Bono and The Edge Come Back to Dublin to Illuminate U2’s Past in ‘A Sort of Homecoming’ with David Letterman

There is a moment fairly early on in Disney’s Bono and The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming, where the show’s host David Letterman, just flat-out admits that he’s not in any way approaching his time in Dublin with Bono and The Edge as a job. For him, this is a pleasure, a delight, a gift. I can understand that sentiment. Just like my fellow Midwestern David, this is not a gig. This is the band of my life looking back on their storied history and musing on what forward could look like for a rock group so venerable and ingrained in our culture.

There’s no way I can talk about this 85-minute special without producing a bit of full disclosure upfront. I am not, and cannot be, an objective entertainment journalist about U2. I have loved them for so long, that their music courses through my veins and their words through my mind on a daily basis. It all started with “Achtung Baby,” their masterful 1991 album that may have just saved my life. While I was a fan of their music before that record, “Achtung Baby” came along at one of the most difficult times in my life. I was just getting over a brutal breakup with my first love. I then got a job at a record store and quickly ascended to the role of store manager. Like many at the time, I was enthused about a new U2 album, but I had no idea how much it would come to mean to me. It became the salve for my brokenhearted teenage wounds. Every song on “Achtung Baby” spoke to me. To this day, when I drop the platter on my record player, I still never skip a single song.

The album was more than a great record or a diversion from my sadness, it was the soundtrack to my salvation. I could press play on that record and for the entirety of its length go through a range of emotions that made the album’s running time of 55 minutes feel more like a therapy session than a listen. And I always felt better afterwards. We had a rule in the record store that whenever a CD ended, we would pass the next choice over to another staff member to play whatever album they wanted to listen to. I played “Achtung Baby” for months, every day, and without fail. In fact, if one of my staff members was too slow in making a selection, I would just hit repeat. Management comes with certain privileges, and that was how I abused my privilege: by playing “Achtung Baby” relentlessly. 

All of a sudden, I knew who my favorite band was. Since “Achtung Baby’s” release, I haven’t missed a single tour. Somewhere along the way, I lost track of how many times I’d seen them. I’m sort of proud of the fact that I can’t name the number. 

After “Achtung Baby,” my love of the band only grew. Lord knows, the shows didn’t hurt. They really aren’t like anything else I’ve ever seen. You don’t come to just watch a U2 show, you come to participate. That’s the difference between U2 and almost everyone else. It’s a communal experience where you and thousands of your new best friends spend two hours singing along to every word as if you wrote the songs yourself. At a U2 show you aren’t part of the crowd, you’re in the band.

I don’t know if I can think of a single significant occasion in my adult life where they didn’t play some small part. It’s as if these Irishmen are in my DNA. At my wedding party in Boston a little under four years ago, Maria, my lovely bride, surprised me by singing “All I Want Is You” to me, accompanied by her dad and a full band. Maria has a beautiful voice, and anyone in attendance will attest to such. I still can remember the sense of having to try to contain myself while she sang the words to me. It was as close to an out of body experience as I’ve ever had (at least while sober).

So, now that the stage is set, please understand, I am not here to review A Sort of Homecoming, I am here to celebrate it. Thankfully, the show is so beautifully shot, edited, and composed (tip-top marks for director Morgan Neville) that I feel no need to further qualify my perspective. It would have been simple enough to just have Letterman take a chair, put Bono and The Edge on a couch, and just talk through their history, but A Sort of Homecoming aims, much like the band always has, for something more. The show is not really an interview, or a basic run through of the band’s history, or a concert film, or a straight documentary—it’s something altogether different, and it’s all the better for it.

While watching A Sort of Homecoming, you will see Letterman learning about Irish culture, its past, its present, and its future. Something U2 has been a major part of illuminating since 1976. That fact alone is extraordinary. Here is a band heading into their fifth decade without a single lineup change. But while the band has stayed constant, Ireland has changed greatly. From “the Troubles” that seemed to go on for eons between the northern and southern parts of the island nation, the battles with the monarchy/British rule, and the transition from being religion based to far more secular, today’s Ireland has become a remarkable new country. It’s useful to note that this country that was once soaked in the Catholic/Protestant divide was the first to make “gay marriage” legal by popular vote, and ended ages of control over women’s bodies in 2018 by a 2–1 vote.

Maria and I visited Ireland last spring. On our last day, we were carried to the airport by an alabaster-complected, middle-aged, shaven-headed cab driver, who was talking about that day’s Pride Parade, with, well, pride. He went on to tell us how the country used to be run by the church, but now “they are closing up the churches and turning them into pizza parlors.” Aside from being a pretty amusing statement, it was also instructive of how far this country has come. As we made our way to the Dublin airport, it was impossible not to think of how ironic Ireland’s progress has been in this age of regress in the United States. You see, we were there while the United States Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. The flight home felt like a time machine. Had it not been for our beloved dog waiting for us at home, I’m not so sure we wouldn’t have just stayed. 

