Bono
Appearances
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
i mean three hours because i this i mean i don't know why you this my family at this point would be gone to bed it'd be just the two of us at the fire locked in jamie's locked in like see you later dude that thing though is like what we all it's what we we know how hard it is to reach too like ordinary love like when you guys were doing that we know that that's not a first take
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
That's not like you just wrote the song and you guys are out there jamming. No, that's a polished song. And the fact that you're doing this and you're doing it acoustic right there sitting on a chair. Everything is off, right? You're not on the stage. There's not a spotlight on you. There's no mist. There's no lights. All the theatrics are removed.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
You're in a brightly lit studio sitting down with a bunch of people beside you, which is like the most un-rock and roll thing of all time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
But yet you fucking nailed it. And that moment, it took everybody to a better place. That's what we're all hoping for in everything. We're hoping from our leaders. We're hoping for that one speech, that one JFK speech where you just go, oh my God, yes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Clinton when he was young, he had some bangers. Obama when he was young. They had these speeches that made us feel better as human beings, better about the country. That's the danger of the conflicted times that we're in, is that people don't feel good even about America. There's people that think that the American flag is a symbol of injustice. That's a crazy thought. America's U2.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It's not just U2 the band, but it's us. It's all of us human beings, regardless of your political ideology. And we've got to think of that first. We're a community. We're a neighborhood. We should think of ourselves as a giant neighborhood. And We don't. We think of ourselves as opposing tribes that are in this battle to stay in control of whatever the direction of the country is.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And it's being orchestrated by artificial intelligence bots that are constantly battling with people online and state actors and intelligence agencies and money and all this shit is together. And it's all confusing everybody as to what is the purpose of being a human being that's alive with other human beings. The purpose is community, communing. We're supposed to be a United States.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
We're supposed to be a community. And all the differences that we have, the political differences, they should be so fucking secondary that it should be a small part of the elections. A small part of the election should be policy. Because we should just all agree that we should figure out, you want to have a good use of AI?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Figure out what's the objective best use of resources to support the collective whole. And how does that get accomplished? How does that get accomplished without fraud and waste? And what's the best way to navigate where it doesn't have fraud? That should be done, whether it's Democrats or Republicans. It should be like, what are we looking for? We're looking to clean up the lakes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
We're looking to stop pollution. We're looking for clean energy sources. We're looking for education. We're looking for health care. We're looking for housing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
We're looking to get people off the streets that have mental health issues and get them help. And don't just give them fentanyl and give them money for needles. That's stupid. Don't let them camp on the street. That's stupid. Also stupid ignoring them. Right. That's stupid, too. So some real resources. And once we do that, we could all do better. The whole country can do better.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
We'll be less at each other's throats. There'll be less anxiety. It can be accomplished. But we have to address the primary factor in this country. for crime and horrible behavior. It's completely disenfranchised neighborhoods. It's areas that have been fucked since the 1940s. And they're not doing anything to change them. And no one's pouring any resources to try.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
There's no plans to try to revitalize these communities and elevate these people out of dire poverty and gang violence and drug use. There's a way to do it. It's not impossible. but there's no resources put at it at all. That should be another thing. That shouldn't be a Republican thing or a Democrat thing. Why should we spend money on that? It should be community.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Huge. What's your- I used to have a dog named Johnny Cash. Does the dog bite? No, not anymore. He's dead. He didn't bite when he was alive. He was a nice dog. It's just I had a habit of naming my dogs after famous singers.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I think as human beings, there's a constant struggle. I think there's a constant struggle to find the path. And I think we go through a series of overcorrections and a series of going really far left and really far right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It's part of the battle of good and evil. There's a thing that's... Well, do you believe there's good and evil? I do. I do. I believe it. I think it's naive to think that if evil acts occur, there is no true evil. I think it's naive. And evil acts are undisputable. And the concept of evil has always existed. And we can become part of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
We just can't be afraid of sounding foolish. No. And when you say that I think evil is a real thing, you can sound – You can't measure it. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah, I had a dog named Frank Sinatra, and Marshall is named after Eminem.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Please do. And keep doing whatever you're doing, man. I appreciate you very much. Thank you. Thank you for coming here. It was a lot of fun.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Sinatra, most people don't realize, had a completely different voice when he was younger. His voice when he was younger was very high-pitched and beautiful and had so much flexibility to it and so much tone. And then probably all the cigarettes and Jack Daniels over the years sort of hardened his voice.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And we have his mugshot out there. He got arrested. He was like 125 pounds. Wow. Yeah, he got arrested for, what was the term? Seduction? I think it was seduction. I think he seduced a married woman.