Though Bono knew the basics of debt relief, he consulted with Sachs when he began his unofficial tenure as a Jubilee ambassador. "He gave a call and said he'd like to meet and talk about foreign debts," says Sachs. "And he said to bring a conservative colleague with me, because he wanted to hear the other side." Armed with his quick grad-school tutorial on debt relief, Bono began using his fame to lobby politicians, even those who may not have known exactly who he was. "I'll never forget one day during my Administration," says former President Bill Clinton, "[Treasury] Secretary Lawrence] Summers comes in to my office and says, 'You know, some guy just came in to see me in jeans and a T shirt, and he just had one name, but he sure was smart. Do you know anything about him?'"

Last year Jubilee 2000 was renamed Drop the Debt, and Bono stayed on as the group's most persuasive and high-profile spokesman. He founded DATA, which he hopes to officially launch in mid-March, as a vehicle to expand his African agenda to include short-term economic aid, lowered trade embargoes and money to fight AIDS, in return for democracy, accountability and transparency in governments across that continent. "I know how absurd it is to have a rock star talk about the World Health Organization or debt relief or HIV/AIDS in Africa," Bono says. But he also knows that no one else with his kind of access to media and money has taken on the job. In an effort to keep the discussion serious and avoid the appearance of being just another rocker against bad things, he refrains from treating Africa as an emotional issue. "We don't argue compassion," he says. His argument is pragmatic, not preachy. "We put it in the most crass terms possible; we argue it as a financial and security issue for America...There are potentially another 10 Afghanistans in Africa, and it is cheaper by a factor of 100 to prevent the fires from happening than to put them out."

The DATA Agenda is loosely modeled on the Marshall Plan, which provided Europeans with foreign assistance, debt cancellation and trade incentives to rebuild their economies after World War II, so that they could act as a bulwark against Soviet expansion. When Bono met with Colin Powell in January 2001, he brought a gift, a signed note from George C. Marshall, another military man turned Secretary of State. The rock star turns lyrical when talking about the Marshall Plan: "You still find people my parents' age in Europe who talk about the Marshall Plan. That was where Europe felt the grace of America, in a way more than just stepping in with its military might." Bono wants his vision for Africa to be as effective and as enduring for future generations as the Marshall Plan was for earlier ones. "Can we do something that people will be proud of in generations?" he asks.

At 1:30 a.m., exactly five hours after his bravura Super Bowl show, Bono is exercising the rock star's fundamental right to be ridiculous. At a celebratory post-game dinner in the French Quarter with his band mates, the U2 management team and actress Ashley Judd (an old friend), he throws back some red wine, tells a few stories about Frank Sinatra, leaves a rambling cell-phone message for Judd's husband gently informing him that his wife has been kidnapped by a rock band, and then sneaks off to the bathroom for a cigarette. (Bono thinks the rest of U2 doesn't know he smokes; they know.) After 15 minutes, guitarist the Edge, who adopts a kind, paternalistic role toward his childhood friend and band mate, glances toward the bathroom and says nervously, "Bono's allergic to red wine." Sure enough, Bono has passed out on the bathroom floor. U2's deputy manager, Sheila Roche, is unconcerned and continues sipping her drink. "He's probably just taking a nap. He's an excellent napper," she says.

A few minutes later, Bono emerges rumpled but renewed. As he exits the restaurant and makes his way through the mob on Bourbon Street, he throws his hands in the air and screams to no one in particular, "No, I will not do the snake dance for you!"

Bono is in full rock-star mode, and he has good reason to savor the moment. U2 nearly called it quits a few years ago. After putting out Pop, the first dud of their 10-album career, in 1997, the band members—all in their 40s, all with relationships, side interests and more money than they could ever spend—had to decide whether there was a compelling reason to continue being a band. "Why are you still around?" asks the Edge rhetorically. "You know, you made some great records. But why are you still making records? Part of what we decided is that we had a sense or belief that we can still make the album of the year."

On All That You Can't Leave Behind, which has received eight Grammy nominations, including one for Album of the Year—U2 dispensed with the drum loops and DJs it had toyed with on Pop and got back to the hard business of writing big, straightforward songs. Lyrically, Bono was struggling with his father's terminal illness (his father Bob Hewson died of cancer last year), but specificity can be the plague of pop. Songs like One, Where the Streets Have No Name, Stay (Faraway, So Close) and Walk On from All That You Can't Leave Behind achieve the impossible—becoming meaningful to millions of people—precisely because they are beautifully vague. "Bono did something recently that he probably shouldn't have done," says drummer Larry Mullen Jr. "He did a book as a favor for a friend of his in Ireland that 'explained' all the lyrics. I think that was a mistake because one of the most valuable things about his lyrics is that you can adapt them to any particular situation."

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