Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q Hewson (born 17 August 1999) is an Irish rock musician from Killiney. He is best known for being the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of Inhaler, with whom he has released two albums, It Won't Always Be Like This in 2021 and Cuts and Bruises in 2023. He is the son of U2 frontman Bono and activist Ali Hewson.
Hewson was born Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q Hewson[1] on 17 August 1999 to Bono, the lead singer of U2, and Ali Hewson. He has two older sisters, Jordan Joy Hewson and Memphis Eve Sunny Day Iris Hewson,[2] and a younger brother, John Abraham Hewson.[3] Elijah was raised Catholic and his first name is a result of the Christianity of his father,[4] while his first middle name is Bono's father's name[5] and his other middle names make reference to Guggi, a member of the Virgin Prunes, and Quincy Jones,[6] a long-time friend of his father. Bono's naming decision, which took him a week to make and two further weeks to announce,[1] earned him ordure in the press, with John Walsh of The Independent wondering what he was thinking[7] and Euan Ferguson of The Observer suggesting that he should be ashamed of himself.[8] Growing up, Elijah lived at Temple Hill in Killiney, which his parents had moved into in the late 1980s,[9] and attended Dalkey School Project[10] and St Andrew's College, Dublin.[11] In December 2017, a photograph taken by Anton Corbijn of Elijah holding hands with Sian Evans, the daughter of U2's the Edge, appeared on the cover of Songs of Experience, U2's fourteenth album.[12]
Aged thirteen,[13] he took up the guitar after playing the video game Guitar Hero,[14] three years after discovering that his father was famous.[13] While at St Andrew's College, he met Robert Keating and Ryan McMahon,[15] and in late 2012,[16] he formed a band with them and a vocalist under the name "The Collapsible Chairs"; when he was fourteen or fifteen, the band's singer left after his vocals were found to be substandard, leading to Hewson replacing him.[17] They later earned the sobriquet "The Inhalers" after the medical device of the same name due to Hewson's asthma,[18] and adopted the moniker Inhaler in February 2015;[16] around this time, Hewson attended a party with the intention of attracting the attention of Josh Jenkinson,[14] who McMahon had known from primary school[19] and who was a member of another band Hewson thought had split up, enticing him to join the band by playing him a copy of "I Wanna Be Adored" by the Stone Roses.[14]
After graduating with a Leaving Certificate,[20] the band took a year out to play music, with the intention of going to college afterwards if it did not work out.[21] Hewson's parents made a point of not assisting further than necessary;[13] in an interview with Craig McLean of the Evening Standard in January 2023, he noted that after his Airbnb was cancelled on the band's first trip to London and he asked his mother to provide a hotel, he found himself instructed to sleep "on a park bench". A friend later allowed them to use their couch.[22] Inhaler later had a No. 1 album on the UK Albums Chart with It Won't Always Be Like This in 2021 and a No. 2 album with Cuts & Bruises in 2023;[23] in contrast, his father's band's first two albums, Boy and October, had charted at No. 52 and No. 11.[24]
Reviewing Inhaler in December 2019, BBC Culture remarked that Hewson's voice was "like you've got back in time, 40 years to witness [U2]'s first faltering steps in a sweaty, smoky Dublin club" [sic],[25] and while reviewing It Won't Always Be Like This, Neil McCormick found Hewson's "raw tone" reminiscent of Bono's, but with "a loose, understated fluidity to his melodies that is very pop contemporary".[26] In 2023, it was reported that he was dating Grace Burns, the daughter of Christy Turlington and Edward Burns.[27]
