A street gang and the hearing aid shop: How Paul Hewson became Bono
It’s the early 1970s, and a group of surrealist street rogues is besetting the Dublin suburbs of Finglas and Ballymun. These youngsters prowl the town up to something devilish; they go by the name of Lypton Village. Their crime? Inventing shit nicknames. Eventually, one of these would befall the man we now know as Bono.
But before he became the international rock star famed for hits like ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and flying his trilby first class, he was Paul Hewson, a young lad looking for direction. His pals were in the same eternal teenage predicament. They figured that the answer might lie in a catchy new moniker. And the arts.
In truth, they had tapped into something ineffably true: modern culture needs the right packaging if it’s going to sell. After a stint working in advertising, Frank Zappa realised that modern music had “50 per cent” to do with the image. While that quota might be a little bit high, his sagacious mind had, nevertheless, identified a truth universally acknowledged within the industry’s backrooms but rarely amid consumers on the shop floor: that music is a product to be sold.
As such, it needs all the same marketing ploys that any other commodity needs, including the right brand name. Even when blunt terms that sound so unfitting of the spiritual wonder of music are sequestered (i.e. commodity), the fact remains that an artist’s entire creative gestalt is there for our judgment these days. Part of the beauty of pop culture is that personality and talent sit alongside each other, and when we buy into an oeuvre, we often celebrate the whole thing.
Thus, a name can say a lot about an artist and how they choose to present themselves to the world. The fact that the famed artist Guggi was also a member of the Lypton Village gang along with the musician Gavin Friday proves that they were rather good at this, even if Bono has since gone on to regret the name U2—although not half as much as John Lydon, who doesn’t just regret their name choice, but their very existence.
Nevertheless, the young gang didn’t always have the greatest first drafts. Bono recalls that one of his earliest nicknames was Steinhegvanhuysenolegbangbangbang or just Steinhegvanhuysenoleg to friends. Naturally, this ludicrous name didn’t stick. Neither did Huyseman or Bon Murray. But then, one day, as they were kicking a can around the tumultuous streets of Dublin, they saw the presentment of a rocking future thanks to the familiar crystal ball of a hearing aid store’s shop front.
From that day on, like a Brazilian footballer, Paul Hewson has forever been known under his mono-name Bono. Fortunately for Bono, his nickname dates back to his boyhood and is not just some latter-day self-dubbed snatch at a semblance of cool, or an email to all with the subject line, ‘New Nickname’.
The hearing aid shop was fatefully called Bono Vox which is Latin for “good voice”. Finding it applicable for the crony formerly known as Hewson, the name stuck, and the rest is ancient history. The crooning youngster now had a sense of identity to match his larking ways, and he was always destined to be the singer of the group.
