Bono on U2, the Sphere, and Adam Sandler’s SNL Impression

Bono is not a gambling man. But when the U2 frontman and singer has an idea, he’s all in. The artist’s upcoming documentary, Bono: Stories of Surrender—premiering on Apple TV+ on May 30—follows a multimedia campaign involving a 40-track album, a memoir, a VR experience, and a one-man show at the Beacon Theatre in New York City.

In Esquire’s new cover story with Bono, the artist told Esquire that he conceived of the project during Covid-19, when he and the Edge rerecorded a collection of the band’s greatest songs in quarantine. “It became more of an undertaking,” Bono said. “All of this stuff does. It does!”

Songs of Surrender also takes place following U2’s opening residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas—which you may be surprised to learn is not, in fact, spherical.

“I don’t know if I should say this,” Bono tells Esquire in an additional video interview (streaming above), “but the Sphere is not actually spherical.” The Las Vegas venue is just a “very big dome,” according to Bono, even if it can project a massive, 50-foot-tall image of the singer, “like Hollywood-sign big—minus the Botox,” he jokes.

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U2 in 1987.

It made perfect sense for U2 to open the Sphere in late 2023, since the band has gravitated toward the city ever since it shot the music video for “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” in 1987.

“I love the fact that it’s a town that appears to be designed by children so that adults can run around and behave like them,” Bono said, “but people work really hard in Las Vegas looking after people like me who don’t work as hard.”