help with what's going on.

you know, in faraway places or whatever, and they tithe. I think they call it tithing. And it's just part of the blessing of America. It's just... Okay, so it's... It's less than 1%. It's half of 1% of the government budget to keep all these people alive. all over the world. They love America. Because they love America, they're not going to be a problem for America. It takes them away from terrorism, takes them away from anti-Americanism. It takes them, puts points in the direction of freedom.

That's a blessing. So if you count your zeros and you say, that's mine, that's ours. We're not sharing that with those people. The definition of neighbor is, oh. Just next door. Be careful. Because there is a bigger blessing out there. It's just a bigger blessing. It most certainly is. And it sounds like you're in it. And it is in the business where you'll see it. Because people have a...

a great mouth on them. I have a big fucking mouth. But it's not about what you're talking about. It's what you're doing. It's how you're living. The U2 thing is not just about the songs. It's the way. Did you use the word way a minute ago? You said it's the way when you're fighting. Yeah. Anything that takes you away. What did you mean by that? There's a great quote by Miyamoto Musashi.

this is the guy i actually have tattooed on my right arm it's once you understand the way broadly you can see it in all things Beautiful. Yeah, and the concept is he was the greatest samurai that ever lived. He killed 60 men in one-on-one combat with swords. He got to the point where he was killing people so easily he decided to stop using swords and he would fashion a wooden sword out of an oar from a boat on the way over to go kill the guy. Sounds like Googie.

It was an extraordinary human being, but he wrote a book on strategy called The Book of Five Rings. Yeah, and go read No Show, The Book of Five Rings. This book is all about... Where is he from? Japan. All about how you – from the 1400s. You had to be – balanced in everything. To be a great warrior, you had to be great at calligraphy. You had to be great at poetry. You had to be an artist. You had to be able to meditate. You had to be balanced. You had to know the way.

any bullshit it be this is the modern interpretation don't let your ego don't let other people's perceptions don't let insecurities and don't let any of these things stay on the way and the way is like this way of thought the once you Everybody says how you do anything is how you do everything. This was his earliest version of it. This is wonderful to hear. Once you understand the way broadly, you will see it in all things. It's that Nietzsche, this path to greatness.

Once you realize what that is, like, oh, this is this intense focus and dedication to something that could be applied to anything. You could apply it to being a better father. You could apply it to being someone who writes books. You could apply it to music. You could apply it to anything. But that's what it is. It's like finding what the thing is and throwing –

the essence of you at that thing, like really doing it. And to do that correctly, you can't have, you know, macho issues. You can't have insecurity, things that you're compensating for. You have to be pure. You have to fight. And it's a constant struggle. It's stunning. There are stunning insights in my path, I suppose, or whatever you call it, my practice.

I have this, I am the way, the truth and the life. This is what I learned from Jesus. Become a bumper sticker. Probably taking the meaning of it away. But it's the same thing. I've got to... Because when I focus on this, this kind of this radical idea to serve. you know, rather than to lead, to be...

No greater love and all that. All this stuff. Unfortunately, this language has been ruined for you guys. I'm so sorry. Kind of, but no. But it's powerful. Yeah, it's real. And this Jesus is a long way from... the one that you meet on these kind of sales programs. But it is humility, and it is service. and it is discipline, and it is not my will, thy will. It is indeed surrender. And anyone, wherever they are in the world, Japan in the 1400s or the...

15th century reverie, anyone anywhere, scientists, you know, the pursuit of truth, it just gathers. Yeah, there's something about... I'm trying to think of the word, the sort of gathering where we will all end up in the same place if we're really true. And I'm not talking about a life after death as if you have to enter a competition. But we're in the same... Consilience, I think is the word. I think it was... I don't know who wrote...

I wrote a book called Consilience, but it's the idea that all disciplines, all art forms, everything comes together on a point, a kind of convergence. But the word is consilience. And if it isn't... I just made up a great word. It's a great word. There you go, Jamie. Well, those moments where great art hits that peak. Oh, really good.

