I don’t know how U2 will stay relevant. I know we’ve got a future. I know we can fill stadiums. And yet with every record, I think, ‘Is this it? Are we still relevant?’
The great gifts of models are not that they’re more beautiful than the next person, it’s that they’re able to be photographed and not be self-conscious.
I have been working for Africans since I was 18, when I got involved with the Nelson Mandela concerts. I got involved with debt cancellation because Desmond Tutu demanded that the world respond to that situation.
When those people get up at the Grammys and say, “I thank God”, I always imagine God going, “Oh, don’t, please don’t thank me for that one. Please, oh, that’s an awful one! Don’t thank me for that – that’s a piece of crap !”
The idea that there is one kind of African is of course ridiculous. Sometimes African entrepreneurs want to kill you because you are saying public health is the priority, not roads.
When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.
It’s much easier to be successful than it is to be relevant. The tricks won’t keep you relevant. Tricks might keep you popular for a while, but in all honesty,
You can never completely fill that hole-you can try with songs,family,faith and by living a full life…but when things are silent, you can still hear the hissing of what’s missing.
