Bono is celebrating his 60th birthday on May 10—and you're surprised because, WTF, how is the lead singer of U2 60?
But that's what happens eventually when someone's been rocking out since before you were alive and has left his mark, not just on the music world, but all over the planet in many not-so-mysterious ways.
"I'm not sure that my younger self would approve of where I've got to, but I like to think that if my younger self stopped punching my face, my younger self would see that I've actually stayed true to all the things I believed in," Bono told London's Sunday Times magazine in 2018.
"I'm still in a band that shares everything," he continued. "I'm not just shining a light on troublesome situations, but trying to do something about them. I still have my faith, I'm still in love, I'm still in a band."
Bono makes it all sound so simple. Though making things needlessly complicated certainly doesn't seem like his style, especially now that he's one of rock's elder statesmen, the journey to being able to check off all of life's greatest hits at a glance wasn't altogether a smooth ride. Or at last not a boring one.
In the name of love of a singular artist who has fronted one of the best rock bands for more than 40 years, here are 60 facts about Bono:
"I'm a scribbling, cigar-smoking, wine-drinking, Bible-reading band man," he succinctly, humbly, and perhaps a little facetiously, summed himself up to Assayas. "A show-off...who loves to paint pictures of what I can't see. A husband, father, friend of the poor and sometimes the rich.
"An activist traveling salesman of ideas. Chess player, part-time rock star, opera singer, in the loudest folk group in the world. How's that?"