Had to run to the library over lunch to pick up a couple things on reserve and spent a minute or two looking through the new non-fiction. Happily, I stumbled on the new Bono book 'Bono in conversation with Michka Assayas'. Read a few pages of it over lunch, so far it's been an interesting read.
I'm only in chapter 1, but I figured I'd post a little interesting tidbit of some unused verses from Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own. I guess these were sung at his fathers funeral but ended up not getting recorded.
"... I think How To Dismantle... also allowed me to vent all that stuff. The atomic bomb, it's obviously him in me. Yeah, "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" is my swan song for him. I sang it at his funeral [recites, but does not sing]: Tough, you think you got the stuff / You're telling me and everyone you're hard enough / Well, you don't have to put up a fight / You don't have to always be right / Let me take some of the punches for you tonight / Listen to me now: I need to let you know you don't have to go it alone / Sometimes you can't make it on your own. It's like a Phil Spector kind of a deal, very fifties. There's a verse I left out of the recording: When I was a young boy in the suburbs of Cedarwood / I wanted to be great because good would not be good enough / Now that I'm older, I don't see things any clearer / We're closer now but still a long way off / I need you to know you don't have to go it alone / Sometimes you can't make it on your own. And then it goes into this middle eight which is amazing. I scream and it goes: Sing, you're the reason I sing / You're the reason the opera is in me / Still I need you to know a house don't make a home / Don't leave me here alone / Sometimes you can't make it on your own. So it turns around at the end. It's a sort of simple song, but it's, I hope, the last song I will be writing about him.
anyway, worth reading if you get the chance to pick it up. I've got other things to read, but I imagine this one will float back to the top and get read first.
1 comment:
I personally think the actor/activist thing is just stupid. Ed Bagelly Jr and Ted Danson telling me to drive their car, Rosie O'Donnel badmouthing the NRA but at the time her primary income came from KMart the largest gun distributer in the country, Bab's telling me to not buy gas but her home heating bill is $10,000 a month.
That being said, Bono has broken the so-called Mold. He actually listens and creates synergy and discussion in his 'political' life. Do I agree with everything he does--Ah..no. But I am willing to listen because he is willing to listen.
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