Killing Bono (14 page)

Ah, what did he know? The peculiar thing is that, as much as I loved U2 and felt convinced they had what it took to become a successful international rock band, I seriously doubted whether they would ever trouble the singles charts. And that is where I saw Yeah! Yeah! heading. I wanted the mass audience. Given the obvious commercial limitations of their high artistic principles, U2 could perhaps reach the level of playing arenas (if they were lucky) but I had my eye set on stadiums. Fuck it. I wanted the planet.

In my mind's eye it was already real to me. This was my plot for the eighties. I would get a major record deal and release a classic debut album of teen-angst pop that would delight critics and teenyboppers alike. My band's first three albums would be melodic, punchy, meaningful and, most of all, commercial. We would make a couple of films that would be the finest synthesis of rock and cinema since
Hard Day's Night
. I was already working on the script for one of these, a story about the meaning of life, the universe and everything, based on an obscure science-fiction novel by Kilgore Trout entitled
Venus on a Half Shell
. My main concern was how to turn the banjo-playing hero into a four-piece rock 'n' roll band. I had George Lucas, fresh from his
Star Wars
triumphs, penciled in as director. At the height of our success we would astound the world by producing a daring, innovative album that would be to the eighties what
Sgt. Pepper's
was to the sixties. A new hi-fi system would have to be built to cater to this recording revolution, which would mix multichoice visuals with Sensurround sound. We would follow it up with an on-the-road album mixing live work with studio demos, rehearsals and other off-the-cuff recordings. Critics would write theses about the meaning of my increasingly convoluted lyrics while pop magazines would worry about how weird we were becoming. We would break up acrimoniously, sending suicide rates soaring. My long-time lover, Nastassja Kinski, would leave me and I would retreat to the studio to work out my pain in a solo outing to rival
Blood on the Tracks
. At the end of the decade, the group would triumphantly re-form to play a concert to be broadcast live all over the world from the first moon station. I would be knighted.

But first we had to do some gigs. The St. Paul's end-of-year talent contest was coming up again but this year it was to be open to the public and was being held in their massive gymnasium, which was the site of a popular weekly rock disco and had a full-scale theatrical stage. This, we decided, would be the ideal place to unveil the future of popular music on an unsuspecting (but presumably grateful) public. We redoubled our efforts at rehearsals.

In October 1980,
Boy
was released. I held U2's debut album in my hands and marveled at this proof that the impossible dreams of teenagers could come true. U2 were touring the U.K. and Bono suggested in a phone call to
Hot Press
that I might like to come over to see them at the Marquee. Having witnessed their very first performance, I would have a unique angle from which to assess their progress. “It's like the Beatles in the Cavern, Neil,” he told me excitedly. “It's going so well.”

The only problem was that the U2 gig on Thursday, November 27, was just a day before Yeah! Yeah!'s planned debut at St. Paul's, so it would have to be an overnight return. Feeling like an international jetsetter, I flew to London. It was already dark when I set off and I remember spending the whole journey staring out the airplane window, marveling at the delicate spiderweb of road and city lights flickering in the blackness below.

I arrived at the Marquee in a state of mental agitation. I had traveled by Tube from Heathrow Airport, trying hard not to stare at my fellow passengers, people of every conceivable brand of ethnicity. Coming from a white, exclusively Roman Catholic country, I found my head put in a spin by London's overcrowded multiculturalism. The Marquee itself was smaller than I imagined. I had read the name of this legendary venue in the
NME
so often that I had pictured a vast arena, not a crowded club. I negotiated my way to the narrow backstage dressing room to greet the band, who seemed happy to see a familiar face. “You're going to witness something special tonight,” Bono promised me.

And I did. The place was jammed with sweaty bodies, a capacity crowd of 740 riding U2's tidal wave. I had not seen them play since a secret gig in the Project Arts Center in July and I realized I missed them. After getting used to the crafted beauty of their debut album it was simply stunning to catch that furious live attack again: hard, rocky, pulsating. Bono did not speak so much anymore; he did not exhort the crowd to become involved. He didn't have to. He was preaching to an audience already converted by the album. There was a tiny bit of resentment in my heart toward the hipsters of this foreign metropolis who were roaring U2's name as if the band belonged to them. I could feel that tug of letting go, familiar to everyone who watches their private discovery become public property. But mostly I was ecstatic and amazed. My schoolfriends had come so far so fast and they were still traveling at hypervelocity, heading upward and into the ether.