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I fucking loved the film. It was really great. You saw it? I watched it last night, yeah. It was cool, too, because I always feel special when I've got to enter in the password because I know that nobody else has seen it yet. You know, I've got to enter in the email and the password, and I watched it, and I screen-mirrored it on the TV. It was great, man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Was it surreal when you were a young man and you were just starting to achieve success to encounter these people that were essentially heroes and be embraced by them and hang around them. You know, a lot of people feel imposter syndrome. Like they feel just, it's bizarre to be around these legendary human beings. Like they're right there. Like I still kind of get weirded out by it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Even when I met you today, I'm like, oh, that's Bono. Like it's still weird. You know, it's still weird to meet people that are like hugely famous. And when you were a young man, when U2 was just blowing up, Was it strange to accept the fact, like, this is where we are. We belong here.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It's like a documentation of your career, but in this very unique way with talking about things and explaining these moments. And then the music plays, and it's all black and white. It was really cool.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
That's a great Bob Dylan impression. Yeah. One of my favorite moments in the film was when your bandmates were concerned that Pavarotti was going to show up with a camera crew.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
He did. It was just funny. It was a really well-timed moment. And when you said it on stage, it was so well-timed. Because it's like here you're honoring this man who's like this incredible, fantastic singer. But your bandmates, they've got a good instinct. Like this is going to be a big press op as well. Like this is part of the reason why he wants to do this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And then that's not going to be fun because it's going to be weird. And then boom.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah. Yeah. And it's also this you are both celebrating the brilliance of this incredible singer. And also you're you're taking the piss out of this whole cult of celebrity thing that comes along with it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
The best thing with your dad and Princess Diana was hilarious.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
The relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom and England, it's complicated.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
So you don't like bullies? No. No. No. No, I don't like that at all. It's the weakest inclination of the human spirit to pick on the weak. It's terrible. It's a terrible instinct that humans have probably from the time where you had to ostracize weak people because you lived in a tribe of people barely surviving and you couldn't tolerate any weak links in the chain.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I mean, it's essentially probably where it came from. It probably came out of a survival instinct.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Where everyone was barbarians and you had to force people to be the hardest version possible because otherwise the genes wouldn't survive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yes. Yeah. At its greatest, that is what America is. At its greatest, it's an idea. And it's an idea that was, like I said, was founded. with the concepts behind the Declaration of Independence. And those men who wrote that, the men who signed the Bill of Rights, they were so young. They were so young. Some of them were 18 years old at the time, which is so crazy.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And, yeah. We hope that every election cycle, like this will be the one that finally makes us what we truly believe we are. But the country's just so co-opted by this. First of all, you have this genuine issue with the fact that it's essentially a popularity contest to see who gets to be running the government.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
You have a popularity contest that's fueled entirely by special interests and the military industrial complex and pharmaceutical drug companies. And it's just, it's all the opposite of an authentic song. The thing about an authentic song where it makes your fucking goosebumps stand up, you're like, God damn. You think it's an AI composition? Can I tell you a story?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
A long time ago, probably 25 years ago, I was on mushrooms with a friend of mine. And we were laying on the side of this hill overlooking this canyon. And we played In God's Country. Oh, wow. It was just the peak of the mushrooms and the songs, the melody, the way that song hit. It gave me this insane appreciation for things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It was like this very unique fusion of the beauty of the music and the love of the experience. Mushrooms bring out this, like, loving, like, communal quality, like happiness and joy. And just lying in this field, looking up at this canyon and hearing that song. It was like, this is what music does. It takes...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
these moments, and wherever they're at, it breaks them through the membrane into this new place. Like this moment, it broke through this membrane and brought me to this. I think about it all the time. I think about that particular experience all the time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And it was so, like, almost like a fever dream. It was wild. Like, the way you set it up, all black and white.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
That's not America, is it? Well, they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Right. This is the problem. The problem is... For sure, there have been a lot of organizations that do tremendous good all throughout the world. Also, for sure, it was a money laundering operation. For sure, there was no oversight. For sure, billions of dollars are missing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
In fact, trillions that are unaccounted for that were sent off into various – they don't even know where because there's no receipts. The way Elon Musk described it, he said if any of this was done by a public company, the company would be delisted and the executives would be in prison. But in the United States, this is standard.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
When Biden left office, when it was clear that Trump won in the 73 days, they spent $93 billion from the Department of Energy on – Just radical loans, just throwing money into places. And there's no oversight, no receipts. The whole thing is – there's a lot of fraud, a lot of money laundering. But also – We help the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And when you're talking about making wells for people in the Congo to get fresh water, when you're talking about food and medicine to places that don't have access, like no way that should have been cut out. And that should have been clear before they make these radical cuts. Like there's got to be a way to keep aid and not have fraud.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And you can't say we're going to kill everything so that there's no fraud. But then you're killing all the good and you're doing it without letting anybody know it's going to happen. So it's not like they had three years to prepare. Let's build a new infrastructure. Let's make sure that everything's set up. They want to change and they want to change quickly.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And due to the nature of American politics, they have about two years before the midterms, right? So everything has to get done as quickly as possible. You have to show a growth in GDP quickly. You have to show that the economy is booming again under these ideas. Make America first. Terrorists for the world.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Bring back American manufacturing in this mad rush to do it all as quickly as possible while cutting out as much waste as possible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
