
There’s many reasons for the glasses, posing I’m sure right up there, privacy, and other more medical. “I do like having one step of a remove, actually. I don’t think when I’m singing I hold anything back and I don’t think when I’m writing I hold anything back. But I think I’m allowed to hold something back in this kind of a set-up. “As honest a man as you are and as honest as I’m trying to be, there is a natural insincerity in the set-up and I’m trying to be much better at it. But just one step removed.”
BIRTH NAME: Paul Hewson
(d-o-b May 10, 1960, Dublin Ireland)
PERFORMANCE NAME: Bono (BAH’-noh)
ORIGIN OF NAME: Paul was originally nicknamed “Bono Vox” by his friend, Guggi, a high school cohort who stole it from a hearing aid store on O’Connell Street in Dublin. Fittingly enough, the original moniker meant “good voice” in cockeyed Latin. Paul later shortened it to Bono, which remains his name to this day.
NICKNAMES/ALTER-EGOS: The Antichrist, Alton Dalton, The Mother Teresa of Abandoned Songs, The Sonic Leprechaun, The Fly, Mirrorball Man, Mister MacPhisto
BAND ROLE: lead singer/songwriter, sometime guitarist
OTHER OCCUPATIONS/INTERESTS: Activist. Screenwriter. Orator. Amateur thespian.
MARITAL STATUS: Alison Stewart (August, 1982)
CHILDREN: Two girls (Jordan, Memphis Eve) and two boys (Elijah Bob Patricus Guggi Q, and John Abraham
Jo Whiley interview from BBC Radio 1 here