Batman has Robin and Rick has Morty, but what would rock music’s equivalent be? How about U2’s Bono and The Edge? On March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, Disney+ will premiere a docu-special on the streamer with the faces of the Irish rock band and David Letterman just in time for the release of U2’s Songs of Surrender.
The docu-special, Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming (named after the track from their 1984 album, The Unforgettable Fire), will primarily focus on the unique friendship of Bono and The Edge that has spanned over four decades and also follows Letterman as he visits Dublin for the first time. And who better to guide him on that tour than the legendary Bono and The Edge? Dublin has been an overlapping theme — up there with America — in U2’s music (just listen to “Cedarwood Road,” “Running to Stand Still” and “The Crystal Ballroom”), and even Bono himself acknowledges this in the teaser for the upcoming special: “Dublin is a real part of our story that’s in our songs.”
On January 13, a short teaser was released in anticipation of the docu-special. Bono’s crooning during an acoustic rendition of U2’s 2005 hit, “Vertigo,” plays in the background as snippets of Bono, The Edge and Letterman walking the streets of Dublin, meeting fans and performing are shown.
Bono has been a busy man of late. He had a starring role in last year’s Sing 2 as Clay Calloway and his memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, was released in November. In addition, Bono had gone on a unique book tour that stopped at theaters across America and Europe. The show was an intimate show much like Bruce Springsteen’s Springsteen on Broadway that gave Bono the opportunity to tell stories about a portion of the songs in his memoir while also performing. A second leg of the tour, which will be a residency at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, is set to kick off this spring with dates spanning April to May.
While U2 hasn’t toured since their 2019 leg of The Joshua Tree Tour or released a full album since 2017’s Songs of Experience — though the band did contribute a song to the Sing 2 soundtrack — they’ve been in the studio working on Songs of Surrender. U2 rarely looked back on their career before the 2017 and ‘19 legs of their Joshua Tree anniversary tour, but Songs of Surrender will be a wide look back at their entire catalog dating back to their 1980 debut album, Boy. The album will feature 40 new renditions of U2’s songs including some of their biggest hits like “With or Without You,” and some of their lesser-known songs like “Red Hill Mining Town.” The first single from the forthcoming album, “Pride (In The Name Of Love),” was recently released.
Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming was produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Documentaries, Letterman’s Worldwide Pants and Morgan Neville — who also directed it.
Bono & The Edge: A Sort of Homecoming will premiere on Disney+ on March 17. Check out the teaser for the docu-special below: