What on earth is the ‘Bono Talk’?
Picture the scene: You’re in the middle of the most incredible experience of your life. The band you formed at school with your mates is on the rise. You’re on the cover of magazines. You’re up for awards. Your album is selling. The gigs are getting bigger. Every day brings something new and amazing, and everyone you meet—at your level and above—tells you to wait… for him.
“Who’s him?” you wonder—until suddenly, you feel a rush of cold air. A wave of Vertigo, if you will. There he is—Bono, standing in his sunglasses and lifted-shoed glory. And he wants to talk.
The ‘Bono Talk’ is a rite of passage every rock band on the cusp of great things goes through. Within a certain strata of rock stardom, it’s almost an in-joke by now. Whether you’re Trent Reznor, Will.I.Am, Brandon Flowers or Fontaines DC. At some point, the U2 superstar will find a quiet moment to sit down with you and talk.
For some, it seems to be a chat about advice for how to make your band A Big Deal™. Coldplay were famous recipients of this iteration of the Bono Talk around 2000. Drummer Will Champion talked about it on The Howard Stern Show and said, “He was very generous with his advice, absolutely. He was so lovely. We were just sort of kids straight out of college, and we’re suddenly in Bono’s house”. Singer Chris Martin was a little more candid with what Bono told him and a little more blunt, revealing that his advice was: “Sound a bit like us for a bit.”
Other times, it seems to be a warning about how to stay grounded in such a mental industry. Someone who knows a thing or two about the dark side of the industry is Hole singer Courtney Love, who actually tried to give a Bono talk of her own to The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas despite refusing one when she and her late husband Kurt Cobain were in their prime. In an interview with NME, she said, “When it was my turn and Kurt’s turn for the ‘Bono Talk’, we were idiots and turned him away and were too embarrassed. I sort of begged Kurt to take the ‘Bono Talk’ because fuck it, if I had listened to it, I’d have avoided a buttload of trouble for myself.”
In fairness to Love, the Bono Talk seems to be a very specific kind of advice that doesn’t always hit with artists a little less competitive than the famously driven Dubliner. During an interview with The New York Times, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder talked about coming to an impasse with the U2 frontman during his Bono Talk. In the interview, Vedder claimed: “He said that when U2 makes a record, it’s like they’ve got a racehorse, and they don’t just want the horse in the race, they want to win the race. I said we raced the horse and then let the horse run free. I wasn’t trying to be clever. That was the truth. He was frustrated with me.”
So, what is the ‘Bono Talk’?
In short, it’s a sign of just how seriously Bono takes the idea of rock ‘n’ roll and rock stardom in general, for better and worse. On the one hand, it’s nice to see someone at his level taking it upon themselves to give back to other bands and share what he’s learned. On the other hand, it’s a sign of how seriously he takes himself and how he views his own opinions as gospel, worthy of being passed around to all acts regardless of their own beliefs.
Sure, it’s arrogant. Sure, it’s presumptuous. However, no matter your thoughts on the man himself, if you were navigating the industry, you’d be mad not to at least hear him out. Hilariously, his own son’s band, Inhaler, are getting to the point where, if they were any other band, they’d be getting a Bono Talk sharpish. God only knows what that would sound like.
