The project sees the Irish rocker writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was fourteen, to U2’s unlikely journey to become one of the world’s most influential rock bands, to his more than twenty years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty.
Writing with candor, self-reflection, and humor, Bono opens the aperture on his life, and the family, friends, and faith that have sustained, challenged, and shaped him.
Surrender’s subtitle, “40 Songs, One Story”, is a nod to the book’s forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song and accompanied by forty original drawings by the singer, which will appear throughout the book.
“When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs. The people, places, and possibilities in my life,” says Bono. “Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. Surrender is the story of one pilgrim’s lack of progress . . . With a fair amount of fun along the way.”
In a preview clip, fans can hear audio of Bono read an extract from the chapter titled “Out Of Control”, in which he tells the story of starting to write U2's first single on May 10, 1978, in the years after the band formed in Dublin in 1976.
See also:
U2 announce Achtung Baby 30th anniversary reissues
U2 stream new single Your Song Saved My Life from Sing 2 soundtrack
U2 complete streaming series with 2015 Paris concert
U2 stream PopMart Live From Mexico City
Search U2 at hennemusic
