Surrender is the story of one pilgrim’s lack of progress. In the band, in my marriage, in my faith, in my life as an activist. I am still grappling with this most humbling of commands. A word I only circled until I gathered my thoughts for the book. Growing up in Ireland in the seventies with my fists up (musically speaking), it was not a natural concept. Surrender is a word freighted with meaning for me. The people, places, and possibilities in my life. “When I started to write this book, I was hoping to draw in detail what I’d previously only sketched in songs.

Told with wit, insight and astonishing candour by the band themselves and manager Paul McGuinness, with pictures from their own archives, 'U2 by U2' allows unprecedented access into the inner life of the greatest rock band of our times.Bono-artist, activist, and the lead singer of Irish rock band U2-has written a memoir: honest and irreverent, intimate and profound, Surrender is the story of the remarkable life he’s lived, the challenges he’s faced, and the friends and family who have shaped and sustained him. From the anarchic days of their Seventies punk origins through their Eighties ascent to superstardom with the epic rock of 'The Joshua Tree', the dark post-modern ironies of 'Achtung Baby' in the Nineties and their 21st-Century resurgence as rock's biggest and boldest band, this is a tale of faith, love, drama, family, birth, death, survival, conflict, crises, creativity. In a epic journey that has taken them from the clubs of Dublin to the stadiums of the world, U2 have sold over 130 million albums, been number one all over the world, revolutionized live performance, spearheaded political campaigns and made music that defines the age we live in. Over thirty years later, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr are still together, bound by intense loyalty, passionate idealism and a relentless belief in the power of rock and roll to change the world.

The drum kit just about fit into the room, the lead guitarist was playing a homemade guitar, the bassist could barely play at all and nobody wanted to sing. In 1975, four teenagers from Mount Temple School in Dublin gathered in a crowded kitchen to discuss forming a band.

U2 by u2 hardcover book