Paul Hewson (Bono) Paul Hewson (Bono Vox) was born in Dublin, Ireland, on 10th May 1960. As a young boy Paul was very eccentric. He refused convention or rules of any kind and often spent most of his early educational years skipping school1 and walking the streets of Dublin. Born from a Protestant mother and a Catholic father (which is a much scorned2 pairing, even now, in Ireland), Paul often felt out of place and awkward3. When he got to Mount Temple he finally felt at home and became quite popular and well-known, even to the school s teachers. It was Larry Mullen s invitations to Bono to meet at his home and then to join the band that got things moving at the start in 1976. He could write poetry and he had the gift of speech. Both of which made him very suitable to be the lead singer songwriter in the band. But he did not have a great singing voice at first. His gift of talk, communication and playacting with the audience was in fact recognised from the earliest U2 gigs4 and Bono worked hard on that with stagecraft5 courses as he did with his voice taking lessons to increase his singing. Bono s religious beliefs were at the basis of his humanitarian ideas. When he became famous, he used his fame to draw people s attention to important socio-political issues by at first publicly supporting organisations, such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace. He then threw international light on the 3rd World Debt, AIDS in Africa and the war in Bosnia. He had always been attracted by great historic and vision-led6 leaders such as Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and, as soon as he realized that rock music could be a very powerful medium, he decided to employ it for something positive, to get fans involved in urgent current events, or to contribute money to charitable organizations. Bono gave a fundamental contribution to all U2 s changes in music and style throughout the years, and re-invented his public image many times. But in his private life he has been quite constant. In fact in 1982 he married his first love, Ali (Alison) Stewart, and they have been together ever since. They now have four children. : F u v 1. skipping school: staying away from school without permission. 2. scorned: not respected. 3. awkward: embarrassed, not at ease. 4. gig: live music performance. 5. stagecraft: skill in acting. 6. vision-led: guided by deep religious or civil thoughts. 4