Book Excerpt

Former Times pop music critic Robert Hilburn writes in his new book "Corn Flakes With John Lennon (and Other Tales From a Rock 'n' Roll Life)" that after John Lennon's death in 1980, he focused on artists who carried on in Lennon's tradition, including Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, U2 and Kurt Cobain. But in the second half of the decade, the music began to drift and widespread piracy threatened to throw the recording industry into collapse. Looking for some answers about the future of rock, Hilburn sat down with Bono, a visionary from one generation, and Jack White, the most captivating musician from a newer generation.

Bono was in town to address the Women's Conference 2008, and we talked over breakfast about why U2 has remained such a compelling force for so long. He stressed the importance of keeping your sights set on artistry, something they learned from Dylan, Lennon and Springsteen, among others.

"Bruce is probably one of the only people in the world who understands how to survive in this kind of a life, how to get through all this without dying or walking with a limp or with one eye -- the way so many of these great people we've known and met did, these musical geniuses who didn't make it through the fire," Bono said. "They gave us beautiful music, and they were left exhausted, empty. It's heartbreaking. You've got to be tough, and you've got to avoid being self-conscious.

"I certainly went through a self-conscious phase, and it makes you ugly. . . . And it can change the way you walk and think because you don't want to let people down. . . .

"I am much more recognized now than I ever was, but I don't notice it anymore. People come up to me all the time, and I don't care if I've washed or if I'm crawling on my hands and knees out of a night club. The artist's journey is away from self-consciousness. That's where you've got to have tenacity. Bruce certainly has that. Lennon had it. I had that," he said. "It's like we are locked into something and we will not let go of it. If your drug of choice is that song that's never been heard before but feels like it's always existed, then you'll do anything to protect it."

Despite the struggle he outlines, Bono doesn't feel rock is at the end of the line. "It's still the most powerful art form," he said.

"Rock brought together rhythm, harmony and top-line melody: rhythm for the body, top-line melody for the mind, and harmony for the spirit. That's a very powerful concoction. Classical music has harmony and top-line melody, but it didn't have rhythm. That's why rock 'n' roll surpassed it."