Bono

Early life

Paul David Hewson was born in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin on 10 May 1960, the second child of Iris (née Rankin) and Brendan Robert "Bob" Hewson, then living in Stillorgan on Dublin's Southside. His brother, Norman, is eight years older than he is. Bono's family moved to a new house on Cedarwood Road, between the Northside suburbs of Finglas and Ballymun when he was six weeks old, and he grew up there. The Hewson brothers grew up in an interdenominational Christian household; their mother was a member of the Church of Ireland, and their father was a Roman Catholic. Both parents initially agreed that the first child would be raised Anglican and the second Catholic. Although Bono was the second child, he also attended Church of Ireland services with his mother and brother, while his father also sometimes brought him to Mass at the nearby Catholic church, St Canice's. In 2000, Bono learned that Scott Rankin, a relative he thought to be his cousin, was actually his half-brother; Rankin was the offspring of an affair that Bob Hewson had with his wife's sister Barbara. Bono attended a Protestant primary school, Glasnevin National School, rather than the local Catholic-managed primary school in Ballymun. His teenage musical idols were Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, David Bowie, and Marc Bolan of T. Rex. After attending St. Patrick's Cathedral Grammar School for a year, Bono moved to Mount Temple Comprehensive School, a multi-denominational school in Clontarf. Bono's mother died on 10 September 1974, three days after suffering a ruptured cerebral aneurysm at her father's funeral. Many U2 songs, including "I Will Follow", "Mofo", "Out of Control", "Lemon" and "Tomorrow", focus on the loss of his mother. He said "because of the way I grew up in Finglas—sleeping on a couch, or because my mother died when I was a kid, I was in the house on my own a lot of the time, so I'd knock on the door of the Hanveys at teatime, or the Rowens at lunchtime." At age 15, he secured his first job, with the local Superquinn supermarket; he later worked for the father of his friend Derek Rowen (later the artist Guggi). During his childhood and adolescence, Bono and his friends were part of a surrealist street gang called "Lypton Village". Two of his closest childhood friends, "Guggi" (Derek Rowen) and the musician Gavin Friday, lived on the same street; Guggi was also in Lypton Village. The gang had a ritual of giving nicknames. Bono had several names: first, he was known as "Steinhegvanhuysenolegbangbangbang", then just "Huyseman", followed by "Houseman", "Bon Murray", "Bono Vox of O'Connell Street", and finally just "Bono". "Bono Vox" is a modified form of Bonavox, which is the name of a hearing aid shop just off Dublin's principal street, O'Connell Street. The name derives from the Latin phrase for "good voice". The nickname was given by Guggi; Bono initially disliked it but after learning of its translation, he accepted it. Hewson has been known as "Bono" since the age of 14

Yachts & assets

After leaving the Howth peninsula, Bono and Ali bought a Martello tower in Bray in northern County Wicklow, south of Dublin. Since the 1980s, they have maintained a primary home on Vico Road, in the affluent Dublin suburb of Killiney. The house, Temple Hill, is located on the slopes of Killiney Hill and has views of Killiney Bay. Bono's childhood friend Gavin Friday lives next door. Some years after the original purchase, the Hewsons bought one neighbouring house, Curlews, and shortly after, a second, the castellated Lios Beag. Bono and Ali also own residences in the south of France and New York. In the late 1980s or early 1990s, Bono bought a top-floor duplex apartment in Manhattan's San Remo apartment building from Steve Jobs for $15 million. Jobs had renovated it for his own use, but never moved in. In 1993, Bono and the Edge co-purchased a seafront house in Èze-sur-Mer in the south of France.

Personal life

At the age of thirteen, Bono met Alison "Ali" Stewart, who was one year below him at Mount Temple Comprehensive School. After the September 1974 death of his mother left him emotionally adrift and in conflict with his father and brother, Stewart began taking care of him. In 1976, Bono and Stewart began dating. The pair split up briefly but reunited. Their relationship became more serious as she accompanied him in his efforts to break through in the music industry, and by 1979 they were discussing marriage, conditional upon his career becoming established.

Stewart and Bono married on 31 August 1982 in a Church of Ireland ceremony at All Saints Church in her home area, Raheny. The ceremony combined rituals of both conventional Protestantism and the Shalom Friendship Christian group that Bono and other U2 members had belonged to. U2 was in debt to their record label Island Records so the couple could not afford a honeymoon, but the label's founder Chris Blackwell gave them use of the Goldeneye estate he owned in Jamaica. After returning to Ireland, the couple moved to a small mews house in Howth, which they shared with the rest of U2. The couple have four children: daughters Jordan (born 10 May 1989) and Eve (born 7 July 1991) and sons Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q (born 17 August 1999) and John Abraham (born 20 May 2001). Elijah is the lead vocalist and guitarist in the rock band Inhaler, while Eve is an established actress.

Career

In 1992, Bono, along with the Edge, bought and refurbished Dublin's two-star 70-bedroom Clarence Hotel, and converted it into a five-star 49-bedroom hotel. In 2019, they sold the hotel leasehold, and four years later, they sold the property. Bono and McKillen are also co-owners of Clós Nua Ltd., a company that owns the Tramyard site in Dalkey and plans to redevelop it. In 2005, Bono, Ali Hewson, and designer Rogan Gregory co-founded the EDUN fashion label ("nude" spelled backwards, to suggest both "natural" and the Garden of Eden). It was intended to help bring about positive change in Africa through a fair trade-based relationship rather than by direct aid. Bono was a board member of the Elevation Partners private-equity firm, which attempted to purchase Eidos Interactive in 2005 and subsequently invested in other entertainment businesses. Bono was an investor in the Forbes Media group in the U.S. through Elevation Partners; his firm took a minority stake in Forbes Media, which encompassed the 89-year-old business that includes Forbes magazine, the Forbes.com website, and other assets. The terms of the deal were not disclosed, but reports said the stake was worth about €194 million ($250 million). Elevation Partners also owned a 1.5 per cent stake in social networking site Facebook, originally purchased for $210 million. Although it was reported that Bono's stake was valued at approximately US$1 billion in February 2012, a 2015 article in Forbes stated that this estimate was based on an incorrect attribution of shares. In 2016, Bono invested in and joined the board of directors of the "Rise Fund", a new $2 billion impact investment fund founded by TPG. Rise's investments fell across seven sectors, including agriculture, education, and healthcare, and were made into companies making "a measurable positive social and/or environmental impact". In 2019, Bono and TPG announced the creation of Y Analytics, a company intended to measure the social and environmental impacts of investments. Bono was among those named in the 2017 Paradise Papers after he was identified as an investor in Nude Estates, which bought a shopping mall in Lithuania in 2007 and transferred ownership to Nude Estates 1 in Guernsey, in an apparent attempt to avoid tax. Bono welcomed the subsequent investigation by the Lithuanian tax authority, saying that transparency was necessary and he had personally campaigned for it. Nude Estates paid €53,000 in taxes and fines after the investigation was completed and Bono severed ties with the company. In September 2019, Bono joined the board of directors of Zipline.

The fortune

Bono has been involved in philanthropy and activism for human rights and social justice causes, both as a member of U2 and as an individual. He explained that he was motivated to become involved in social and political causes by seeing one of the Secret Policeman's Ball benefit shows, staged by Monty Python member John Cleese and producer Martin Lewis for the human-rights organisation Amnesty International in 1979. Bono stated, "I saw The Secret Policeman's Ball and it became a part of me. It sowed a seed...". In 1984, musician Bob Geldof enlisted Bono to participate in the Band Aid charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?"; Bono reprised his singing role for the 2004 Band Aid 20 and 2014 Band Aid 30 singles of the same name. In July 1985, U2 performed at the Live Aid charity concert, which was organised by Geldof to benefit the Ethiopian famine; he and Bono later collaborated to organise the 20th anniversary Live 8 concerts in 2005, at which U2 also performed.

From September to October 1985, Bono and his wife Ali Hewson made a humanitarian visit to Africa, spending a month working at a feeding centre in Ajibar, Ethiopia. Along with other volunteers, they developed an educational programme consisting of songs and one-act plays to teach Ethiopian children important information about issues such as health and hygiene. During the trip, he also became aware of the corruption, trade agreements, and debts that were all claimed to be contributing factors to the famine and poverty in Africa. The trip was cited as fueling Bono's passion for African issues that would come to characterise his future philanthropic and activist efforts. In 1986, Bono and U2 performed on Amnesty International's Conspiracy of Hope Tour of benefit concerts in the United States, alongside musicians such as Sting and Bryan Adams.

Since 1999, Bono has become increasingly involved with raising awareness of the plight of Africa and campaigning on its behalf. From 1999 to 2000, Bono was involved with the Jubilee 2000 coalition, working as an activist on its Drop the Debt campaign. He met with U.S. Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, and with U.S. Republican politicians such as Jesse Helms, John Kasich, Orrin Hatch, J. Dennis Hastert, and Dick Armey in an effort to secure bipartisan support for the U.S. forgiving the debt of developing countries. He has met with several influential politicians, including former U.S. President George W. Bush and former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin. During a March 2002 visit to the White House, Bono lobbied Bush to provide financial assistance to developing countries. The following year, Bush signed legislation authorising the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program, which has been credited with saving 17 million lives over its lifetime. Bush told Bono that the initiative "never would have made it out of Congress had [Bono] not been engaged".

The advocacy non-government organisation (NGO) DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa) was est