U2 frontman Bono slams Elon Musk in his Stellar interview

The U2 frontman takes aim at the billionaire businessman’s cuts to HIV/AIDS prevention funding — and reveals a “special romance” with Australia.

After nearly 50 years fronting one of the most successful rock bands in history, Bono quietly celebrated a recent milestone birthday.

The U2 singer, songwriter, activist and philanthropist turned 65 – which is traditionally the age of retirement in his native Ireland – on May 10, the same day his eldest daughter, tech entrepreneur Jordan Hewson, turned 36.

“I had the most incredible birthday,” he tells Stellar. “I share a birthday with Jordan and we celebrated – the whole family – by going to see our eldest son [Elijah] play in Amsterdam with his band Inhaler to 12,000 people.”

Bono poses for photographers at the photo call for the film 'Bono: Stories of Surrender' at the 78th international film festival, Cannes. Picture: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP

The singer, who met his wife of 42 years, activist and business owner Ali Hewson, when they were teenagers during the same week that U2 was formed, adds, “I feel sorry for my missus, for Ali, because she’s had to go through this now twice, watching a high school band get delusions of grandeur and then follow through on them.”

Bono admits he has been in a nostalgic frame of mind of late. He spun his 2022 memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, into a one-man theatre show in 2023, and it now serves as the basis for Bono: Stories Of Surrender, an Apple TV+ film that premieres on Friday.

Not that he hasn’t been teased about it. “[U2 guitarist the] Edge was just saying the other day, in his sardonic way, ‘Nostalgia is a thing of the past, Bono – and it’s time to get into the future,’” he recalls. “But before you can get even to the present, sometimes you’ve got to deal with the past.”

With his spouse, Irish activist and businesswoman Ali Hewson. Picture: Valery Hache/AFP

In his memoir, Bono (born Paul Hewson) sets out to connect the dots from tragic events such as losing his mother at the age of 14 to becoming a global star with the clout to badger world leaders for social justice and humanitarian aid.

“It’s OK to accept that the things that made you – the things that gave you these big dreams – are very small wounds, really, from when you’re a kid,” he says. “Those wounds can become these great openings into adventures and you turn that pain and that rage you have into beauty. In my case, into songs.”

Bono opens the book and his show by recounting his near-death experience in 2016, when a blister on his aorta needed major emergency surgery.

That close call and an ongoing sense of his own privilege, he says, have left him with a sense of great gratitude.

“I’m just waking up in the morning and thinking, Wow, it’s great waking up in the morning, isn’t it?” he reflects. “If you do what you love, you never ever work a day in your life and our audience has given us that. I don’t have the same worries that a lot of people have. U2 audiences have been so good to us.”

From left, Larry Mullen Jr., Bono, Adam Clayton, and The Edge of U2. Picture: Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

To bring Stories Of Surrender to the screen, Bono tapped New Zealand-born Australian director Andrew Dominik.

A fan of Dominik’s since his debut film, the 2000 crime drama Chopper, Bono says he was impressed by the director’s way with non-actors and by his work with Nick Cave on the acclaimed 2022 documentary This Much I Know To Be True.

“I don’t know how to act,” Bono explains, “and it turns out Andrew’s kind of angle on it was, ‘Well, I don’t want you to act, either.’”

In 2003, Bono’s role as the co-founder of HIV/AIDS charity and advocacy organisations ONE and (RED) saw him lobby then-US president George W Bush for the passage of the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), which has been credited with saving more than 26 million lives since its inception.

However, the program has been put on hold due to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s freeze on foreign aid, which was announced in January.

“It’s a crushing irony that a man who seemed most excited about space travel to Mars was the person who cut off that aid,” Bono says of Musk.

By contrast, he points out, “I’ve never met an Australian I didn’t like. Australia is still leading the world in so many ways in optimism. Not love in a kind of warm, fuzzy-feeling love, but love in action and still believing in the future, believing in the planet – all those clichéd sounding things.

Bono features in Stellar on Sunday.

“They’re not clichéd to me and I know they’re not to Australia. I think when we get to Australia next time, we’ll have a very special romance.”

On the music front, Bono is brimming with excitement for new U2 material following the band’s most recent original album, 2017’s Songs Of Innocence.

While the founding foursome haven’t performed live together since 2019 – drummer Larry Mullen sat out their 2023-2024 Las Vegas residency due to injury and surgery – Bono says they are “in the process of making a very extraordinary album. Larry is back from injury, that took a while. Edge is back from outer space, we think, and [bassist] Adam Clayton has just been on the BBC’s [gardening show] Gardeners’ World.

“So it’s time to make a rock’n’roll album. The emerging themes so far are the guitar, the guitar, the guitar – and the future.”

Bono: Stories Of Surrender premieres Friday on Apple TV+.

Read the full interview with Bono inside Stellar via The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD) and Sunday Mail (SA). For more from Stellar and the podcast, Something To Talk About, click here.

Originally published as U2 frontman Bono slams Elon Musk in his Stellar interview