Chicago Tribune - December 4, 2002
James Warren, Tribune staff reporter

But this is Bono, one of the world's biggest rock stars, openly appearing on a string of small Midwest stages, from Methodist churches to Iowa truck stops and drab Ramada conference rooms. His aim is to arouse interest in a subject of less apparent interest to many Americans than the latest Lisa Marie Presley divorce (from Nicolas Cage), namely the greatest health debacle ever, the African AIDS epidemic.

"Washington is not afraid of student activists and rock stars," he tells the activists, wearing the trademark blue-tinted wraparound glasses Pope John Paul II once briefly tried on in his presence. "But they are nervous when they see men with collars hanging out with students and rock stars." Make alliances with the churches, he says, "slap them around the neck," especially the evangelicals whose frequent lack of sympathy reflects a sense that AIDS is God's revenge for the misdeeds of gays, lesbians and drug users.

Having started a bus caravan Sunday, World AIDS Day, Bono is creeping out of the protective bubble that unavoidably devours celebrities, largely spurning the big-market media conventional wisdom of modern public relations. "We're done with grandstanding in New York and Los Angeles," he'll say later. Forsaking the coasts, but unabashedly exploiting his own fame, the 42-year-old Dublin native may be shaming all those Hollywood stars who appear for cameo testimony before Capitol Hill committees, wax passionate about a subject, then head off, falsely buoyant, to a limo, private jet and comforts of home.

The frontman for U2, the remarkably resilient band now enjoying a cross-generational renaissance after its biggest album in a decade, Bono is mostly exploring unbeaten and very unglamorous paths, convinced that the way to Americans' minds is through the "heart of America," thus the moniker of "Heart of America Tour." The nation's consumer-driven homogeneity may be unceasing, with each Gap, Blockbuster Video or Starbucks belying a region's proud claim of individuality, but Bono's personal crusade, which arrived late Tuesday in Chicago and features stops at a South Side church and Wheaton College Wednesday, turns on the notion that the Midwest remains honorably distinct, rife with an idiosyncratic sense of community and integrity and lack of artifice.

Now if only a man who self-deprecatingly tags himself "a spoiled, overpaid, occasionally under-the-table rock star" can just get its attention.

"If we have the goods but do not share them with a brother in need, how can we claim to have love?" he asks the Sunday service here at St. Paul's United Methodist Church, where double the usual crowd of 400 has surfaced amid word of his intentionally brief, modest appearance.

If he can just get some of the parishioners to corral five others, getting them to write their politicians. Same with the 50 activists, such as Pat Tetreault, a sex education coordinator at the University of Nebraska, and S.T. Williams Jr., a Lutheran minister. Or the 2,000 college kids who packed a university auditorium Sunday evening to see him, actress Ashley Judd and cyclist Lance Armstrong. Or the truckers at a diner, some of whom have no clue who he is.

"It's too bad it takes a celebrity," says Tetreault. "But it raises awareness. But now, can we maintain interest?"

Inquisitive to a fault, Bono seems open to any and all suggestions for solving the related ills of AIDS and crushing debt, and seems especially partial to the recent counsel of an unlikely ally, Warren Buffett, the multibillionaire Omaha investor and nation's second richest man after Bill Gates.

Driving the 60 miles from his home, Buffett urged Bono to appeal to the nation's greatness, not necessarily its conscience, in seeking to eliminate AIDS.

And even if America's foreign aid budget is depressingly low as a percentage of gross domestic product, don't suggest that Americans themselves are penny-pinchers because they're not, says Buffett during one of many small sessions Bono is taking part in.

Focus on pressuring the politicians in Washington to loosen the government purse strings, says the "Oracle of Omaha," by arousing their constituents to write, e-mail and call.

Bono thus asks more questions than he gives answers, conjuring ways to move a political establishment still wary of inefficiency and corruption on the "Dark Continent."

