Yuk! These articles stink… It is so bad I don’t know where to begin. Take the stereotypical rock star: starts young, forms a band, annoys everybody, makes a couple of great drugs-and-alcohol fuelled albums, makes millions, marries supermodel, makes bad album, gets reviled by the music press, spends his money in superfluous over-the-top luxury, checks several times into rehab, beats a couple of paparazzi, spends night in jail for some stupid crime (beating a policeman or shoplifting being favoured), keeps spending not-so-easy-anymore money, makes a couple of over-the-top and pretentious albums, appears alongside all sorts of famous people most of whom know nothing about music, divorces one supermodel after another (not after battering some of them), wears a hat or a bandana to conceal that he’s losing his once trademark hair, plays Glastonbury alongside people who are 20 years younger for the last time, his overspending catches up and he dies poor and alone from an overdose in a cheap hotel, family scrambles for money only to find out there are only debts, younger bands play tributes and make covers of his two only worth-remembering songs, Mojo and Word magazines dedicate some lines to him. The end.

This is the standard. All future rock’n’roll artists should try hard to do the same. Some even get serious and kill a prostitute or sexually abuse a child. It’s part of life. It’s what you have to do to belong to that immortal club of rock stars. However, when somebody does different he gets a treatment like the one Bono received from The Word this month… C’mon guys! For every issue surrounding Bono there are several interpretations, one being that he is a pretentious prat with messianic delusions, a manipulator in search of fame and another that he genuinely believes that he can change the world by talking to decision-makers and just does that. Your journalists have unanimously gone for the cynical option, even when there is plenty of proof of the second one! Let’s see some examples of the distilled poison I had to read today:

Page 84: “Compared to that of some other short male rock stars I won’t mention, his overcompensating desire to be noticed…”
Oh yes, the guy is short and wants to be noticed. So what! He’s a rock star for God’s sake!

Page 87: “Bono’s charisma can be attributed largely to his glasses”… What! Would anybody dare to say this about John Lennon (who wore the most iconical glasses in rock history)? What a lot of rubbish. They guy wears shades, full stop. His charisma has to do with his enormous capacity to charm people (mentioned in the previous article) and with the fact that the guy WRITES good songs with lyrics that reach people, which seems not to be worthy a mention anywhere in the magazine. The strangest thing about this musician is that nobody mentions his music.

And here your magazine gets serious:
Page 88: Bono gets accused of the hideous crime of being successful!! Because he was Ireland’s best export he “choked” Irish music because every band wanted to be like U2…. What!!!! Would you seriously agree that the Beatles “chocked” rock music because of the success they had in America made every teenager in the world want to write songs like Lennon and McCartney. What a piece of rubbish argument. I never heard something more stupidly poisonous than that. On page 89 he committed another hideous crime by being in between David Trimble and John Hume, what an arrogant git he is… sneaking in the middle of the hard working politicians to get some credit for the agreement. Nobody cared to suggest that there might have been the politicians who longed to be seen near a cultural icon that could actually talk to younger people? How biased and ill-intentioned you have to be to write an article like that!

The last bit of the article is actually the (poisonous) cherry at the top.

Page 89: “people hate him for flying his hat first class and for carting his stage set in 120 vehicles”. He is a rock star for God’s sake. Would you ever get it? For him paying a first class ticket is like for you and me paying a first class post stamp. He lives in another dimension where money becomes meaningless. A demonstration of how living in rich limbo can affect your senses comes from the multitude of MPs asking for stupid expenses last month. At least Bono’s money comes from you and me willingly paying for his CDs and concert tickets, not from the taxes.

Page 89: “Bono can’t sing” well, if Bono can’t sing I would like to know of any mega-rock-band leader who actually can. That would be a matter of taste and the fact that the guy is still selling his music after 29 years speaks about the ignorance of the rock music public who keeps buying his music. In fact people are ignorant and rock music journalists should decide who gets into the hall of fame and who doesn’t. That would be a much fairer world wouldn’t it… we would be all listening to properly sanctified bands sitting still on our chairs.

Page 89: “It’s not right to criticise a dog for not being a horse”…Has this woman ever heard punk rock music? Has she ever heard rock music? Where does she live, in Pavarotti’s cuckooland? Is she a Bell-Canto music teacher found frozen in the Italian Alps? I don’t’ believe you even consider printing opinions like this. What a patronising piece of rubbish!! I have never felt so angry with a stupid article in my whole life. I am subscribed to The Word magazine in the hope that your editor spares me rubbish like this... Please!!

Page 91: “Celebrity politics tend to be a total failure” Not a mention here of the Jubilee foreign debt cancellation initiatives of 1996 and 2000, of the Make Poverty History campaign, the One campaign, the End Malaria campaign and loads of others that are not only raising interests in issues that have been around for years but actually channelling money from rich people to poor. No one knows if celebrity politics work. No one will know for a few decades. To assume to have the answer is at least ignorant and patronising.

Page 91: “…after his ludicrous pronouncement, by far the most grandiose of the day…” Paraphrasing Martin Luther King seems to be a capital sin in the music business. Then we need to start shooting cartloads of people. Name me a musician that has not made a public statement in favour of world peace! Hey man, may be this guy Bono needs to support the far right and fund the BNP to be really accepted by your magazine. Why do we judge him by a completely different standard than any other star?

I am no U2 fan, I am not a staunch Irish catholic, in fact I am an atheist who believes religiosity actually harms charitable work. I n fact I always mistrusted famous people who engage in celebrity politics… I may not agree with his politics, but to treat this man the way you magazine is treating him and by extension, to all of us who buy his music and attend his concerts is just plain wrong. I doubt it very much that you will even react to my concerns unless other people join me and ask for a fairer view of the man. I think you readers deserve better.