But the ironic thing is even though Elon Musk has proposed all these things and the Doge Committee has proposed all these things, they've made no cuts in terms of the budget. They've cut nothing. They vote against it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
What would your advice to me? I would give you zero advice. I don't know if I'm qualified to give advice. But I would say that America goes through these great periods of overcorrection. It goes these great periods of like you saw it during COVID, during the lockdowns and the authoritarianism.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And we fell into a kind of state of tyranny where there was just massive oppression of free speech, including government sponsored oppression. They were contacting different social media platforms and banning legitimate doctors and scholars because they had different opinions about how things should be handled. There was wide scale censorship, a push for a changing of the First Amendment.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
The First Amendment needs to be overhauled. The First Amendment doesn't apply to hate speech or to disinformation. There was all these like new ways of talking about censorship in this country and condoning censorship. And it's very dangerous because it's all about money. It had nothing to do with protecting people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I think it's worse than that. I think it's programmed like an EDM concert. I think it's not even an orchestra. I worry, and this has been substantiated by data, that more than 50% of the interactions going on on the Internet and social media are not real. There was a former FBI analyst that said it might be as much as 80%. It's bots, as you said.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And this is a problem with the concept of free speech. I'm completely wholly in favor of free speech, just like the ADL was back in the day when they let the Ku Klux Klan march around. Like, look, you've got to – the way to combat bad speech is with better speech.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
The way to find out whose arguments are correct is to let them debate in the marketplace of free ideas and expose these people for what they are and have the people – that are on the sidelines that are letting these great thinkers have these discussions, say, okay, this guy makes sense. This guy is clearly a grifter. This guy has ulterior motives.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
This guy has an ideology that's very toxic, and he's trying to push this on the whole world for control, for power, for money, to benefit the special interest groups that he's a part of, or whatever it is. That the problem with... Free speech is you're also going to get a lot of ugliness because there's a lot of ugliness in the world. You're going to get a lot of people that say horrible things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And I think the only way we sort through all that is you have to let them. And then you have to let people rise up that oppose those horrible ideas. And those people become heroes. Those become the Martin Luther King juniors.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Dude, look at the stage gear. You're a ghost. It's like, come on. Do you know who Daryl Davis is?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Daryl Davis is a musician who was a traveling blues musician and did some shows where afterwards he met some people that told him that they were in the Ku Klux Klan. And he was like, are you kidding? And the guy shows him his fucking Grand Wizard ID card or whatever the hell it is. He becomes friends with these guys. Here's my card. Darryl's black. Darryl's a black man.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And becomes friends with this guy, goes to his house, meets his family. The guy throws the robe away, gives up his membership in the KKK, renounces his membership, and gives Darryl the rope, says, I want you to have this. Darryl has done that personally. The last time I talked to him was a few years back. He'd done this personally to over 200 people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
just by being an amazing human being, by being a brilliant artist and hanging out with them, just being kind and as an example of just a great human. And they were like, I guess I'm wrong. I guess I'm wrong. This idea that black people are inferior and the white man is the superior race, that can't be true because I love this guy. And so they would just quit. They'd quit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It's a terrible theory. But if you're in a place with only terrible theories and that's what you grow up, there's Daryl. And they give him all his ropes. You know, good man. He's a great man. Good man. And he's a kind, like, very peaceful. Like, when you speak to him, he's real. He's amazing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Well, rehearsals are hard. It's also hard when someone is too close to you. They're there with you every day. Like... This is true with comedy as well. Like if someone sees your act too many times, like if someone's traveling with you, like if my wife went to see my shows all the time, there's parts of it she'd be like, oh, don't do that. Oh, don't do this.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah. There's a real problem with ideology and there's a real problem with fundamentalism and there's a cowardice in it. And there's a cowardice in I'm the only one that's correct. There's a cowardice in not listening to any other ideas, not listening to any other positions. And we're being played against each other in this country.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
The thing about the bots and the social media stuff is it just accentuates this divide between the left and the right, which I think is mostly bullshit. Most people are good people. Most people just want to be happy and healthy and have friends and family and do what they want to do for a living and have the freedom to pursue those things. Most people aren't trying to victimize people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Most people aren't trying to destroy other people's lives and destroy society. They just want to live their life, but they're being sucked into one side or the other, which is radically opposed to each other. The great overcorrection. Did you think...
