How Bono Helped Joe Jones Squash a Feud With Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody

Joe Jonas recalled one of his favorite celebrity encounters from his Camp Rock 2 days, when he and the Jonas Brothers went to see U2 perform in Toronto. On the podcast Hey Jonas, Joe Jonas explained that Bono’s publicist approached the group and invited them to an exclusive afterparty, telling them Bono personally wanted them there.

With an early call time the next morning, most of the group decided to skip it, but Jonas and longtime Jonas Brothers guitarist John Taylor couldn’t pass up the chance. Jonas joked that he imagined one of his heroes sitting at the party, wondering why they never showed.

“We were approached, all of us, by what was Bono’s publicist, and he said, ‘Excuse me, ‘Hi, I just want to let you guys know that Bono is going to be having a really exclusive afterparty, and he wanted to extend it to you and the band. We’d love to see you guys there,” said Jonas. “And we’re all like, ‘Oh, thank you.’ Now that kind of felt like, ‘This is probably not really… Bono’s [invitation].”

Still, the chance was too good for Jonas and Taylor to pass up.

National Geographic Documentary Films /Courtesy Everett Collection

“By the way, [it was] one of the best concerts we’ve ever seen. So then, we get to the hotel; I remember we get on our floor, like floor 15. John Taylor and I look at each other, and we’re like, ‘Bro, the party’s across the street. What if we don’t go?’ Everyone went to bed,” recalled Jonas. “Bono, one of my heroes, I just had this vision of him just waiting for us, like, ‘I guess they’ll never show.’

“So we went down, walked across the street, walked in, and it’s kind of like empty. It was like people were starting to trickle in because the concert was just finishing. We got there pretty fast,” recalled Jonas. “Like a movie scene, like a mist of smoke, and Bono walks in with his shirt buttoned down to the last button.”

Bono headed straight for their table, sat down, and spent hours talking with them. Singer Maxwell eventually joined them, while Colin Farrell and Kings of Leon were also among the celebrities at the party that night.

The night also gave Jonas the chance to confront Snow Patrol frontman Gary Lightbody over an article criticizing the Jonas Brothers’ purity rings as a marketing tool.

“Two weeks before that, there was an article where [Lightbody] essentially wrote something about the purity rings that we had at that time and how it was a way for us to sell music to people and how it was Disney’s idea, and it was just dangerous marketing selling sex to young people as a marketing tool,” explained Jonas. So when Lightbody walked over, Joe decided to address the criticism directly.

“Bono was like, ‘Meet my friend, Joe Jonas,’ and I’m like, ‘Oh hi, actually I have something I want to talk to you about,” explained Joe. “We kind of got into it, and Bono made him sit down, and we aired it out. Bono literally mediated the conversation.”

The unexpected intervention seemingly helped Joe and Lightbody put the disagreement behind them, leaving Joe with an even greater appreciation for Bono. “He’s a saint,” said Jonas.