Bono stopped by the BBC’s Desert Discs podcast on Sunday (June 26) and shared the story of finding out he had a secret brother back in 2000.
“I do have another brother whom I love and adore that I didn’t know I didn’t have — or maybe I did,” the U2 frontman told host Lauren Laverne with a chuckle. “My father was obviously going through a lot [when Bono’s mother died], but partly his head was elsewhere ’cause his heart was elsewhere. So I think that was part of the problem I was probably pickin’ up as a kid.”
He continued: “It’s a very close family, and I could tell that my father had a deep friendship with this gorgeous woman who was part of the family. And then they had a child, and this was all kept a secret.”
Bono went on to explain that his mother never found out before her sudden death when he was just 14, but that he did get the opportunity to confront his father about the affair years later.
“I asked him, did he love my mother? And he said yes,” the Grammy winner said. “And I said, you know, ‘How could this happen?’ And he said, ‘It can.’ And that he was trying to put it right, trying to do the right thing. He wasn’t apologizing, he was just stating, ‘These are the facts.’”
Recalling the life-changing revelation that rocked his world came between the rock singer choosing the eight records he would bring with him to a desert island, including Peter Frampton‘s “Show Me the Way,” Bob Dylan‘s “Every Grain of Sand,” Emeli Sande‘s version of the classic Anglican hymn “Abide With Me” with The Fron Choir, and the live version of “Dead in the Water” performed by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds at Dublin’s RTÉ 2FM Studios.
The other four songs he selected later in the podcast were Inhaler’s “Ice Cream Sundae,” Angelique Kidjo’s “Agolo,” Verdi’s “La Traviata Prelude to Act 1” as performed by Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and Simple Minds’ “Someone Somewhere in Summertime.”
Listen to Bono’s full Desert Discs interview here.