If he can just get the Heartland to cast aside condescending moralism about Africa's wayward social and political ways, he believes he can actually spearhead a virtual counterpart to the Marshall Plan that revived post-war Europe-and saved millions of lives.

He thus arrived in Chicago after stops at the church, a student union and a theater here; a diner outside Greenfield, Iowa; a motel meeting room in Johnston, Iowa; the editorial board of the Des Moines Register; a university auditorium in Iowa City; the nation's biggest truck stop, in Walcott, Iowa; and a high school class in Davenport, among other spots. On Wednesday, he meets with newspaper editorial boards, then ends the day at Wheaton College, talking to students, before heading to Indianapolis and concluding Saturday in Nashville.

A Dublin native, father of four and married for more than 20 years, he is an icon in Ireland for both his music and humanitarian work. A frequent traveler to Africa, he received ample notice earlier in the year for an "odd couple" mission there with U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. Indeed, he has spent lots of time lobbying American and European politicians on hiking AIDS support, in the process even winning over retiring U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the archconservative whose qualms were long an impediment when it came to U.S. help.

The basic facts behind the Bono caravan are simple.

More than 17 million Africans have died of AIDS, with 2.5 million expected to die next year. About 28 million are infected with HIV. Most cannot afford, or have access to, medications on a continent spending an estimated $40 million a day alone in repaying debts to the wealthier nations.

And yet, it's abundantly clear that, newsweekly magazine cover stories aside, the problem is not appreciated by many. As a brilliant, late fall sun streams through a 50-foot-high window at the Methodist church Sunday morning ("I don't think much darkness can stand up against that light!" Bono joked earlier to the congregation), Paul Young, 33, a data analyst at a small firm outside Lincoln, says after the service that he has some U2 CDs and is "somewhat aware" of the crisis "but [I] probably need to get more educated. It's not a main subject on the news or anything. A lot of people may not know about the problem in Africa."

A pudgy teenager, clearly here only to see the star and little else, scoots by with chums, holding aloft a plastic, 8-ounce drinking cup.

"I've got Bono's cup! I've got Bono's cup!" he declares, more interested in this artifact of fame than the issues at hand.

In sharply abbreviated form, the tour has methodological similarity to a normal musical road show. There is the testing of certain gambits, to see what works, what doesn't. In this case, what sort of meetings are best, which will divine the most useful tactics, how should Bono and certain aides be best used? Should slides be used, rather than purely oral presentations?

The most typical sessions, closed to the media to avoid a sideshow aura, are with 10 to 12 local leaders from the corporate, non-profit, political and student sectors. But the true centerpieces are roughly 90-minute presentations in larger auditoriums. Those feature Bono; Judd (traveling on her own bus, with her hunk of a race driver husband Dario Franchetti in tow) as an adroit master of ceremonies ("She's Phil Donahue!" Bono blurted out during the first show as she ambled up and down aisles with a hand-held microphone); a 50-year-old AIDS-infected Ugandan nurse and mother of eight named Agnes Nyamayarwo and a talented group of young Ghanaian singers, the Gateway Ambassadors.

Bono offers the large construct of the African dilemma and defers to Nyamayarwo, whose health has stabilized because of drugs, to personalize the ravages to her (her husband and an 8-year-old son died because of AIDS) and other families. A medical specialist is there, too, to update progress on a potential cure. The kids sing, a question-and-answer session with the audience ensues and the evening ends with Bono on acoustic guitar, with a mellow work in progress called "American Prayer."

Later, he privately wonders if he was drowned out by a nearby boombox playing accompanying music. And Buffett suggests that instead of leaving a single postcard under chairs, to be used to write politicians on behalf of Bono's London-based group, Debt Aids Trade Africa (DATA, which has a Web site of www.datadata.org,) there should be five or 10 wrapped together.

All of that is on the star's mind as the bus tour's first real leg played out Monday, between Lincoln and Iowa City, with a stop in Des Moines.

