Tonight, just hours after his father succumbed to cancer at age 75, Bono spoke about his father to the capacity crowd at Earl’s Court.
He dedicated “Kite” to him, saying:
“I want to thank my old man, my father, for giving me this voice. He was a fine tenor and he said to me if only I had had his voice just think of what might have happened. [ He had ] … a lot of attitude and he was very ill over the last week and he’s no longer ill, cause he’s free of all that now. My old man is… has left the planet, like Elvis. This is a song I thought I wrote the lyrics for my kids, but I think my old man wrote it for me. This is Kite.”
Bono also changed the last line to: “the last of the opera stars, when hip hop drove the big cars” a tribute to Bob, an avid opera fan.