Thank you. That's really good. Jamie's the best. How did you not nod off? How long have I been talking? Almost three hours. Because I don't know why you... My family at this point will be gone to bed. It'll be just the two of us. At the fire. Jamie's locked in. Jamie's locked in. Maybe like, see you later, dude. That thing, though, is like what we all, we know how hard it is to reach, too.

like ordinary love like when you guys were doing that we know that that's not a first take you know that's not like you just wrote the song and you guys are out there jamming no that's it's a polished song and the fact that you're doing this And you're doing it acoustic right there sitting on a chair. Like everything is off, right? Like you're not on the stage. There's not a spotlight on you. There's no mist. There's no lights. Like all the theatrics are removed. You're in a...

brightly lit studio sitting down with a bunch of people beside you, which is like the most un-rock-and-roll thing of all time. Yeah. Right? It's corporate almost. Like, no one does that. Yeah, I got a corporate haircut, too. But yet you fucking nailed it. And that moment, it took everybody to a better place. That's what we're all hoping for. everything that we're hoping for the far from our leaders we're hoping for that one speech that one JFK speech

Where you just go, oh my God, yes. That's the prayer. Clinton when he was young, he had some bangers. Obama when he was young. They had these speeches that made us feel better as human beings, better about the country. That's the danger of the conflicted times that we're in is that people don't feel good even about America. There's people that think that the American flag is a symbol of injustice. It's like it's that's a crazy thought like America's you too.

It's not just you to the band, but it's it's us. It's all of us human beings, regardless of your political ideology. And we've got to think of that first. We're a community. We're a neighborhood. You know, we should.

think of ourselves as a giant neighborhood and we don't we think of ourselves as opposing tribes that are in in this battle to stay in control of whatever the direction of the country is and it's being orchestrated by artificial intelligence bots that are constantly battling with people online and state actors and intelligence agencies and money and all this shit is together and it's all confused

everybody as to what is the purpose of being a human being that's alive with other human beings. The purpose is community. Communing. We're supposed to be a United States. We're supposed to be a community. And all the differences that we have, the political differences, they should be so fucking secondary that it's...

should be a small part of the elections. A small part of the election should be policy. Because we should just all agree that we should figure out, you want to have a good use of AI? Figure out what's the objective best use of resources.

to support the collective whole. And how does that get accomplished? How does that get accomplished without fraud and waste? And what's the best way to navigate where it doesn't have fraud? That should be done, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, it should be like, what are we looking for?

looking to clean up the lakes. We're looking to stop pollution. We're looking for clean energy sources. We're looking for education. We're looking for health care. We're looking for housing. We're looking to get people off the streets that have mental health issues and get them help.

And don't just give them fentanyl and give them money for needles. That's stupid. Don't let them camp on the street. That's stupid. Also stupid ignoring them. Right. That's stupid, too. So some real resources. And once we do that. We could all do better. The whole country can do better. We'll be less at each other's throats. There'll be less anxiety. It can be accomplished. But we have to address the primary factor in this country for... crime and horrible behavior. It's...

completely disenfranchised neighborhoods. It's areas that have been fucked since the 1940s. And they're not doing anything to change them. And no one's pouring any resources to try. There's no plans to try to revitalize these communities. communities and elevate these people out of like dire poverty and gang violence and drug use. There's a way to do it. It's not impossible, but there's no resources put out at all. That should be another thing.

It shouldn't be a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. Why should we spend money on them? It should be community. Look, the people who voted... for Donald Trump, who I'm not a fan of, and I know you have respect for him, and I respect that. But the people who voted for him, I have... immense respect for them and their sense that they felt left out of the American dream, a lot of people. And in so many ways, when...

You know, the world got globalized, and a lot of people did very well out of that, particularly in the global south. But everyone in America, I think, you know, a lot of people... A lot of communities paid the price for that. And I don't know what the pie was grown. NAFTA, I think, was supposed to be a trillion dollars. It ended up being the pie was...

I think it was one and a half trillion. So there was enough money to reinvest in communities, but it never happened. And so people were pissed off. And I think we should be with those people. I'm not sure this is going to be the answer that they're looking for. And if it's not... I would encourage people. I'm not American. I don't vote. I'm Irish. You'll know. I trust in the wisdom of crowds. I really do. I'm in you too.