In the dressing room afterward, Bono babbled with excitement. “This band isn't gonna stop. You've seen the pits, Neil. You've seen where we've come from. To get from there to here, you'll admit, is rather interesting. To get from here to a gold album in the U.S. is nothing, a small step. I'm serious. We're gonna break America like no British band has broken it in a long time.”

With a sheepish grin, Adam disappeared into the night with some girl who had been at the show. His taste for the traditional rock 'n' roll vices was becoming something of a running joke in the band. The rest of us headed back to a flat in Earl's Court rented by Island Records. It was an unimpressive affair, with (as I recall) just one large bedroom containing a number of single beds, where Larry, Edge, Bono and I settled down to talk. They wanted to catch up on news from home, expressing particular interest in what up-and-coming bands were filling the void left by their departure. Then I pulled out a tape recorder to begin the official interview, rustling my notes to assume the role of journalist.

“I suppose we should start with the album,” I said.

“I suppose we should,” said Bono.

“Uhm. Well. What do you think of the album?”

“It's my favorite album,” said Bono, laughing.

“What a question!” said Larry. “This guy really goes in at the deep end!”

“I think it's lovely,” said Edge.

We talked till all hours of the morning. We spoke about the history of the band, with Bono spluttering whenever I interrupted his sometimes fanciful rewriting of the past to remind him of the often more banal truth. When he tried to assert that the Marine Hotel was the first gig, I raised the specter of their Bay City Rollers cover versions in the school talent contest. “Oh please, Neil, you go back. This is like my life passing before me. What have we done to deserve this?”

“At this stage, Bono is taking a coughing fit,” Edge solemnly noted for the benefit of the tape recorder. “He's looking bad.”

We spoke about the past, the future, their influences and motivation. But most of all we spoke about something Bono and I had often talked about. God. Religion. Faith. For the first time, Bono was uneasy about the subject—all too aware that rumors about the band's Christian commitments were flying around, and fearful that this was an association that could damage them in the eyes of self-consciously cool rock commentators and consumers. “We don't want to be the band that talks about God,” he insisted. “Anything that has to be said is in the music or on stage and I don't want to go through the media. I'll talk to you personally about it but I don't want to talk to the world about it because we will face a situation where people will see us with a banner over our heads. This is not the way U2 is gonna work.”

But still we did talk about it. Long after the official interview was over, Bono and I were sitting in our underpants in adjacent beds talking furiously into the wee small hours, while the Edge lightly snored in the corner and Larry grumbled that he was trying to sleep. Faith seemed to me nothing but a panacea for fools. I had examined the Christian religion from every conceivable angle and found it wanting. I felt I had seen through it and called it out, the way the boy shamed the bleating flocks of yes-men in the tale of the emperor's new clothes. Yet here was this guy I thought the world of, as smart as they come, who had apparently gone through the same process of questioning and doubting and reached entirely the opposite conclusion. “I don't understand how you can find faith in religion when you see all the damage it's done, especially growing up in a country like Ireland,” I argued.

“I'm not into religion,” Bono countered. “I am completely antireligious. Religion is a term for a collection, a denomination. I am interested in the personal experience of God. When I was fourteen I called out and asked God to show me a direction, and I wondered whether there was any direction or not, and then I saw it happening. I saw the band taking shape and being pointed in that direction and it gave me an insight.”

“But you were part of that Christian Movement in school,” I said. “All those happy-clappy people, they used to do my head in.”

“I found that very hard on the head, too,” he insisted. “I found them very uncool. But I realize now that that is their beauty. Because God's values are not the values of this world. They're not the values of cool. It says in the Bible that it's harder for a rich man to get into the kingdom of Heaven than it is for a camel to get through the eye of a needle, and we are rich men. We are people who are rich in intellect or personality and we tend to judge people by our values. God doesn't judge people by our values so it's usually humble people who find God. But at that stage I couldn't handle those people, so I left.”

“I'm baffled about how someone as intelligent as you can think you can find all the answers in a centuries-old book,” I said.

“I'm still finding my way,” he replied. “I don't have all the answers, I haven't got everything sussed. It's not easy being a Christian. When you discover Christianity, you discover other things as well. You tend to experience a darker side of life. You experience great temptation. Becoming a Christian you go into battle. Because of what this band stands for, 'cause of where we are in the business, you wouldn't believe the pressures we're under. I mean spiritually. We get up early in the morning and we work against it. Every day is a battle, every moment is a struggle, and it's the same struggle other people have in life if they're looking for an answer. It's the same struggle you are going through.”

