Bono in Madrid, City Of Blinding Lights

"Something like Iris, I did myself regret it at the last minute. A few days before the album launched I tried to take the song off the record. We're doing this homage to all these punk bands we loved, and here's this song about missing my mother. How punk rock is that? I panicked, 'Let's take it off.' She died when I was 14, it was September 40 years ago. I realized that the day I was trying to pull it off the album was the same day 40 years ago that she slipped away. That sort of cosmic coincidence gave me encouragement to trust my instincts. You have to be bold enough to be emotionally direct. That's what I learned from John Lennon." - Bono, 2015