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Well, the whole thing is strange, right? I mean the argument in the White House of like you don't have the right hand of cards and just the fact that this is all being done publicly is very strange, right? There's cameras and photographers. I don't like live podcasts. Sometimes – I've done them before, but there's something about having an audience where you're playing to an audience.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Having these conversations should be just a couple people in a room. That's what I think. I think that's the ones that resonate with me the most. I just think it's the best way to do it, the way that resonates the most. I think the kind of conversation that you're going to have with a world leader... shouldn't be performative.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It certainly shouldn't be with a bunch of people snapping photographs and pointing cameras and then pushing each other back and forth. You don't have the right hand of cards. This is not cards. You are playing cards. It's a crazy way, and each calling each other disrespectful. It's a crazy way to handle any world events. It's just a terrible platform for it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Like that's not – like you get too close to it. Like she's too close to you. But to see it with fresh eyes, like to see it in front of that audience, the joy that they have when the music starts playing – when some of the songs that they love, it's amazing. Like, you could feel it in the show. It's like the pure joy. Because the people that came to see it were hardcore fans.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
We don't have to go further. Who do you think is the funniest world leader?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Well, he's not good at that. He doesn't enjoy a joke coming his way. No, he doesn't.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It was quite a piano. I mean, it's funny to go from playing piano with your penis to becoming the president of Ukraine. Becoming the president of the United States, by all accounts.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It was great, man. It's great. And it's also like I love the way you did it. Like you played the beginning of some songs and you talked about the origin of the songs. The thing that I have a hard time believing, though, is that you weren't a good singer when you were young.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Oh, I've had so many. Yeah. Especially in the early days, you're trying to figure it out and, you know... The thing about material is material is essentially like a calf that's newly born, and it has awkward legs, and it has to develop into a bull. But it takes a long time. It takes crafting. You have to sit with it. You have to go over the ideas.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Some ideas come to you in full form, and some ideas you have to believe in them. You know there's something there, and you have to dig and trust the muse and find it. And sometimes those bits would just fucking bomb. And you have to just go, God, should I abandon this? Should I keep working on this? Do you have a team of writers? No. Wow. No, I just write everything myself. You're kidding.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
No, always. Yeah, always have. I just like my my view on stand up. The kind of stand up that I do is supposed to be here's the world through my eyes. This is how I'm seeing things from the most ridiculous, awestruck and laughing at everything perspective. And I have to it has to be through my lens.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah, like a Saturday Night Live monologue or, you know, a Tonight Show monologue or any of that kind of thing. That's a different thing. The real stand-up is clubs.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Well, because if you can mock something, like you can have a position or an opinion on something and someone can disagree strongly. But if they make everyone laugh at that position, now they've made a real point. Because it's actually an opinion that you might not have even agreed with has caused you to belly laugh. Like, oh, God. Like, that's how you really get it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Because if you go on stage and just have a bunch of opinions and just lecture people, there's people in the audience that go, well, fuck you. I feel differently. But if you could go on stage with that opinion and make people laugh at something they know they shouldn't be laughing at, like, oh, my God. And then you're introducing ideas into a person.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yes. And also the contradictions of the world and how bizarre things are, it's just ripe with humor. And if you don't ever pick up on it – Like what are you focusing on? Like you don't ever see the hypocrisy and the ludicrousness of just this existence, this temporary existence on a spinning orb hurling through the universe and concentrating on who gets to use what bathroom.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Like is this like – you know what I mean? It's like we're weird. We're very weird. And if you don't see that, you're not paying all attention. You're not all in. You're certainly not balanced. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah. I'm telling you, man. In God's country. That's the ticket.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I think... Oh, here it goes. Oh! Enneagram, three centers... Oh, it looks like a cult. ...of intelligence. The mediator, peacemaker, so the perfectionist, reformer, the giver, helper, supporter, performer, achiever, romantic, individualist, the observer, thinker, the loyal skeptic, the trooper... The epicure, enthusiast, generalist, and the protector, the leader or the boss.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
What would you say you are? Oh, Jesus. I don't know how you could tell. I wouldn't. I think I just keep on keeping on. I try not to pay attention to me as much as possible. I think there's a thing that happens, what you're talking about on stage, where everyone... achieves a higher state of consciousness through a song. I think that's where it is really like a church.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
That's where it is really like a religious experience. When a great song is playing that like really, like when people hear it and like, ah, you know, maybe it's the first couple of bars of Sunday Bloody Sunday. They hear it and they're like, yes! It's like this thing that washes over everyone collectively and we're all experiencing it together and it takes you away from yourself.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
You know, everyone's caught up in their own struggle and their self and how they exist in this world and all the problems of reality. And then there's something about these moments of divine inspiration where they impact people in a very profound way. And I think that's one of the reasons why people are so deeply drawn to music and especially live performance. Because music is wonderful.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Music by yourself is great. I love listening to music in my car. I love listening to music, period. But music, when you're in a live setting, when everyone's experiencing it together, it's a religious experience. There's something attuned to it. There's a reason why they sing in church, right? It achieves very similar results.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
well as songs and i sometimes just have to just just shut up yeah i think we're all those things just to varying degrees and i think the spirit of the thing is what you're talking about this intangible moment where everybody realizes they're in it whether it's in a church where they're saying or one of my favorite moments with you was on uh the jimmy fallon show Singing Ordinary Love.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I loved it. We played it on the podcast. When it happened, the next day when it got out on YouTube, I brought it in here and I go, you've got to listen to this. This is just such an amazing rendition of a song because it's just you sitting on these chairs and Jimmy Fallon is next to you on the table. Like, this is it here. What a beauty. We played this. I want to listen to it. Let's put this on.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
