June 22, 2009. Copyright 2009, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Rock messiah Bono, friend of presidents and U2 front man for 30 years
By Susan Shepherd

LONDON, June 22, Graphic News:  He’s been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times, given an honorary knighthood by the Queen -- being an Irishman he can’t actually use the “Sir” -- and persuaded George W. Bush to quadruple the American aid budget to Africa. He sang for Barack Obama at his inauguration this year and counts former President Bill Clinton and ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair among his friends. Despite the backlash against him -- opponents see him as the worst of the celebrity do-gooders for his campaigns against AIDS and poverty in developing nations -- the Dublin-born musician can still fill the biggest venues in the world and sell his gospel of rock and responsibility to millions.
 
The band he formed with his mates back at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in the mid-70s is one of the most successful in the history of the pop industry. Their 1987 album, The Joshua Tree, remains the fastest-selling of all time. With his wife, Alison -- the two met as teenagers, have been married 27 years and have four children -- Bono has raised the profile of the world’s poorest people. The couple founded their own fair trade clothing company, Edun, and, through Project Red, challenge top-name brands to incorporate lines specifically to profit third-world charities.
 
The catalyst, for the man born Paul David Hewson and whose stage name evolved from a shop sign for hearing aids, was the 1985 Live Aid appeal for famine victims in Ethiopia. When he and Alison visited a feeding station on behalf of the appeal, Bono held a dying child in his arms and found his cause. Twenty years later he inspired another generation with the Make Poverty History marches. He has also aligned himself with the Solidarity movement in Poland -- the U2 single New Year’s Day was an anthem to that struggle -- supported Greenpeace’s opposition to the Sellafield nuclear power station in Northern England and collaborated on an award-winning documentary, Miss Sarajevo, about the war in Bosnia. Bono’s father, Bobby, was a Catholic and his mother, Iris, a Protestant. She collapsed and died at her own father’s funeral when Bono was just 14.
/ENDS