He feels utterly at home, and for good reason. His personal bus, replete with cushy leather seating, wood paneling, huge color TVs, DVD and VHS players, fancy stereo system, bedroom with queen-size bed, nice carpeting, vanity mirrors and shower, makes those used by campaigning politicians, such as Sen. John McCain during his failed 2000 presidential bid, resemble a four-wheeled hovel out of "The Grapes of Wrath."

"I call this God's work but God might be more reliable!" he says of the work at hand, with the self-mocking that mixes with his distinct, deadly serious purpose.

"People say it would take an act of God to solve the AIDS emergency. But I think God is waiting for us to act. And I do believe that when you confront an idea that's bigger than you, you can get carried by its moral force. Even away from your family, working 18-hour days, like so many of the people with me here, you still feel good about your lives."

Soon, it's time to put on his black, three-quarter-length winter coat, and, with the Ugandan nurse who is making her first trip out of Africa, stop at the Iowa Harvest diner in Greenfield. There one of the few artificial, if still revealing, scenes placed out as he sits at a table with a pre-chosen group, including a state legislator. With TV and documentary cameras surrounding the small group, it has the stagey feel of innumerable campaign ads with "real people" meeting the candidate.

Still, the challenge down the longer road is evident as Daryl Nelson, a farmer and implements dealer, answers Bono's own query about the extent of local interest in the African AIDS issue.

"I think it's pretty much in the back of people's minds," says Nelson, a member of the Adair County Board of Health. "And as far as our rural health, it's not much of a concern."

Finally, there's that song in progress unveiled in Lincoln, whose words were drowned out by the boombox and a somewhat muddy sound system. Even incomplete, it hints at the real driving force behind this most atypical of rock star tours, namely one Irish kid's love and admiration for America.

On the bus he makes clear the lyrics, at least what he's got so far.

"This is the time to finish what you've started. And this is no time to dream. This is the room and we can turn off the dark tonight. Maybe then we can see. Remember that what you see depends on where you stand. And how you jump will tell you where you're going to land."

On the way to Des Moines, Bono sought to explain to context in which he sees the song.

It has to do with a belief that the U.S. is in a rare position given its huge economic and creative advantages to do maximum good.

"This is the American moment," he said. "The moment will pass, as they always do."

So, he implores, try to consider the nation's essence, the Declaration of Independence, and the connection between guiding principles and the rest of the world's needs. It's a matter of finishing what you've started.

From Eminem to the Teletubbies

Musings from Bono aboard a bus that's every air guitarist's dream of what a rock star's life must be like:

On performing before 80,000 screaming, adoring fans: "People think about performers that it's, 'Love me, love me, love me!' And they're right! No, you can actually be trying to impress just one person in the crowd; a lover, your father, a guy who bullied you in school."

Biggest musical influence as a kid: "John Lennon. He taught me the value of a song as placard."

On Paul McCartney: "He writes better tunes and may be the most underrated [Beatle]. Harmonically rich. And it's almost as if he's been elbowed aside, and not taken as seriously, because he's not dead."

On Eminem: "Brilliant lyricist and writer who is in the tradition of [the French poet] Rimbaud and the 15th Century murder ballads."

On Johnny Cash: "Greatest exponent of murder ballads. I think he's wonderful."

Rock band revival tours: "I could never see U2 in Las Vegas. Too much self-respect. I, on the other hand, have some crushed velvet in my wardrobe.

So bring on the dinner plates! Plus, I could use a tan."

Favorite TV shows (a tie): "First, there's 'Oprah.' She is a study as a performer. It's taken me 20 years to lose my self-consciousness. She doesn't seem to have any. There's no plate glass between her and her audience. Like the greatest actors, she's great because she's not acting. Then there's 'Teletubbies.' Psychedelic stuff, with TVs in their bellies. As a person who doesn't trifle with hallucinogens, it's the closest I'll come to Jimi Hendrix."

U2's immediate future: "We'll get back into the studio soon. We're halfway through a record that will burn down all our good works! It's a very full-on rock 'n' roll album, not at all like my speaking tour."
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