that is that is without a doubt hands down my favorite performance ever ever on a talk show ever because it was so first of all it starts out so relaxed you're sitting on the couch and you're singing it and you're just so on it you're so on it that everyone just gets captivated by it and then the music builds and then you bring in roots it's phenomenal That is what we're talking about.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
That's like this moment that elevates people. It takes people out of their life and just this joy of expression all happening simultaneously with everybody in the crowd. And then when you stand up and you start dancing and roots are playing, it just washes over everybody.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Well, if you're in that audience, there's an act of surrender, for sure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I recognize that. You can come back anytime you want, by the way. Oh, thank you. Anytime. But yeah, that's what everybody wants out of entertainment, out of... celebration. That's what everybody wants, these moments. And that was a real moment, man. That was a real moment that resonated through the television. I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to be in that room.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And I was thinking that, like, God, I wish I was there. Because, you know, you see Will Smith. And Will Smith's in the corner. You see him just taken over by the music, like, nodding his head, like, oh, my God, just in that moment. It was so pure.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah, but it was – that's what everybody's looking for. That's what everybody's looking for out of art, out of religion, out of just love and community. We're looking for these moments that elevate us above everything else. And there's a moment when a great performance like that, just when everyone in the audience realizes what you're doing and we're all in it together –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And people at home are in it. That was so powerful. Everything through the television is like 60% of what it is in person.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Well, what you were doing, and I think what you're saying that you're attracted to is something that's not contrived, something that's pure. It could be messy, it could be, you know, Patti Smith, elbowing people, or you running through the crowds. It's real. And there's so much in this world that's not real. There's so much that's manufactured.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
He seems like it. I don't know him, but he seems like a real sweetheart.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I think the problem is that only the people that can truly do it understand it. Right. That's the problem. You know, the problem. And then what you're talking about, confinement for the talk show format, that's also what makes that moment so much greater. It's the pop star. Yes. It's just... It doesn't belong there.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
That format is for hollow platitudes and selling a new television show and getting in and out before the seven-minute commercial break. It's the worst way to have a conversation where you're going to get the most out of people. Because when you have time constraints on conversations, you immediately feel under the gun. So you're kind of like... tense and you're pressured and you don't know when.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And then the audience is staring at you and then there's bright lights. Everything is wrong. Everything is opposed to the way normal, comfortable human conversation and connection works. It works with silence around you and just people talking or in a pub or wherever you're at, in a living room with friends at a party. That's the real human connection where it's open-ended and you're just talking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
As soon as you lock it down, and then you have to lock it down for commercials, and you have to button this up, and there's a new person coming in in five minutes, so they've got to shuffle you out the door and hold up your album and tell everybody to buy it, and then you leave. I'm like, was that good? I guess it was good. You know what I mean? I never liked doing them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
There's so much that's produced and run through a focus group. And there's so much that doesn't resonate. Like you don't feel it as a piece of art. You don't feel it as like a real person pouring out their emotions and their soul. But great music, you feel. It gets into you. It gets into your cells. No one can figure out how it works or why it works or why this does and this doesn't.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I always felt confined, and I would never do stand-up on them. I was always asked to do stand-up on them. That's not where stand-up belongs. Right? But if someone can pull it off, like there's been great comedians that pulled off incredible Tonight Show sets, like Richard Jenny and George Carlin.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Well, when I was a child, I was probably – I guess I was 15 or 16. My parents took me to see Live and the Sunset Strip. in a theater and it was Richard Pryor. He performed, he did a concert special in a theater and I think it's his greatest performance.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And when I was there in the theater, I was laughing so hard and I remember very clearly looking around at all these people and they were falling out of their chairs laughing. People were just falling back, slapping each other, going, oh my God, oh my God, like they couldn't breathe. And I remember thinking, this guy is doing this just talking.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And I remember all the funny movies that I'd seen, like Stripes and all the great comedies, Animal House, funny comedies, nothing compared to this. And this guy's just talking. It was an incredibly profound moment for me. I remember I got obsessed with Richard Pryor. I started buying Richard Pryor cassettes. Wow. I would buy, like, whatever I could. You know, you could find them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I found a bunch that were, like, weird printings of him at Red Fox's Comedy Club. I actually found them in a truck stop once. They were selling these cassettes. I was like, what is this? And then I bought them, and they were incredible performances, like, 15 people in the crowd, and he's just ranting and going on these unhinged rants about things and just having fun and being really loose.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And I just couldn't believe that someone could do that, that he could just, by talking, this theater filled with people were just falling down laughing and just blown away. So that was probably my first thought about stand-up comedy, my first real thought, just how – what a – crazy power to have. Like what an unbelievable thing to be able to do with just your words.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah, that's part of it. These ideas, they come to you and you just have to decide whether to embrace them or not.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I didn't truly realize that. And I never had any aspirations of comedy whatsoever when I was young. When I loved Richard Pryor, I just loved it as a fan. Just like I loved rock and roll, I didn't want to be a singer. I just loved it. And then I saw Kinnison. And I think that was the first moment where I went, oh, this is comedy too? Wow. OK, what is comedy?
