Refuse to Hate

"One boy washed up on an empty beach"

BONO has offered support to refugees fleeing their homes by changing the chorus of a U2 song mid-concert to help raise awareness of their plight. 

The singer altered the lyrics in Pride (In the Name of Love) to, "One boy washed up on an empty beach" in memory of Aylan Kurdi who was found dead on a Turkish beach He told fans in Turin's packed Pala Alpitour in Italy he did not have the answers to the crisis but that we "must work together" to find the solution.

In a set which featured a screen showing footage of refugees, Bono said: "There is a lot of heartache in the world but there is so much joy in here this evening.

"Watching the news, ordinary people - all of us - seem capable of such great evil and such great love.

"What do you want? A Europe with its heart and borders closed to mercy? Or a Europe with its heart open?"

"This is My America"

As is often the case at a U2 show, the boldest moment of the night came when, towards the end of the set, the band played “Bullet the Blue Sky,” a dissonant Joshua Tree deep cut that’s become a live staple. The album version is about the United States’s involvement in military conflict in El Salvador, but on subsequent tours the band has tailored it to addressing whatever political issue has them riled up at the time: religious violence, the NRA, Nazism.

On this tour, in keeping with the whole “innocence and experience” theme, it becomes a dialogue between a 19-year-old version of Bono and the modern-day one we’re seeing onstage, who has “100, 200, 300 times” more than he needs. The criticism, though, eventually turns outward: Bono ended the song, powerfully, at the lip of the stage, shouting to the crowd, “Hands up, I’m an American. I can’t breathe, I’m an American.” And though this is the kind of thing we’ve come to expect from U2, the moment felt genuinely confrontational. They then launched into a soaring rendition of “Pride (In the Name of Love),” as the crowd blithely pumped its fists to a song that it may or may not know is about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

"This is my America," Bono exclaims.