Authors: Neil McCormick
And so mostly, despite my initial reservations, I enjoyed my time as a music journalist. Mostly. I have to admit that there were occasions when a sense of envy or resentment would well up.
Like when some pop star who had a cowriting credit by dint of sitting in a studio chipping in the odd idea while teams of established professionals assembled their record would start talking to me (
me
!) about the craft of songwriting. “Listen up,” I wanted to say to Natalie and Samantha and Mel, “I know more about the pain and beauty and goddamn art (not craft!) of songwriting than you could possibly imagine.” But I had to keep my peace. Because they had hits. And I had a bunch of old demos rejected by the same record companies who turned them into stars.
Or when some joker whose looks and luck had carried them way beyond where their talent truly warranted started complaining about how hard it was to be famous. “Come on,” I wanted to scream at Gavin and Dolores and Simon, “you got more than you ever deserved, so fucking make the most of it.” But I couldn't say anything. Because they had it. And I hadn't. And that is all that counted.
Or when the dread subject of Destiny reared its ugly head. And some star who had everything they ever wanted started talking about how it was
meant to be
. Did they really believe that shit? I mean, was it really and truly fatalistically inevitable that Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan would someday top the charts? And that I would be sitting in other people's hotel suites, listening to the inane drivel of lucky dopes with half my talent?
Not that I was bitter. Oh no. But whenever anyone, no matter how genuinely, supremely, indisputably talented they might be, started talking as if their fame was preordained, I wanted to turn off the tape recorder and say, “Listen, buddy, let me share with you an open secret, spoken freely in the streets but never even whispered in the corridors of power: it's a big world out there and sometimes, despite all of your best efforts, events get out of your control.”
I once met Rob Dickens at an awards ceremony. He was no longer head of WEA, yet remained one of the most significant individuals in the British music business. But in my private realm of demonology Dickens was the number-one monster. His dismissal of my band had been so cruelly arbitrary. I had never forgotten that Bill Drummond told me his boss had refused to even listen to our music before tearing up our contract. A mutual acquaintance introduced us. And then promptly froze as she realized what she had done.
“You dropped my band from your label,” I said to him, as we shook hands.
“You'll have to remind me,” he said, smirking. “I've dropped a lot of bands.”
“Shook Up!” I said.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Bill Drummond's lot. Well you never made it, did you? So I was right.”
The
fucker
! I wanted to headbutt him right there, break his nose and leave him bleeding on the floor, maybe kick him while he was down, so he could see how it felt. But I thought it would probably be conduct unbecoming of a representative of the
Daily Telegraph
. So I just smiled and let go of his hand.
We could have made it. I still believe that. I just think it would have required a bit more imagination than by-the-numbers industry guys like Rob Dickens have ever displayed.
So anyway, after all these years writing a newspaper column and consorting with the great and the good of the music business, I'm often asked who is the most famous person I've ever met. It always feels like a trick question. I could say Dylan but I just stood next to him once. And Paul McCartney is pretty famous, but we've only talked on the telephone. The truth is, the most famous person I have ever met is a guy I first got to know in school in Dublin when I was fourteen years old.
I ran into Bono again in May 1996, at a funeral. Bill Graham had died of a heart attack, aged just forty-four, his years of heavy drinking having taken a lethal toll. I went back to Howth to pay my last respects to a man who had been a mentor to so many of us, the best rock journalist ever to have come out of Ireland by a country mile, the man who discovered U2 when really there was not much to discover, and befriended them, believed in them, guided them, challenged and inspired them. But he inspired a lot of other people besides, myself included. The small band of brothers and sisters that put
Hot Press
together back in those early days are bound together forever by a shared history of long nights of music, laughter and fucking hard work keeping Ireland safe for rock 'n' roll. I had spoken to Bill during a visit to Dublin shortly after landing the
Telegraph
job. He had been full of encouragement (after he got over asking me to return a record he loaned me over fifteen years beforeâwhen it came to music, Bill never forgot anything). I remember thinking it was good to know that I could draw on his incredible musical resources. If I was ever stuck for an idea, I could call Bill and just listen to his rambling discources. Bill was a gushing river of ideas and insights; you could spin entire articles out of the tributaries of his conversation.
But it was not to be. We would never again have the pleasure of his rich, wild, kind and frequently rather inebriated company. Bill was gone.