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
You know, because everybody else had been like telling jokes or with prior. It was like these stories of life that was so like revealing and so vulnerable, but also hilarious, like deeply fun, just like so accurate in the caricatures of people. And then there was Kinnison. I was like, OK, this is comedy, too.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And the first thing I ever saw of him, I was actually introduced to him by a girl that I worked with, a girl that I worked with at a gym. I worked at the Boston Athletic Club. I was a trainer. I was teaching people how to lift weights. And there was a lady who was a volleyball player who I was friends with that worked there. She worked the front desk. And she was like, I saw HBO last night.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
This comedian was so funny. And in the parking lot of this gym that we worked out, she did Sam Kinison's bit of homosexual necrophiliacs paying a bunch of money to be with the freshest male corpses. Have you ever seen the bit? I have not. So the bit is the guy goes, imagine this. You're at the end of your life. You're lying now. You're like, well, I guess I'm dead now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I'm going to be alone with Jesus. That's going to be great. I'm going to be in heaven. And hey, he starts rocking back and forth.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Why does Johnny Cash have such a fucking cool voice? What is it? What is it? But there's something about real. That's just, it's like a vitamin. It's like going out in the sun when it's been raining, like, ah, like you soak it in. Yeah, it is, you know.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
She's doing this impression. She's lying on the parking lot on her stomach going back and forth. And I'm dying laughing. I was like, I got to see this. So my first introduction to kinesin was this friend of mine, her doing it on the concrete. That was good. It was amazing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Oh, yeah. She did a great job. She had me howling. Who else? Well, he was a huge one. Eddie Murphy, for sure. That was a huge one. But then again, that was also like... I still didn't think I was going to do stand-up until I saw Kinison. When I first saw Kinison, that was when I was like, maybe I can do it. Because I had friends telling me to do it. But it was friends that I did martial arts with.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
So we would have to... From the time I was 15 until I was like 21, 22, all I did was travel around the country competing. And I was with this... Such a wild combination, if you don't mind me saying.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
You were fighting for your life. It's very scary. So when it's terrifying like that and everyone's nervous, that's when gallows humor comes in. And I was the guy who, I always needed attention when I was young. So I was getting my attention from being really good at fighting, but then I was also getting my attention around also the people that were really good at fighting at being funny.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
So when we were all like a bunch of fucking crazy people, their hobby was to travel around the country and trying to kick people unconscious. So this is the group that I'm hanging out with. And most of them were older than me. I was the youngest because I was in high school at the time. Most of these were grown men.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And I was competing against grown men while I was in high school, which is another crazy thing. My instructor was – hardcore, and he threw me to the grown men when I was 16. It was terrifying. But because it was so terrifying, I developed this way of releasing steam.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And so my way of releasing steam, I'd make fun of different guys that we trained with having sex, like how he probably does it, and this and that. I was just always trying to crack people up. And I had one friend that I'm still really good friends with to this day, my friend Steve Graham, who talked me into doing stand-up. And I never thought, I'm like, you think I'm funny because you like me.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I go, but you're crazy too. Like you're a fucking psychopath as well. Like you think I'm funny because you're doing the same thing that I'm doing. Like we're nutty people. We're not normal. Other people are going to think I'm an asshole.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
so so can you just paint me the picture i was at a comedy club i was terrible i went to open mic night i did like five minutes it was horrible but i got a couple of laughs i got a couple of chuckles and i i was like i got off stage i was like i think i could do this the weirdest thing was like i had probably at that time i was 21 years old i'd probably fought at least 100 times
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And I was way more terrified of doing comedy. Way more scared. Way more scared. Like fighting was scary, but I was like, I know it just has to start. Once it starts, I know what to do. Like the real fear of comedy or fighting was before the fight. It was all the demons, all the thing. Why am I doing this? Why are you doing this to yourself? That's what you're really fighting in the end.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
That's what you're fighting. You're fighting the fear. But I knew once it started, I wouldn't be scared at all. Because you don't feel fear when you're fighting because you're so in the moment. You're in the moment. You're zen. You almost don't exist. You have to, to operate at the highest level, to have instantaneous reactions and to be able to manage your pace and all these different things.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
You can't think about yourself or how you look or how you feel or whether your girlfriend's mad at you or whether you're going to fail out of high school. You have to be locked into what you're doing. So I wasn't afraid of fighting. I was afraid of everything before fighting. I was afraid of feelings. But that's where the comedy came from. The comedy came from alleviating that. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
There's a thing in it. It's a task, a very complicated task. The way I describe fighting is it's high-level problem-solving with dire physical consequences. Wow. That's what it really is. You could call it fighting, you could think it's brutish and aggressive.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
