Bono has claimed he received death threats from the IRA during the height of his career, his bombshell memoir will reveal.
The U2 frontman also told how a major Irish gangland figure plotted to kidnap his daughters. He tells how he faced an assassination threat in America over the U2 song Pride – a tribute to murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King – which made him fear for his life while performing it on stage.
The claims are detailed in full in Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, which is published on November 1. In the book, Bono recalls how former Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams criticised the band’s pro-peace stance.
Read more: Bono returns to Mount Temple school in Clontarf for surprise visit with sixth year students
He recalled Adams saying he “stinks” after it was perceived “U2’s opposition to paramilitaries had cost the IRA valuable funding from the US”. However, he was told by Garda special branch officers his wife Ali was most likely to be the target of IRA threats and notes, adding: “I still take that badly.”
A further threat occurred during the 1990s when the singer said a gangland leader in Dublin had been planning to kidnap his daughters. He recalled how hoods had cased the home he shared with Ali and their children Jordan, Eve, Elijah and John.
They did so for several months and developed an elaborate plan. Bono said he is still shaken by the incident. That revelation came after Francis Cahill, daughter of the late gangland criminal Martin “The General” Cahill, made the revelation in a 2007 book.
She told how her father stopped the kidnap attempt of Jordan for a €6million ransom after he was told of the plot by another criminal associate. Francis maintained he refused to take part in the kidnap with a gang who had staked out the rocker’s luxury home in Killiney, Co Dublin, for several months.
At the Times and Sunday Times Cheltenham Literary Festival last weekend, Bono, 62, spoke about the violence that plagued the band. Bono recounted being onstage in Arizona in the 1980s and feeling sure he was going to be killed.
Ahead of a performance of Pride, the band had come under fire for speaking out against the then-governor’s resistance to a memorial day for Dr King. Bono claimed U2 received a threat which promised that he would be assassinated before the end of the song.
Read more: Bono announces Dublin date for his new book tour
He said: “The specific threat was that if Bono sings the verse about the assassination of King he will not make it to the end of the song.” The singer, from Dublin’s Glasnevin, said he: “Got all messianic on myself” and half-knelt as he sang the key lyrics.
‘A shot rings out in the Memphis sky, free at last, they took your life, they could not take your pride’. “I then realised the gravity of the situation and I did close my eyes. It was a slim possibility [of being assassinated] but, just in case.”
He opened his eyes to find bass player Adam Clayton had stood squarely in front of him to protect him from any shots. Live Nation and Penguin Random House announced earlier this month that Bono would visit 14 international cities next month to promote the release.
The tour starts in New York and includes a night at Dublin’s Olympia Theatre on November 21. Bono said in a statement: “I miss being on stage and the closeness of U2’s audience. In these shows I’ve got some stories to sing and some songs to tell...
“Plus I want to have some fun presenting my ME-moir, Surrender, is really more of a WE-moir if I think of all the people who helped me get from there to here.” In the book Bono also recalls meeting with powerful figures. He recalled Pope John Paul II trying on the singer’s iconic tinted glasses as they discussed debt.
He tells how he had to apologise for his anger after “behaving shrilly” as an “overzealous rock star” with George Bush Jnr. The memoir also explores the band’s rise to power, the impact on Clayton in particular and Bono’s embarrassment whenever he watches 1985’s Live Aid.
Read more: Bono delights fans as he returns to childhood home
He writes: “There is only one thing that I can see. The mullet.” He notes he always rejected drugs, but Adam had regularly indulged. In 1993 before a concert in Australia, the bassist was found “locked up and unconscious in a Sydney hotel room after a blowout”.
Bono wrote: “We recovered. Adam has been in recovery ever since.” Another chapter reveals how the late former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev visited to Bono’s Dublin home in 2002.
There, the last leader of the USSR met Ali’s goddaughter Anna, who had been born with severe disabilities because of the Chernobyl disaster. Bono’s memoir reveals Gorbachev told them the 1986 nuclear accident was the moment he knew the Soviet Union was finished.
He said the late General Secretary of the communist party told him: “I thought to myself if the state cannot control a nuclear power plant of this significance, then the state is no longer functioning as a state. The state is kaput.”
READ MORE
Robbie Keane's 'heavy heart' as mum Anne dies with funeral details announced
Parcels labelled Lego and Blackberry found in Dublin premises with €266k drugs inside
Parents urged to take children between two and 17-years-old to get nasal spray flu vaccine
Inhaler to play two gigs at Dublin's 3Olympia Theatre as part of major world tour
Sign up to the Dublin Live Newsletter to get all the latest Dublin news straight to your inbox.