“But I'm not trying to force anyone to live their life a certain way. I'm not on a crusade.”

“I'm not on a crusade, Neil,” Bono asserted. “If there is a God and Jesus Christ died on the cross and if there is any value in what He says, it should be shown in our lives. We're not puritans. We're not saying this is the right way and you are wrong. But if people come up to me and say, “I'm asking questions,' I'm willing to share my experience. If they want to follow that through, that's fine, but I wouldn't lay it on anybody. Look at Adam. He is as free as any individual. He honors our commitment. He realizes that it is a very important source of inspiration. But he rejects it himself. That's the way the world should be. I'm not going to hit somebody over the head if they don't believe.”

“To me the Bible is all arbitrary rules and regulations based on unsound supernatural principles,” I said. “It's all about surrendering your own will and giving up responsibility for your own existence. There's so much in life I want to experience and I'm not gonna be stopped by all that Catholic guilt they tried to foist on me growing up.”

“A lot of people think surrendering to God means giving up all the ‘good things.' I used to believe that, in a way,” said Bono. “But when you get involved, you start to see things very clearly. You start to see what's happening around you. When a guy goes for you with a bottle, you realize what is happening, you realize he's being cheated. It's an insight. It's certainly not puritanical or cowardly. It's not about abdicating responsibility. It's about taking life into your own hands.”

“You're so sure you're right and I'm so sure I'm right,” I said. “But we can't both be right!”

“You make me smile, Neil, because I know you are looking for answers, you are looking for God, and it's all right at the end of your nose!” said Bono.

“Go to sleep!” grumbled Larry from his bed.

“Better do what he says,” suggested Bono. “Big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“Hope you've said your prayers,” joked Bono.

“I don't need to pray,” I countered. “I believe in the power of rehearsal.”

Y
eah! Yeah! rocked the packed hall at St. Paul's, playing three original songs and dancing away with first place, an outcome that had never been in doubt (in our ranks, at least).

A leading pirate-radio DJ was on hand to present the prizes. “I'm Gerry Ryan,” he declared in a breezy, mid-Atlantic DJ swagger, winking as he shook my hand, his manner suggesting that we should all know who he was already. I had never heard of him before but tried to cover up my ignorance by asking, incredulously, “
The
Gerry Ryan?”

“That's right,” he responded, with admirable nonchalance.

“I'm
the
Neil McCormick,” I announced, with gleeful immodesty.

What the hell. I was
the
Neil McCormick and who could deny it? I was a teenage member of Dublin's rock elite, the youngest person in
Hot Press
. I had been on radio and TV. And my band was ripe and ready to take on the world. I felt like everything I touched would turn to gold records.

I experienced a rare moment of self-doubt on December 8, 1980, the day John Lennon was murdered. I must have been the last person in the world to hear this news, or at least the last to take it in. I was standing at the layout table, working on the cover of the Christmas edition of
Hot Press
, an elaborate affair that I had been slaving over all day, when Niall came in and said, “All change! We're going to put John Lennon on the front.”

“Why?” I said, with astonishment. “Have we got an interview?”

“He's been shot,” said Niall. “Haven't you heard? He's dead.”

“Oh, fuck off!” I cheerfully responded. Niall encouraged an atmosphere of irreverent candor, so I felt I could say such things to my editor without fear of reproach. As the junior member of the operation I was used to being wound up and, since everyone in the office knew how I felt about the Beatles (and Lennon in particular), I assumed this was just the latest gag at my expense. So I continued working on my original cover while various members of staff trotted up to insist that my hero was deceased, retreating with bafflement when I told them all to piss off and let me get on with my job. It was only when Bill Graham came in, muttering to himself about Lennon's legacy, that I began to have doubts. Bill was too far adrift on his own sea of endless internal contemplation to allow himself to be dragged into an elaborate practical joke at the expense of the art director. I put down my ruler and scalpel and went out on to the street. And there it was, emblazoned across the evening papers in black and white: “
LENNON SHOT DEAD BY CRAZED GUNMAN
”; “
BEATLE MURDERED
”; “
JOHN LENNON DEAD
.”

I sat down on the pavement and started to cry.