Americans will know, and they must... I can see where they're going right now. They're trying out this new version of themselves. And we're... We're not interested in the wider world as much. We're trying to fix our own problems. I would say they are bound up in each other.

And I would say there's a higher purpose for America than the one that's being offered presently. But I don't want to get into the politics of it. I think it's an overcorrection. Yeah. I just don't – you know, I really hope so because we really – really, really need you. The world, we need America. And this European project, we have a land war on the outskirts of Europe.

It is the most astonishing thing. And we don't know what's next. Poland. You know, the Polish people, they have two million Ukrainians staying with them. They never complain. These are the most remarkable people you'll ever meet. There's all that money that was invested in by guess who? George C. Marshall, an American... general who became Secretary of State, who had the cleverness to say after the war, the Second World War,

And I think it was like 4% of the GDP was invested in the rebuilding of Europe. And the idea was we have to make Europe succeed. And that's how we will defeat. And so when Ronald Reagan, you know, pronounced a death sentence on the Soviet Union, and the reason Mikhail Gorbachev... threw his hands up and said, this project is over, is because he knew that people could see it was dysfunctional. He knew there was a better life across the wall, the other side of the Iron Curtain.

And sometimes it takes putting your money where your mouth is to show what freedom is. America did that. We owe America. And we need you. That's all I want to say. We need you and together. Wow. There's 450 million people in Europe. It's like... You know, we don't be fighting with Canadians and Mexicans here. You put all this together, this is formidable. And these boring...

People who are listening to you are probably tuning in. What are they saying? They said something about the goods country. Like it and he ate the mushroom. It's like, you wouldn't know. You've never been lifted by music, sir. You know, you wouldn't know. You send people to death. Build some balonium up the bum. This is like, come on. It's like, you're talking.

Come in. Your time's up. And, you know, I know we want to rewrite history and all the rest of it, but you can't do that. We are free people. And it is great to be free. And I don't want to stop singing songs about freedom. I want to be it. And that's what we talked about earlier. And that's... I think as human beings, there's a constant struggle. I think there's a constant struggle to find the path.

And I think we go through a series of overcorrections and a series of going really far left and really far right. Order, disorder, reorder. That's Richard Rohr's thing. It's part of the battle of good and evil. There's a thing that... Well, do you believe there's good and evil? I do. I do.

I believe it. I think it's naive to think that if evil acts occur, there is no true evil. I think it's naive. And evil acts are undisputable. And the concept of evil has always existed. And we can become part of it. Yes. You've seen it outside a pub when people, somebody's down, kid goes down. People are just kicking. You've seen it at a football match. In American football, you don't. But in Europe, in football, in soccer, you see mad violence.

And it's like a spirit. You can watch it in a crowd. And it's, we've, you know, we've all... We've all been part of it. It's not like we're separate from it. It's an entanglement. But rarely is evil so obvious. There's a great book. by Bulgakov called The Master and the Margarita. Have you heard about this? No. So the devil appears in the rooftops of Moscow and he goes, oh, this is going to be fun.

Nobody believes I exist. It's one of the great, the stone, Sympathy for the Devil, I think that's inspired by it. But this, it's insidious sometimes. Evil is harder to spot. But I think we know – we kind of know it when we see it at full force. We just can't be afraid of sounding foolish. No. And when you say that I think evil is a real thing. You can't measure it. You can't prove it exists. But, you know, that's what I say. But science...

We need science. We don't need science to prove that evil exists. We need religion to suggest that it exists and how we might deal with it. And in ourselves, first, I would suggest, you were talking about fighting the biggest opponent. it would appear, is indeed yourself. You're up against yourself. I've got to that place, and I'm not a sportsman competent, but just in my own walk, I realize, wow, all these people I thought I was...

you know, I was up against, you know, in my head. It's yourself. Yes. I love this thing of the way. I'm going to remember that. And I love the truth. And I love being alive. I love the life. I'm going to hold on to that. Please do. And keep doing whatever you're doing, man. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you for coming here. It was a lot of fun. I loved it. I enjoyed it.