Bono Irish Singer From Dublin

Early life

Bono was born Paul David Hewson on 10 May 1960 in Dublin. He grew up on Cedarwood Road, between the northside suburbs of Finglas and Ballymun, in a household where his father was Catholic and his mother belonged to the Church of Ireland. He went to a Protestant primary school in Glasnevin and then moved to Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Clontarf, a multi-denominational school. As a teenager he was part of a group of friends known as Lypton Village, whose members gave each other nicknames. "Bono Vox", taken from the name of a hearing-aid shop in central Dublin, was the one that stayed, and he has been called Bono since his mid-teens.

Career

In September 1976 Bono answered a notice on a school bulletin board placed by fellow student Larry Mullen Jr., who was looking for people to start a band. The group that formed, with David Evans (The Edge), Adam Clayton and Mullen, went through the names Feedback and The Hype before settling on U2. Bono began as a guitarist and songwriter but moved to the microphone as The Edge's playing improved. He is the band's lead vocalist and writes the lyrics for almost all of its songs, which often deal with social and political subjects and draw on religious imagery.

The band played at Live Aid at Wembley Stadium on 13 July 1985, a performance that many commentators regarded as a highlight of the day. Their 1991 album Achtung Baby brought a more personal lyrical approach, and on the 1992-93 Zoo TV Tour Bono took on stage characters including "the Fly", "Mirror Ball Man" and "MacPhisto".

Away from U2 he has worked with many other artists. With The Edge he wrote the theme to the 1995 film GoldenEye, sung by Tina Turner, and the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. His record releases listed under his own name include "In a Lifetime" (1986), "New Day" (1999), "Rise Above 1" (2011) and "We Are the People" (2021). His memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, was published on 1 November 2022, and he toured a stage show built on it, later filmed as Bono: Stories of Surrender for Apple TV+ in 2025. He narrated the audiobook and won Audiobook of the Year at the 2024 Audie Awards.

He has also appeared on screen. His 20 listed credits include a cameo in Across the Universe (2007) and a part in Brüno (2009), and he voiced a character in Sing 2 (2021). He was executive producer of The Million Dollar Hotel (2000), which was developed from a story he wrote with Nicholas Klein, and of the documentary Miss Sarajevo.

Public roles

Bono is an activist on extreme poverty and HIV/AIDS, particularly in Africa. He took part in the Band Aid single in 1984 and, with his wife Ali Hewson, spent a month working at a feeding centre in Ethiopia in 1985. From 1999 he worked with the Jubilee 2000 debt-relief coalition. He co-founded the advocacy group DATA in 2002 and the ONE Campaign in 2004, and in 2006 co-founded (Red), which raises money for the Global Fund through branded products. He left the board of the ONE Campaign at the end of 2023. In 2005 he and Ali Hewson also helped found the fashion label EDUN, intended to support trade in Africa.

Recognition

Bono has received 18 recorded awards. With U2 he has won 22 Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2005. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 2003 for "The Hands That Built America" and in 2014 for "Ordinary Love".

State honours include France's Legion of Honour in 2003, an honorary knighthood from the United Kingdom in 2007, the Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 2013, and Ukraine's Order of Merit in 2022. In January 2025 he was awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom. Time named him one of its Persons of the Year in 2005, and that year he also received the TED Prize and Portugal's Order of Liberty.

Personal life

Bono met Alison "Ali" Stewart at Mount Temple Comprehensive School. They married on 31 August 1982. The couple have four children, among them the actress Eve Hewson and Elijah Hewson, who sings and plays guitar in the band Inhaler.