In the fantasy world where I spent so much of my mental time, I always thought that I would meet John Lennon. He was the only rock star I really wanted to talk to, up close and in person, not so much to ask him the million and one questions I had about the Beatles and his solo career and not just to tell him, like so many fans before, how much he meant to me, personally, but to look him in the eyes and see…What? My reflection, I suppose. To see myself in my hero. To find out if I actually existed in the same dimension as him.

God may have died for me years before but Lennon was my living idol, sitting astride my personal pantheon of rock deities. My bedroom had become a shrine to the cult of rock 'n' roll. Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Bowie, Dylan, Johnny Rotten: these were the almost supernatural icons whose images were plastered on my wall. And a whole tier of bizarre lesser divinities besides, from the patron saint of geeks, Joey Ramone, to my Aphrodite, goddess of love, Debbie Harry. But I didn't just want to prostrate myself at their altar. I wanted to ascend the stairway to the stars, where my own psychedelically colored painting of Lennon held pride of place, cast in the guise of mystic seer, Buddha, Christ and Zeus all rolled into one idealized figure, floating through the universe like
Marvel
comic's Silver Surfer, peering omnisciently through little round spectacles that contained the whole world. Surely the godhead of my psyche could not have fallen too?

I tried not to leave much space for doubt in my life. After all those years of wrestling with the concept of faith, long nights of self-torturing analysis as I questioned every facet of the religion I had grown up with, I knew only too well how those little worms of misgiving could gnaw at the mind, chomping away until there was nothing in there but a black hole of despair. So I crammed them down into one dark corner and bolted the cellar door shut. I relied on confidence to carry me through. I believed in self-belief. But I was shaken to the core by Lennon's murder. If one of the brightest stars in the firmament could be so capriciously snuffed out, what chance was there for the rest of us mere mortals? Suddenly the future seemed a far less certain place. What if I never made it? What if I was just swept away by the random workings of the universe?

Yeah! Yeah! had a gig that week, supporting the Gravediggers. We played “Twist and Shout” as an encore, ripping the place up. I stood in the lights at the end, riven with emotion, listening to the crowd applauding, thinking, “I
can
do this. I've got to do this.”

My interview with U2 appeared in the same issue as Bill Graham's moving Lennon obituary. I was a little bit nervous about its reception by the band. Despite Bono's repeated admonitions that U2 did not want to be the band that talked about God, I felt strongly that the spiritual issue had to be addressed. For a start, there were the rumors about the band's religious commitments, with their enemies on the Dublin scene (and there were plenty of those, a motley collection of professional begrudgers and vanquished rivals) depicting them as Bible-thumping puritans, which I knew not to be the case. But, just as importantly, I felt that you could not properly understand the group without taking into account their spiritual imperative. It had been the subject of their first proper song, the unrecorded “Street Missions,” and continued to inform much of the material on
Boy
(what was the album's desperate, driving, optimistic opening track, “I Will Follow,” if not a dedication to God, with its declaration of “I was lost / I am found”?). A conviction that U2 existed for a higher purpose underpinned Bono's need to reach out and touch his audience, to en-fold and encompass their humanity, to be at one with them.

In a rock 'n' roll milieu where studied cool was often valued over passion, U2 had always seemed bravely and unfashionably open in their desires and it disturbed me now to think of them trying to close ranks and cover up something so crucial to their identity. “I don't know what you're going to do with this,” Bono said to me before I left London. “You have a sort of peculiar understanding of the group 'cause you've been there right from the beginning and I really wanted to talk to you about it. So if you want you can go right ahead and print it all. It's all on tape. But it's a difficult area and we're going to be faced with the consequences. A lot of people will use it as a trap and work it to their own ends. And I really cannot entertain that.”

I was halfway through writing the article when I suddenly decided I simply could not turn a blind eye to the truth, so I dived into an exposition of U2's spiritual evolution (although I did not include Bono's private conversation with me), effectively outing them in the media as Christians. A few days after the issue hit the streets, U2 performed an emotional homecoming show at Dublin's TV Club. I went backstage and entered the dressing room with some trepidation. Bono cast me a look of pantomime reproval (pursed lip, raised eyebrow) before breaking into a grin and enveloping me in a hug. “Now everyone knows what you know,” he said. “If it bothers them, they'll just have to get over it.”

“If we had to be stabbed in the back by somebody, it might as well be an old pal,” added the Edge, wryly.