Dublin is a magical place now, and that magic extends to the band that the city birthed. Those boys who came together in their mid-teens in drummer Larry Mullen Jr.’s kitchen have grown into older, and depending on how you define age, old men. You can see what gravity and the years take from us by looking at Bono’s weathered face. All of the band members (Bono, The Edge, Mullen, and bassist Adam Clayton) have crested 60 now, and that booming voice Bono once had that seemed like it was big enough to call in boats to the harbor, has been replaced with a more nuanced, if less soaring, croak. Yet somehow, these limitations brought on by age, only make Bono and The Edge more human and relatable, despite the millions of dollars that decorate their coffers.

What A Sort of Homecoming does is take a look at a band that was never really “cool,” except for maybe during the “Achtung Baby/Zoo Station” period, and turn the concept of coolness on its head. As Bono shares advice he once received from Brian Eno , the coolest thing you can be is yourself. If nothing else, for better to some and worse to others, U2 have always been themselves. That’s not an easy feat to pull off if you’ve been around for as long as they have and been as successful as they have been. At a certain point, you can’t be the rebel band inspired by The Clash who wrote and recorded “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” Eventually, you don’t just become a part of the institution, you are an institution. Once you become institutionalized, what matters is what you do with that power. As shown in A Sort of Homecoming, Bono’s activism and desire to get things done by any means possible (debt relief for poor nations, nuclear safety, equality, and funds for AIDS relief) often meant he ended up in photos with some dodgy bedfellows, like George W. Bush and Jesse Helms. But as Bono once said, “To get something done, you don’t have to agree with someone on everything, you just have to agree with them on one thing.” That approach may not sound very rock and roll, but it has certainly saved many lives. 

I have to say, it was a blast watching the carefully curated clips of the young U2 storming the world as if by force of will. They weren’t the best musicians, but they somehow became the biggest band in the word through being endlessly curious, inventive, not sounding like anyone else, and being bold enough to wear their hearts on their collective sleeves. At one point, Bono describes songwriting as “heart surgery,” which is probably a perfect description for a band that has never hid what resides under their chests. 

A Sort of Homecoming covers the band’s ascent deftly without resorting to a travelogue of big moments. Sure, their legendary performances at Red Rocks and at the Super Bowl (just after 9/11) are seen here, but this isn’t just a “greatest hits” take on the band. This is a search for soul and meaning, as Bono and The Edge do something they rarely do (which is to look back) and re-record their most famous songs in a deconstructed fashion as if to get at the core of the meaning of each of them. Without Larry (who is recovering from a back injury) and Adam (off making an independent film), both of whom are missed, but not too much, the duo of Bono and The Edge surrounds themselves with local Dublin musicians. For those old enough to remember MTV Unplugged, that series is a respectable touchpoint for what Bono and The Edge are doing during their several performances interspersed between interviews with Letterman and historical footage. 

The intimate setting and arrangements bring the songs to new life. The Edge goes fully acoustic, without any of the effects pedals he uses in concert like a mad scientist, and Bono’s tenor has never sounded warmer. Songs like “Vertigo,” “One,” “Bad,” “Beautiful Day,” “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” and newer tracks like “Every Breaking Wave” and “Invisible” are viewed like new light through old windows. In particular, “Invisible” starts in an auditorium but closes (with the benefit of some magical editing) in a bar, where the patrons make a choir during the close, singing “There is no them, there’s only us,” and you see the aged, balding bartender lend his full voice to the chorus, well, it’s a thing of beauty, and it left me in a puddle of my own salty tears. 

It’s corny to say it, but fuck it, here I am: U2 isn’t a band, it’s a love story. One about four Irish boys who remained band members, friends, and soulmates over their extraordinary and lengthy history. Near the end of the show, Bono sings “Every Breaking Wave” to Letterman. Once the song closes, a gobsmacked Letterman states. “I feel like a different person.” I’ll be goddamned if I didn’t know exactly what he meant.

You know, you never forget what you love, but sometimes, you get reminded of why you fell in love with that thing in the first place. A Sort of Homecoming was my reminder of why I fell for these four Irish lads, so very long ago. 

During one part of the show, Bono discusses their classic song, “Where The Streets Have No Name,” and says that while the lyrics are oblique, they speak to a “Transcendent place we can go to, together. Do you want to come?”

They’ve been asking me that question for most of my life, and the answer is always the same: 

Yes. Every time. Yes.

A Sort of Homecoming debuts on Disney Plus this Friday, March 17.