It will come as a
surprise to many that the four members of U2 -- Bono (vocals and
guitar), The Edge (guitar, keyboards and vocals), Adam Clayton
(bass guitar) and Larry Mullen, Jr. (drums and percussion), who are
nominated for the best original song Oscar for "Ordinary Love" in Mandela:
Long Walk to Freedom -- have been writing and performing music about South
Africa since the late 1970s, when they were still in their teens. Scott Feinberg of The Hollywood Reporter says he
learned much during a fascinating and candid conversation with the Irish
rockers in New York last week.
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"At a very
early stage, we realized that there was more to music than just rocking out and
that we could actually -- maybe -- make a small difference," Mullen said.
Therefore, when the quartet -- which The Edge describes as "the essential
high school band that just kept going" -- learned about Nelson Mandela
and Apartheid, they decided to take action, playing a gig to protest the
institutional segregation and discrimination taking place half a world away.
Why did they care?
"We really related to what was going on in South Africa," Bono said.
"Irish people are very aware of how the currents of politics -- indeed,
global politics -- can affect their own life. For example, it's well known that
our interest in developing economies around the world is because not long ago
we were one. And we're interested in the fight against extreme poverty because
we were on the other side of that. And we also understand famine -- it cost our
country half its population."
After studying and
traveling to Africa throughout the 1980s -- on fact-finding missions, to raise
funds and awareness through music (see "The Sun City" album) and, in
some cases (like Bono's), even to go on personal honeymoons -- the members of
the band rejoiced when Mandela was freed from prison in 1990 and were delighted
that he wished to meet and work with them in post-Apartheid South Africa.
The band, which
was honored to know Mandela, soon became good friends with the South African
leader, who saw how they could help him spread his call for peace and
understanding. "He was a very sensitive fellow and, clearly, that
sensitivity was what he used to dismantle Apartheid. It wasn't just the
strength; it was the sensitivity," says Bono. The Edge adds: "We actually
went with Mr. Mandela to see Robben Island when we were there, and just to see
the cell that he lived in for so many years was really sobering, to realize
that when he went in there he thought that he would never come out."
Last summer, Harvey
Weinstein, another entertainment industry acquaintance of Mandela's and a
friend of U2's since his days as a concert promoter in the early 1980s,
approached the band and asked, on behalf of producer Anant Singh and
director Justin Chadwick, if they would write an original song for
inclusion in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, a big screen version of
Mandela's own autobiography. They had not released original music in years --
from 2009 to 2011 they had been traveling the world for U2 360, the
highest-grossing tour in history, and were finally making headway when
Weinstein called with his offer, which they couldn't refuse. As The Edge puts
it, "We had to take a deep breath because we realized it was actually
gonna cause havoc in other areas of our work," but, he says, "It was
one of those things [we] just had to do, you know, because of our connection
there."
Singh sent Bono
copies of love letters that Mandela had written to his wife Winnie when he was
imprisoned. "To read his love letters is a real treat," the singer
says. "You realize that this was a kind of extraordinary love, but
actually, though extraordinary love is the subject of movies and books and
novels and songs, perhaps the more important is ordinary love -- the simple
things that people do... and that's what they couldn't do. They had this
passion the size of their country, the size of their continent, but actually,
when he left prison, they couldn't figure it out on just the ordinary, domestic
front."
Consequently, the
song that Bono wrote, which "was always to be at the end [of the film],
after the scene where [Mandela] stands up and he walks out and the people who
had been his enemy are saluting him" -- which the singer describes as
"one of the greatest moments in the last century" -- was not the
uplifting number that had originally been solicited, but rather an honest
imagination of what Mandela might have been thinking in that moment, entitled
"Ordinary Love." Bono explains, "He said he'd won most of his
struggles -- [even] if it cost him 27 years of his life -- but he lost in love,
he lost his wife, and it was of profound sadness to him. That's what we wanted
in that moment, that, as he was walking out, there was still that ache of love
lost."
The band
emphasizes that Mandela's death on Dec. 5, 2013, less than a week after U2's
single was first released to the public, does not bring an end to their
relationship with South Africa. "We've had wonderful times in the
country," says The Edge. "It is an absolutely beautiful country. I
think this is a turning point, and, in his passing, Mr. Mandela has left it up
to those who have some kind of stake in his legacy to step up and really insure
that all of the great work that he's done doesn't go to waste. And we're
certainly willing to do whatever we can."