High level problem solving with dire physical consequences. So as far as like sport.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yes. It's the most consequential of all sports. Because when someone beats you, they don't just beat you, they take away everything you are as a man. When someone destroys you in a competition, you are not a man anymore. You are significantly decreased in your value. Everything about you, you feel terrible. You are as good the day you walked in there confident.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And you still feel like shit where you felt like you could take on the world. You have the same skills. You're as good as you felt when you could take on the world. And now you feel like utter dog shit.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
That pain is fuel. Yeah. The pain of failure is the most potent fuel, the most potent inspiration known to man, and the more terrifying the failure, whether it's failure in stand-up comedy or it's failure in... That's very high stakes.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah, you have to have that. That's the only way you get better. It's the only way you really get better. That's tricky. Yeah, super tricky.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Not from the time I started training. Once I started training, I got very good very quick, and I became kind of known for it. Because I was doing it in a crazy way. It wasn't as simple as, like, oh, he takes karate. It was like, no, he... On the weekends, he's traveling around the country and fighting in tournaments. You know, and I'd... I was winning them.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I found a thing very early on that I could excel at that was scary. And I've realized through that thing, you can get good at anything. You just have to put your attention and focus to it. And, well, when do you put your attention and focus to something the most? Well, when your literal health relies on success. It was so scary that you couldn't half-ass it, which is like –
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I have a problem with things that involve too much personality and charisma where they could mask truth. And I think this is the problem with evangelical preachers. This is the problem with politicians. And rock stars. And it could be anybody. But it's like there's this siren call that will lead you to the rocks. And it's believing your own bullshit. Right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Fighting was – it didn't matter what your personality was. It didn't matter.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah. Nothing mattered. It didn't matter how many people liked you. If you get kicked in the head, you get fucked up. And on the flip side of it, I used to love when I would go to someone else's hometown and they had all these people beating – like cheering for them. All these people like, you're going to fuck them up. All these people cheering in the corner. I would love that.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It was my favorite thing. My favorite thing. I was like, they can't help you.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Well, it gets in the way of clear thinking. And I had this guy named Yuri Prohaska on the podcast recently. He's a brilliant fighter who's in the UFC, who was the light heavyweight champion at one point in time. and is still one of the top light heavyweights in the world. And we were talking about anger and rage and that it leads you down a bad path of decision making when you're fighting.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It interferes with the flow. It interferes with the way. And like I was saying before, when you're competing, You know, I've never competed at that level.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
When you're competing at a world championship level, anything that fucks with your mind, anything where you're doubting yourself or talking to yourself or all that is resources that is being allocated towards something that's completely useless as opposed to being like completely in the moment and in the zone.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
If you get taken out of it for a moment, if they feel for a moment that you're thinking like you're looking for a way out, you're looking to quit, you're gone. You're done. Like when your friend was saying that his son didn't want to be a fighter anymore, this is my advice always. Whenever someone says, I'm thinking about stopping fighting, I go, quit. Quit right now.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Because somewhere out there, there's someone who's not thinking about stopping at all. They're going to fuck you up. They're going to come for you. It's going to be terrifying. You're locked in a ring with Mike Tyson and you've been thinking about getting a regular job? Like, yeah, you're fucked. You're fucked. Because there's all-in people.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
In my opinion, I love fighting, but I think only all-in people should be fighting. And the moment you're not all-in, get out. You've got to get out. Because the difference between an all-in person and a one-foot-out-the-door person is... is enormous. It's enormous. Even if skill level is similar, the person who's all in is a terrifying person.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
All they want to do is this one thing, and they're completely focused on it, just being the best in the world, this one thing. They're going to find holes in you. They're going to find your weaknesses. They're going to push you in a way that maybe you didn't push yourself as far in the gym, so come the second round, come the third round, you start breaking down.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
and they're not breaking down at all they're breaking you down it's a terrifying place to be when you know you're not all in and the other person's all in so anybody if that was my son he's like I'm thinking about quitting I'm like good quit that's what I'd say quit find something else you love find what you love you don't have to do this but if you're gonna do this you gotta only do this this has to be your fucking life
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Right. Your fucking life. I mean, I don't want you to be a rock star and a fighter. Shut the fuck up. You can't be both. It's not possible. If you want to do that thing, that thing is your whole life.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I think people would have already tried that. Come on, man. Totally unaffected.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
You're so filled with adrenaline, you don't feel tickles. You're spooked out.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
The feather's awesome. It is a funny thing. That quote is so accurate. It's one of the greatest quotes of all time.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Though love be deeper, friendship is more wide from Chronicles of Narnia.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It's annoying, isn't it? But I would expect nothing less from you. When you said that, and I wasn't aware of that, I was like, of course. Of course that's how you would set it up.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It didn't make that moment that resonated so deeply with me that I brought it up. We played it multiple times on this podcast over the years.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
