Achtung Bono!

For something slightly trivial and amusing but which raises a point worth thinking about...
'In response to the fact that the Irish government has recently changed its notoriously cuddly fiscal regime, so that creative types can only earn a trifling £170,000 before paying tax, Bono and his friends have moved part of their empire to the Netherlands. This may seem like a rather cruel interpretation of the news, but I don't think I can help it: though Bono is very keen on feeding, watering and healing the world, he and his group - collectively worth £460m, it says here - don't seem to be too keen on paying for Irish schools and hospitals. That's good, isn't it?'


Here's the full article from the Guardian website:

Achtung Bono!

John Harris
Friday August 18, 2006

Not worthy ... Bono. Photograph: Dave Hogan/Getty

Fidel Castro is not the only icon who has just turned 80. Tony Bennett, he of the urbane demeanour, velveteen voice and surprisingly lustrous barnet, became an octogenarian on August 3 - and, to celebrate, his record company are about to bow to the inevitable and issue an album of freshly recorded duets, featuring the likes of Sting, Paul McCartney and the Dixie Chicks. Like all such albums, it will surely be bought by the odd twerp as a Christmas gift, played a bit in Starbucks and then swiftly placed in the historical bin.

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Anyway, it also features Paul "Bono" Hewson of U2, who commemorated his collaboration with Tone by taking out an ad in a special Bennett-themed issue of Billboard. And what a hoot it was. It went like this:

Tony,

Trying to sing with you was a humbling, if not humiliating experience. You're like A HOUSE YOU CAN'T BREAK INTO, at least not by force. You can run at the door, but the doors are locked ... you can bang on the windows ... I got into the HOUSE OF BENNETT, but only as the cat burglar ... looking to steal a place in this incredible legacy.

I've had the pleasure of singing with you, AND FOR YOU ... I broke in through the bathroom window, up a drainpipe ... I'm not leaving

Bono

Did you see that? Not just the keray-zee use of his PC's text toolbar, but the subtle Beatles reference? But never mind that. If this flatly bizarre bit of prose evokes anything, it is a picture of poor old Tone returning from a night out drinking vodka martinis to find the singer of U2 sitting guiltily on his couch, amid broken glass, humming one of his own songs. "Oh jeez, it's that Bonio guy, and he's broken in," says Tone. "I'm not leaving," Bono repeats. "You fucking are," says Tone, and calls security.

Now, I have never much liked U2, neither in their Pained Artists in String Vests phase, nor the Ironic Media Studies Project on a Big Budget period that followed it, nor the post-All That You Can't Leave Behind incarnation that seems to lie somewhere between the two. And somewhere in Bono's Tony tribute - the silly metaphors, the slight whiff of hubris, the buttock-clenching image of Bennett clapping eyes on the advert and wondering what it might mean - lies much of the explanation. I recognise it as the work of the same man whose last album contained the gnomic contention that "freedom has a scent like the top of a newborn baby's head"; who has attempted to bolt himself into history via songs written in clumsy tribute to Martin Luther King, Billie Holiday and John Lennon; who is good friends with a 45-year-old man who calls himself The Edge. This, I would argue, will not do. It reeks of the kind of "cool" that might play well in, say, Austria, but that is known in slightly more sceptical territories as Trying Far Too Hard.

But last week, there came rather more grave news. In response to the fact that the Irish government has recently changed its notoriously cuddly fiscal regime, so that creative types can only earn a trifling £170,000 before paying tax, Bono and his friends have moved part of their empire to the Netherlands. This may seem like a rather cruel interpretation of the news, but I don't think I can help it: though Bono is very keen on feeding, watering and healing the world, he and his group - collectively worth £460m, it says here - don't seem to be too keen on paying for Irish schools and hospitals. That's good, isn't it?

By way of registering a protest, my one U2 album - Achtung Baby, because I actually think The Fly is not that bad - is on its way to the Record and Tape Exchange. To use the Bono argot, I'm leaving. In fact, I'm leaving. No, make that LEAVING.