There isn’t much about Bono or U2 that interests me, but I was curious about Browne’s book as a critique of celebrity culture. If Bono is viewed as a typical example of a rich scumbag, rather than someone of any real significance, I guess the U2 singer is as good a place to begin a critique of celebrity ‘activism’ as any other tedious pop ‘personality’. That said, The Clash and their dead posh frontman Joe Strummer would provide an equally good starting point. Unfortunately Browne seems to admire The Clash and compares Bono unfavourably to these pathetic punk poseurs. And this despite the fact Clash ‘singer’ Joe Strummer lost the Class War group in the UK a load of money by doing an unsuccessful ‘Bash The Rich’ tour for them (of course only anarchists could chose a privately educated diplomat’s son to front a series of anti-posh agit-prop concerts, and then be surprised they lost money). Returning to Browne, he might as well make negative comparisons between Bono and manufactured pop acts such as The Osmonds or The Sex Pistols as The Clash; ultimately there’s little distinguish U2 from these earlier corporate cash cows.

Having never liked U2’s stadium ‘rock’ and since I don’t pursue celebrity gossip in the media, I wasn’t particularly aware of Bono’s AIDS and debt relief advocacy before I read Browne’s book. And while I’d come across campaigns/campaign groups such as ONE and RED, I’d never paid them sufficient attention to realise Bono was involved with them; it wasn’t necessary to look very closely at these operations to know they touted the usual bourgeois stupidities. Browne depicts Bono as a leading figure in neoliberal celebrity humanism, whereas before I read The Frontman I was only aware of the U2 singer as someone who made really bad records and wore even worse clothes. Browne also details the Christian involvements of Bono and his U2 bandmates, which served to further lower my already non-existent interest in them. Likewise, I was even less inclined to listen to U2 (and I didn’t like their records to begin with) after reading Browne on Bono chumming up to a slew of reactionary capitalist politicians such Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, George Bush Junior and Barack Obama. Clearly the U2 singer is as much of a slimeball as his pop world namesake (turned Republican politician and ski death statistic) Sonny Bono.

Browne’s book is probably best read by clueless fans of U2’s ‘music’, since just possibly they don’t yet understand that charity is simply another way of maintaining the status quo, and that genuine equality entails a planetary redistribution of wealth to be achieved through working class struggle. Mostly Browne does a pretty good job of explaining the obvious to those that can’t see it, but the fluffy liberal limits of his agenda does show through in places. For example, Browne praises Bono for his friendship with and support of Salman Rushdie. Like Bono, Rushdie is another celebrity toe-rag and one from a very privileged background – he attended establishment school Rugby and followed this with a stint at the equally elite Cambridge University. Like other ‘literary’ novelists, Rushdie churns out outdated prose designed to shore up bourgeois ideology. Had he been more rigorous and/or further to the left politically, Browne would have subjected Bono’s relationship with Rushdie to exactly the same types of criticism as the U2 frontman’s friendships with other members of the neoliberal ‘elite’ such as Paul Wolfowitz and Jeffrey Sachs….. Still The Frontman is an easy read and it seems unlikely we’ll see a better book about Bono since he is ultimately so inconsequential.