Yeah! Yeah! gigged frequently, taking any support slots we could get, developing our stagecraft, defining and refining our sound and image and continually adding new songs to the set. Indeed, it became something of a matter of pride to debut a new song every time we played. A torrent of material was pouring out as Ivan and I got to grips with our chosen medium of expression, continually experimenting with form and content but absolutely adhering to the primacy of the chorus. Ivan was displaying a real flair for melody, finding a balance between the emotional satisfaction offered by traditional chord sequences and the flights of inspiration that could come with more obscure shifts and twists. As for me, lyrics were proving to be the easiest and most satisfying things I could write. I labored over my journalism but songs arrived unbidden, in intense bursts of inspiration, with little of the gradual shaping and improvisation that Bono described. A title, a theme and a rhyming scheme was all it took to unlock my subconscious, and out would pop songs about superstition (“So It's in the Stars”), masturbation (“Got Your Picture”), sexual frustration (“Breaking the Lights”), global starvation (“Skin and Bone”) and even, much to my own surprise, the eternal quest for an absent God (“Say the Word”).

If the lyrics tended toward the high-minded and poetic, the image of the band itself was anything but. Wearing clothes that referenced the swinging sixties (colorful shirts, lean-cut jackets), we adopted an increasingly wacky, comically self-deprecating, party-band attitude. The emphasis was on encouraging audiences to have fun. Leo certainly brought his influence to bear in this regard, debunking any tendencies to take ourselves too seriously. He was a fierce opponent of pomposity and egotism in all its forms. How we ever became such good friends I will never understand.

There was a miniature local scene developing, involving a number of bands who were alternatively allies and rivals, sharing resources while vying with one another for local prominence. We would play shows at the Summit Inn with the Dark (who modeled themselves on the Doors) and the improbably named Deaf Actor (the latest incarnation of our old friends Sounds Unreel). As different as we all were, we began to influence one another, particularly in our search for wilder and trippier sounds. Bill Graham began to speak of a brand of Howth psychedelia. His mother lived in the village and, as Bill's heavy drinking slipped toward alcoholism and he found it increasingly hard to sustain an independent existence, he could frequently be found in the local bars, where young musicians would gather around for the privilege of buying him drinks and listening to his words of wisdom. Bill was an absolutely brilliant man, a genuine music-lover whose mind raced to make inspired connections between disparate musical sources, but he thought so quickly and spoke so fast it was hard to keep up with him at the best of times. After a few pints he verged on incoherence but we would just sit and nod, never quite sure if he was advising us to listen to Miles Davis and Cuban salsa or just asking for a pint of Guinness and another sausage. Noel Redding, former bassist with the Jimi Hendrix Experience, was another who sometimes frequented the village taverns and found himself plagued for advice by star-struck local wannabes. When Phil Lynott bought a large house in Howth, it confirmed in our fevered minds that this rather quaint fishing village was about to become a crucial landmark on the rock 'n' roll map.

Hot Press
was due to be launched in the U.K. in January 1981, a project that was consuming a great deal of my time. The pool of potential readers in a country as small and as musically conservative as Ireland was inevitably tiny and Niall became convinced that
Hot Press
needed to expand or would wither on the vine. The magazine had a lot of goodwill within the British music industry, partly because the journalism was conscientious and rarely as willfully mean as the U.K. music weeklies, and Niall felt that we could compete in that market. Besides, since the population of Ireland was effectively reduced every year by the mass exodus of any young person with the slightest ambition, he figured that even by appealing to this Irish diaspora we would be massively expanding our potential readership.

I was charged with coming up with a poster campaign to launch the British edition. My concept was simple: a photo of an Irish rock star reading a copy of the
Hot Press
, with flames leaping from the pages of the magazine. Naturally, I had only one person in mind for the part of the star. Niall talked Bono and Paul McGuinness into lending their support by persuading them that the campaign could work for U2 also. The shoot took place in the house of my favorite
Hot Press
photographer, Colm Henry. He was a gentle, soft-spoken, slightly spaced-out guy whose stark black-and-white prints had an indefinable quality of otherness and a professional sheen that put him leagues ahead of any other photographer then working in Ireland. I made up a mock copy of
Hot Press
featuring a full-page advertisement for U2's
Boy
on the back. I met Bono and Ali in the center of town and drove out to Colm's house in some beat-up jalopy Bono had acquired. He chatted enthusiastically the whole time about U2's recent mini-tour of America while Ali pointedly reminded him to keep his eyes on the road and his hands (which would fly into the air to make a point) on the wheel.