Neighbors on a Shelf

Bono's "Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story"

It’s been a while since we’re shared anything about our work on the book. Of late, much of our energy has been focussed not on the actual writing of Part 6, but on our book proposal. One part of the proposal is called “comps,” which is short for “competition and comparative books.” We are choosing recent books that are similar to ours and describing the commonalities and the differences. These are books that theoretically would be neighbors of For the Love of It All on a bookstore shelf. Here follows our “comp” of Bono’s Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.  Although many of you are familiar with the information in this post, try to look at it as if you are an acquisition editor for a publishing company.

Early on in my interviews with Noel, he spoke of “surrender”—giving up baggage as well as the illusion of control—as a spiritual necessity, and though he doesn’t use the word in his songs, the concept is present there and in his life. Those of you who are fans of Bono already know that he and Noel are spiritual kin. Bono’s Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story is a natural choice as a comp. 

The strongest parallels between Noel and Bono are musical. They share teenage beginnings in rock—Noel as lead singer of an R&B band and Bono as lead singer of punk rock band U2. Bono stayed in rock subgenres, and Noel moved into folk music as one third of Peter, Paul, and Mary, but both with the trio and as a solo performer he has reached across genres. 

As songwriters, both men subtly include a spiritual dimension in many of their lyrics, but neither places himself in the contemporary Christian music genre. Both use metaphorical language in reference to God and theological concepts and avoid traditional religious language. 

Both autobiographies are structured around songs, with chapter titles taken from them. Both are conversational and witty, but different in writing style. Bono’s is more nonlinear and lyrical whereas Noel’s is more direct. Both occasionally employ the narrative present, but Bono’s use of it is random, and Noel’s is generally limited to a flashback at the beginning of each chapter. In addition, both singers have a stage presence and sense of timing that shines through their writing. Both are natural mimics, comics, and persuasive communicators in writing and on stage, but Noel is more succinct.  

For the Love of It All contains slightly more discussion of the backgrounds of songs and the production of albums, in part because PP&M were involved in production and because Noel spent much of his 1970s “time off” from PP&M building and running a recording and production studio in Blue Hill, Maine, where he worked with such singers and musicians as David Mallett and Paul Winter. 

Both singers have used their celebrity status and financial resources in service of charitable and social justice causes. Bono played a leading role in the Jubilee 2000’s Drop the Debt campaign and has participated in the global fight against HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty. Noel’s Public Domain Foundation, funded by royalties from “The Wedding Song,” has donated more than 2 million dollars to charities since its beginning in the early 70s. Since 2000, it has provided funding for Music to Life, the nonprofit co-founded by Noel and his daughter Liz Stookey Sunde, which connects socially conscious musicians with the mentors, resources and training needed to realize their visions for social change. 

In spite of similarities in topic, appeal, and format, the origin stories of these two men are vastly different. Born in 1937, Noel grew up in a stable American family with parents who encouraged his creativity throughout his childhood into adulthood and who were a part of his children’s lives. Born in 1960 in Dublin, Bono grew up in a time of political violence in Ireland. He lost his mother when he was 14 and spent the remainder of adolescence with a brother and father who didn’t know how to grieve her death. His troubled relationship with a musically talented but mostly non engaging father looms large in Surrender. Although these two autobiographies recount different life events, many of the themes are similar—the creative life, the underbelly of success, a spiritual journey, a valuing of marriage and family, the importance of joy in work and life, and the concept of surrender as a mark of spiritual maturity. Although both men place a high value on family life, Noel’s story is one of surrendering success to enhance family life whereas Bono’s attempts to hold family and vocation on parallel tracks. 

Both PP&M and U2 have had long running popularity, albeit in different genres and eras. What For the Love of It All might lack in present-day popular appeal in comparison to Surrender, it makes up for in historical appeal. Although a large part of our audience will be fans of Noel and of PP&M, we believe For the Love of It All will also appeal to historians, musicologists, and general readers interested in the folk music revival of the 1960s. As one the music groups associated with the civil rights movement and the anti-nuclear, farm workers, and environmental movements, PP&M has a legacy includes their role in social activism.  

In addition, as a revered elder of the folk music community, Noel is increasingly recognized among progressive Christians, as evidenced by his recent performance at the Convergence Music Project’s Converging 2023 event. We believe that this additional role as well as our new Substack newsletter Strings will serve to enlarge the readership of our book. 

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Connections

Watch historian Jon Meacham and Bono in conversation about Surrender at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Photo by Jamie Taylor on Unsplash.

Resonances

What other books would you suggest as comps for our book? You choices might reach beyond memoirs and autographies of people who are not musicians if you see strong parallels in other areas.