The U2 frontman lost his mother, Iris, when he was just 14 years old
Bono revealed that after her mother’s death, her family no longer spoke about her. In a podcast interview Kelly Corrigan Wonders (via People), the vocalist of U2 talked about Iriswho died when he was just 14 years old.
“I have very few details about my mother and I wrote the book [Surrender] to try to pull some of those memories of that river that passes through life with everything, with your life in it, and suddenly it passed by you,” he said. “And I thought, I don’t want the memories of my mother to completely pass me by. And there were fewer and fewer of them.”
The singer confessed that not even his brother Normanseven years older, has vivid memories of his mother: “That’s because when she died I was 14, and my father just didn’t talk about her. We didn’t talk about her. A very typical situation for Irish men. So, no I can remember how she spoke. But I remember the feelings.”
“I remember the banter. I remember the humor. I remember she could turn on the kettle. And a problem solver,” he continued Bono.
In his memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story (2022), the Irish artist revealed that Iris collapsed at her father’s funeral in 1974 and died in a Dublin hospital, days after suffering an aneurysm.
“I think it was worse than that. That we rarely thought of her again,” he wrote of his father, Bob, it’s your brother. “We were three Irish men and we avoided the pain we knew would come from thinking and talking about her.”
“Iris (Hold Me Close)”, included on the album Songs of Innocence (2014), from U2honors Iris.
Source: Rollingstone
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