Bono wants you to trample him.
And he’s dressed for the occasion, decked out in a Bond villain-esque custom tailored black suit, complete with a black corsage sewn on the lapel, black V-neck t-shirt, and small diamond stud earrings to compliment the wraparound sunglasses that have become his signature—today in a light shade of purple. At 52, Bono shows a few more wrinkles and grey hairs, but he beams the same charisma and earnestness that began shocking the world in the early 1980’s as he sits down for an exclusive interview with the Voice and WGTB Georgetown Radio.
But before you can grant Bono his wish and start stomping the self-proclaimed “evidence-based activist,” Bono himself would first like to do some trampling of his own. His enemy: poverty. Or, as he calls it, “the biggest obstacle in the world” and “the defining struggle of our generation.”
When he stepped to the podium inside Gaston Hall, all eyes shot to the front and the room fell into an anxious smattering of whispers and cameras shooting like Henry repeater rifles.
On behalf of the ONE campaign, (RED), Bank of America, and the McDonough School of Business, Bono came to Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall to do what he does best: entertain and inspire.
“I will, of course, be dropping the odd cultural reference to give the impression that I know where your generation is at,” he said, addressing his student dominated audience. “I do not. I don’t even know where I am at…The first existential question of this class might be, what am I doing in Healy Hall? I could be down having my third pint down at The Tombs.”
But Bono was right where he belonged. And his advice for the target audience? “Trample the likes of myself on the way to where you’re going. If we’ve got anything useful, take it. If not, ignore us,” he said in a post speech interview.
Bono knows who he is–a rock star of the highest order, one of the most recognizable and influential people on the planet and one of the few who can get away with only one name. At one of the heavier moments in his speech, he stopped and had to laugh to himself: “Rock star preaches capitalism.” (He also did a more than respectable Bill Clinton impression, afterwards saying, “Clinton is a bigger rock star than me.”)
But even with his immeasurable success and influence, Bono is not satisfied. Above all else, the native Irishman is a seeker.
“I really hate when people come up to me and say ‘you haven’t changed,” he said. “I go ‘Wow, now that would be a disappointment. (diazepam) ”
Bono has not only changed himself for the better, but also the world. He co-founded ONE, an organization which now has over 3 million members, and (RED) which has raised over $200 million dollars to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa, and his and others’ work with the Drop the Debt campaign has allowed 48 million children to go school.
“You want data? I got data,” he said.
But let’s not forget how we know Bono in the first place—as the lead singer of one of the world’s biggest bands, U2. The band has been together since 1976 without a single notable feud or breakup, a feat almost unheard of in the music industry.
“It’s just the sense that you become a kind of dog and pony show. We don’t have to do this. We’ve been blessed. We don’t have to do things for any other reason than music.”
And it’s the music that has allowed him to come to speak at Georgetown with such gravitas. The music allowed him to get out of Dublin, eventually to see the United Kingdom, and ultimately the world. And sitting smack in the middle of that world was Africa, the origin of humanity itself.
When he saw the despair in Africa, ‘birth camps’ acting as death camps and an entire continent wrought with injustice and corruption, he could not just look on: he had to act. To the audience in Gaston, he spoke of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus and the vision that he had.
“He had what they call a conversion of the heart. He saw God’s work. And the call to do God’s work. Not just in the Church—in everything, everywhere…And once he knew about that, he couldn’t unknow it. It changed him, it forced him about of bed to go change the world. And that’s what I’m hoping for here, in Georgetown with you.”
Bringing the audience to tears, Bono closed, “When you truly accept that those children in some far off place in the global village have the same value as you in God’s eyes, or even just in your eyes, then your life is forever changed. You see something that you can’t unsee.”
