Pride (In the Name of Love)
I have been reading Surrender the memoir of Bono from U2; I have also been listening to the Audible version and my review of the package will come when I complete all forty chapters. Chapter twenty seven culminates with a story about a tour date in Phoenix, Arizona during a period when the state’s governor and others were resisting implementing the federal holiday observing Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday. The band had booked the show prior to the many calls to not do business with Arizona but decided to go ahead and perform but campaign against the then governor Mecham. Bono “stirred the pot” as he says in news conferences and was a very vocal opponent of the attitudes that Mecham and other Arizona politician were displaying. That stirring was not without consequences as Bono describes the general atmosphere leading up to the show and what happened.
“The show would be the crescendo of this troublemaking, but on our arrival we discovered we’d received some death threats—and maybe not just from pranksters—that if we performed ‘Pride’ in the show, I would not make it to the end of the song. I had pretended I was not that bothered by the intel and I trusted our security team would be extra diligent and put in additional measures. The venue was swept for firearms and explosives, and we made the decision to go ahead as planned.”
Bono’s voice betrays the fear he felt all those years ago as he reads this passage, setting up the place in the show where the song Pride is performed. If you are unfamiliar with the song “Pride (In the Name of Love)” it deals with the legacy of those who call out injustice and prejudice. The song features MLK, Jr. as well as references Jesus and Malcom X, but the key verses are about King’s assassination which seemed to enflame certain racist groups and people as evidenced by the death threats. Bono goes on to describe the performance of “Pride” and how he felt as he sang.
“If we started ‘Pride’ defiantly, by the third verse I was losing some of my nerve or at least losing concentration. It wasn’t just melodrama when I closed my eyes and sort of half kneeled to disguise the fact that I was fearful to sing the rest of the words.
Shot rings out in the Memphis sky.
Free at last, they took your life
They could not take your pride.
I might have missed the messiah complex at work in my own anxiety, but it was only when I opened my eyes that I realized I couldn’t see the crowd. Adam Clayton was blocking the view, standing right in front of me. He’d stood in front of me for the length of the verse.”
As I heard Bono telling this story, I heard the words of Jesus in the Gospel of John, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (Jn 15:12–13 NRSV) If you know anything about the band U2, you will understand the significance of Adam Clayton standing in front of Bono in light of the words of Jesus. The band are Christians except for Adam Clayton. Clayton is the lone unbeliever in the band and yet he embodied the love Jesus speaks of by willingly placing himself in front of his friend as he sang a song he was threatened would not finish with Bono alive. What would our world be like if more human beings chose to be like Adam Clayton and be willing to die to protect a friend? What would it be like if it was only Christians who acted this way? Maybe Christianity would have a more positive impact upon our world rather than be seen as a reactionary people who want to refuse to serve others?
Food for thought.
Bono. Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. First edition. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.