Bono was in the South of France last week at the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere Friday of his new documentary, Bono: Stories of Surrender, which will start streaming on Apple TV+ on May 30th.
While there he took time out to tell Rolling Stone about how U2 are progressing on their new album.
He said, “Nostalgia is not to be tolerated for too long, but sometimes you’ve got to deal with the past in order to get to the future and to the present. To get back to now is our desire. Get back to this moment we’re in.”
But he adds that it "sounds like future to me. We had to go through some stuff, and we’re at the other end of it.”
When complete, it will be U2's first album of new songs since 2017's Songs of Experience.
As for the documentary's premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, it received a seven-minute standing ovation at its conclusion.
Once the applause died down he said, “I’m not a Frenchman. I’m an Irishman. I’m not even a self-made man. You wrote this story. The Edge wrote this story. Adam [Clayton] and Larry [Mullen] wrote this story. [U2 manager Paul] McGuinness wrote this story.”