[From Q magazine’s special issue, The 100 Greatest Rock ‘N Roll Photographs. The Bono picture comes in at No. 20 on the list.]
20 Bono Anton Corbijn New York 12 August, 1992
“This is a sort of ironic look at the life of a big pop star,” says photographer Anton Corbijn, “with the jacuzzi, the bottle of champagne, and a reference to the political environment of the time via George Bush, father of the current U.S. president, on the TV screen, and the great view over New York.” Around this time, Bono was clearly coming to terms with the more excessive aspects of his job. “Rock ‘n roll is ridiculous,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. “It’s absurd. In the past, U2 was trying to duck that. Now we’re wrapping our arms round it and giving it a great big kiss. It’s like I say onstage, Some of this bullshit is pretty cool. I think it is the missing scene from Spinal Tap — four guys in a police escort, asking themselves, Should we be enjoying this? The answer is, Fucking right!” So, when U2’s mammoth Zoo TV tour (Outside Broadcast section) lumbered into America in mid-August 1992 with all 109,000 tickets for the first two nights in Giants Stadium, New Jersey, selling out in 23 minutes after going on sale, Bono made time in the afternoon to scrub up among the bubbles for the benefit of Corbijn’s camera. “This was obviously a shot that had to be quite carefully set up. I tend not to sneak into rock stars’ bathrooms. I had worked with Bono since ’82, so I think there was a certain amount of trust between us. I work very fast and my pictures are not so much about perfection as about catching a moment.” Given that this is a photograph of a man of extreme wealth and privilege evidently revelling in his luxurious surroundings, Corbijn acknowledges that “the difficulty of this sort of shot is that is could easily be taken out of context.” But he is adamant that it’s all done in the best possible taste: “I think people who know Bono will immediately see the irony in it. He realises he is in a position where he can actually have both worlds, and he chooses to do great things with it. That’s why we love him.”
© Q magazine, 2002. All rights reserved.