That's really what he was saying. Yes, yes. You hadn't captured like that. But I think that unique moment of the way you guys did it is what made it so special. It's because, you know, Jimmy Fallon's sitting there and Will Smith is sitting there and you're just on these chairs and you're singing on the chair.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
So you're moving on the chair and then eventually everything picks up and you're standing up and dancing and the whole crowd like felt it. It was like this buildup to it. It all flowed together, but it just,
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I sent that to all my friends. As soon as it came out online, I was like, you've got to see this. This is incredible.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Well, there's also the fact that you guys continue to create, because one of the things that happens to great bands is they become a prisoner to their old songs.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
that we will take you somewhere because it has to be these songs have to be they have to be everything or what's the point right what is the creative process for you when you are when you have a concept for a song when you have an idea like how does it work do you do ideas just come to you do you sit until they come to you do you sit in front of a pad and write them down
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
But that is part of it because art changes the collective consciousness of a civilization. And songs that really deeply resonate with young people that are great songs that also have a message and carry with them conversations that people have about the songs and about what's going on in the world. It shifts consciousness.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It shifts consciousness in a positive way and those young people may grow up to become people that aren't corrupt politicians, that aren't corrupt congressmen, that don't give in to the lobbyists and the special interest groups but really look out for their constituents and they get into it for the right reasons because everybody is going to be co-opted if you don't.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I think so, too. Is that too... No, no, no. I think you're dead right.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
But it resonates, right? You can feel something. Yeah, I believe it. I think there's something to it. It's a... You've made decisions that have sort of affirmed this commitment to a higher goal. It's not a hierarchy of who's the lead singer, who's this, who's that. It's not who's the big star. It's just we're all together to do this thing.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Look, it's worked out. And you guys are still together, which is also a giant win. You know, I mean, that's one of the most difficult things to run down the road any minute.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I think that's also what makes you great is the same feeling that some of the real owners are going to come. Like you never really buy into it even though it's you. And that's real. I think we all should have that. And I think if you lose that, you're in trouble.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Yeah. Comedians are in a gang too. We're in a gang at a club. We're in a gang together. Like we're all convened together. And I mean a gang in terms of like a collaborative gang too. We work together. We work on ideas together. We talk about bits together, you know. Especially at my place at the Comedy Mothership, it's set up like that. The whole club was set up entirely for comedians.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Completely different pay structure than any other club. Pays way more than other clubs do. The comedians get most of the money. We get the money from the liquor, essentially. Liquor in a small percentage of the ticket sales. But most of it goes to the comics. And the vibe of the place is not that it's my place. The vibe is that this is our place.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
I paid the bill, but I shouldn't have had that much money in the first place. It's ridiculous. Like the whole thing is crazy. Like that you could do something like this. And if you could do something like this, you're supposed to. If you're the person that for whatever reason the universe has blessed you with a lot of zeros – Throw it at something fun. Let's do it. And so it's ours.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
There's a great quote by Miyamoto Musashi. This is the guy I actually have tattooed on my right arm. Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things. Beautiful. Yeah, and the concept is he was the greatest samurai that ever lived. He killed 60 men in one-on-one combat with swords.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
He got to the point where he was killing people so easily he decided to stop using swords and he would fashion a wooden sword out of an oar from a boat on the way over to go kill a guy. Sounds like Googie. He was an extraordinary human being, but he wrote a book on strategy called The Book of Five Rings. You're kidding. Yeah, and Go Rinnosho, the Book of Five Rings.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
This book is all about... Where is he from? Japan. All about how you, from the 1400s, you had to be balanced in everything. To be a great warrior, you had to be great at calligraphy. You had to be great at poetry. You had to be an artist. you had to be able to meditate. You had to be balanced. You had to know the way.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
And don't let any bullshit, this is the modern interpretation, don't let your ego, don't let other people's perceptions, don't let insecurities in, don't let any of these things in. Stay on the way. And the way is like this way of thought that once you, you know, everybody says how you do anything is how you do everything. This was his earliest version of it.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
Once you understand the way broadly, you will see it in all things. It's that Nietzsche, this path to greatness, once you realize what that is, like, oh, this is this intense focus and dedication to something that could be applied to anything. You could apply it to being a better father. You could apply it to being someone who writes books. You could apply it to music.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
You could apply it to anything. But that's what it is. It's like finding what the thing is and throwing the essence of you at that thing, like really doing it. And to do that correctly, you can't have macho issues. You can't have insecurity, things that you're compensating for. You have to be pure. You have to.
The Joe Rogan Experience
#2330 - Bono
It's a great word. There you go, Jamie. Well, those moments where great art hits that peak. Oh, really good. Thank you. That's really good.