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had to offer. In fact, it was what he liked best about the band: our faith. He didn’t understand some of the work of the nineties, because he felt it was irreligious.
    Some of your fans had a hard time with the records you made in the nineties as well.
    That’s right. They didn’t see it. On Pop, I thought it was a tough relationship with God that was described there: Looking for to save my, save my soul/Looking in the places where no flowers grow/Looking for to fill that God-shaped hole. That’s quite an interesting lyric, because that’s the real blues—that comes from Robert Johnson, it happens through the machine age, through this techno din, but there it is: the same yearning. But he didn’t see it. A lot of people didn’t see it, because they wanted to feel it, not think it. That’s the difference. That was a thing that he seemed to think was important. My father used to say to me: “Have you lost your way?” I said: “Who’s asking? What about you? You didn’t have a way to lose!” We used to go down to the pub on Sundays and we would drink together. We drank whiskey, Irish whiskey, of course. Occasionally, he would ask a real question, meaning I had to give him a real answer. It was always about my belief in God: “There’s one thing I envy of you. I don’t envy anything else,” he said to me one time. But think about it: I was singing, doing all the things he would have loved to have done, had a creative life. He said: “You do seem to have a relationship with God.” And I said: “Didn’t you ever have one?” He said: “No.” And I said: “But you have been a Catholic for most of your life.”—“Yeah, lots of people are Catholic. It was a one-way conversation . . . You seem to hear something back from the silence!” I said: “That’s true, I do.” And he said: “How do you feel it?” I said: “I hear it in some sort of instinctive way, I feel a response to a prayer, or I feel led in a direction.Or if I’m studying the Scriptures, they become alive in an odd way, and they make sense to the moment I’m in, they’re no longer a historical document.” He was mind-blown by this.
    So . . . did he find you pious?
    I wish I could live the life of someone you could describe as pious. I couldn’t preach because I couldn’t practice. It’s plain to see I’m not a good advertisement for God. Artists are selfish people.

2. NEVER TRUST A PERFORMER
    It’s hard to say that we saw the sun setting on that day, for the light had remained unchanged since my arrival. The mood had become so peaceful we might as well have started working on a jigsaw puzzle by the fireplace. If there is an overused word in music writing and writing about art in general, it is “inspiration.” Since U2’s music has spiritual overtones, it’s often been called “inspired” or “inspirational.” It’s a myth I’ve often bought into myself, and I wondered what Bono makes of it after all these years. Was he still buying into it himself or was he ready to debunk that notion? Regardless, he was eager to puncture the myth of celebrity.
    I never believed in channeling spirits, but I have always had this very naive idea that some musicians are actually able to hear voices.
    Yeah, but you want to be careful who you’re listening to. That’s all I’d say. [laughs] But, you know, you’re right, the world demands to be described,and so, painters, poets, journalists, pornographers, and sitcom writers, by accident or by design, are just following orders, whether from high or low, to describe the world they’re in.
    So you’re suggesting that the ideas that come to you are often cheap ideas, not even thought out?
    That’s right. In fact, often, the music that’s the most eloquent is the least serious.