Bono is speaking about the moment he found out he had a half-brother just before the passing of his father.
The U2 frontman, 62, shared in a recent interview how he discovered he had a that he has a half-brother in 2000.
This Was Bono’s Reaction To Finding Out He Has a Half-Brother From His Late Father’s Affair
“I do have another brother, whom I love and adore, that I didn’t know I didn’t have,” the singer told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs this past Sunday.
Bono revealed how his late father Bob was “obviously going through a lot” after the star’s mother Iris died in 1974, and said it seemed as though his “head was elsewhere ’cause his heart was elsewhere.”
“It’s a very close family and I could tell that my father had a deep friendship with this gorgeous woman, who’s part of the family,” he said. “And then they had a child. And this was all kept a secret.”
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Bono shared how no one, not even Iris or his older brother Norman, knew of the half-brother’s existence, but that he was able to speak with Bob about it before he died in 2001 at age 75.
“I asked him, did he love my mother? And he said yes. And I said, ‘How could this happen?’ And he said it can, and that he was trying to put it right, trying to do the right thing,” Bono said. “He wasn’t apologizing, he was just stating these are the facts. And I’m at peace with it.”
And while the timeline of his half-brother’s birth is not clear, Bono continued to speak further on his “complicated relationship” with his father, which worsened after Iris’s death.
The star said that while he understands now his dad was “coping with a lot,” he does regrets not being more present during the difficult times.
“I feel like I wasn’t there for him, really, in the way I should be,” he said. “I apologized to my father in a little chapel in France after he passed away. I went up to this little chapel, there was nobody there. Lit a candle, and I got on my knees and I just said, ‘Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. You went through a lot and please forgive me.’ And I felt free.”
The Grammy winner is set to expand deeper into his relationship with his parents in his upcoming memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, which is set for release in November.
The book will chronicle Bono’s childhood in Dublin, U2’s rise to fame, and his activism in the fight against HIV/AIDS and extreme poverty, among other topics.
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