He received an incredible sending off in a funeral as eccentric as the man himself. The entire Irish music business seemed to have come to pay tribute and it was standing-room-only in Howth Church, an enormous, Victorian-era graybrick monstrosity overlooked by gargoyles in the center of the village. A weave of fiddles and guitars from folk band Altan welcomed us in. Maire Ni Bhraoinain of Clannad filled the rafters with her soft, ethereal voice as she sang a mournful Gaelic lament before the Gospel reading. But it was not an unduly somber occasion. I still chuckle whenever I think of the parish priest receiving an offertory gift from Liam Mackey, the priest standing there in all his fine robes in front of the altar solemnly holding a copy of Miles Davis'
Bitches Brew
above his head (the psychedelic cover of which features a naked black woman with prominent breasts). During Communion, Bono sang Leonard Cohen's elegaic “Tower of Song” from the balcony, with backing from the Edge and members of Altan. Gavin Friday sang Dylan's “Death Is Not the End.” And then Simon Carmody of the Irish trash-rock band the Golden Horde gave a plaintive, shaky, solo rendition of New York Doll Johnny Thunder's “You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory” while Bono, Edge, Gavin Friday, Niall Stokes, Liam Mackey and another old friend, John Stephenson, carried the coffin into the bright sunlight. That was the hardest moment. I suppose we all thought of ourselves as young and were still getting used to the very notion of mortality among our contemporaries. A few of us made the trip out to Fingal Cemetery, where Bill's coffin was laid into the ground to the lonely strains of a jazz trumpet.
Afterward, as tradition dictated, there was a wake in the Royal Hotel in Howth. I was trying to comfort a highly emotional Liam Mackey, when Bono and Ali sat down at our table. It had been a long time since I had seen them, but no words were spoken about that. Edge joined us. And Gavin. And we toasted Bill. “He was not an ordinary man,” said Bono. “He made so many connections he could introduce you to yourself. I'm so glad I knew him. I'm really going to miss hearing that tuba of a voice, like a whole brass section in your ear at four o'clock in the morning.”
The afternoon dragged on with stories and drink, as these occasions must, and a small ragged band of us found ourselves still toasting him late into the night, in the Dublin club Lillie's Bordello. I don't remember at what stage Bono made his farewells but I do remember talking to him about my little sister, Louise, who was the latest member of the McCormick family to have become involved with U2. She had been employed as an assistant engineer on sessions recording B-sides for the
Achtung Baby
album and got along with Bono so well he started using her to record his personal demos. Louise had been a fan of U2 since the earliest recordings. At the age of thirteen she played my copy of
Boy
over and over, until even I was in danger of getting sick of it. But she had a great equanimity about her, and took employment by her teen idol in her stride. Louise had been very quiet around the studio, apparently, and it was a while before she even mentioned that she was related to Ivan, Stella and me. “Where would U2 be without the McCormicks?” Bono joked.
“I often wonder where I would be without U2,” I replied. “Probably a fuck sight better off.”
“Ah, don't be like that, Neil,” said Bono.
“You know, I've got my own column in Britain's biggest-selling broadsheet newspaper, with a nice little picture of me on top,” I pointed out. “I've got more than a million readers, so they tell me. The BBC send camera crews around to my office whenever there's a breaking music story. My granny got all excited 'cause she saw me on the six o'clock news. I'm a regular guest on half a dozen radio shows and, if you get up early enough in the morning, you might see me on the couch on breakfast TV. And still I feel like a failure. It's ridiculous. I never got the kind of fame I always wanted but under almost any other circumstances I would probably be the most famous person to have come out of my class at school, at least. But I had to go to school with you!”
“You're not the only one of my friends who complains about how hard it is knowing me,” said Bono, smiling.
“Everybody's got their dragons to slay,” I grumbled.
“Yeah, but you've got to kill Bono!” chuckled Bono. This notion seemed to amuse him greatly. “That's it! You've got to kill me,” he laughed. “It's for your own good! And mine!”
“I don't begrudge you a thing,” I said. “I think you got everything you deserved. What I worry about is: does that mean I got what I deserved too?”
We started to establish a new relationship after that, a mixture of the personal and professional. My music column provided an excuse to stay in touch. I could ring Bono for quotes and comments without feeling like I was hanging on his coattails. The rise of the mobile phone also meant there was a number where I could leave a message for him personally, anywhere in the world, without having to go through a retinue of assistants. And he started calling me a little more often, whenever something brought me to mind.
Like when U2 decided to call their next album
Pop
.
“I don't believe it,” I scoffed. “How many times have you told me you don't make pop music?”
“I've grown to like the word
pop,
” he laughed. “That pop thing you've always been into, I used to think it was a term of abuse. I didn't realize how cool it was. It's the grown-ups who called it pop music. And now we've all grown up. Some more than others!”
We were talking about the meaning of pop, when he went off to fetch a dictionary from his shelves. “I've got a great definition of pop,” he insisted. “Let me see.
Pox. Practice. Pram. Prant. Prang
. God, all my words!
Pratfall. Preach. Prayer rug.
Hold on, I'm past it. Here we go. P-oâ¦
POP
.
Pop, poppy, pop. To make or cause to make a light, sharp explosive sound.
Isn't that great? Or how about:
an informal word for father
. I like that, I like that a lot.” He idly continued his amble through the dictionary. “
Popcorn
. And then
pope
. That's my favorite. Pop is the Pope after he's dropped an
e
. I'm gonna get a T-shirt made up: âPop John Paul II.' ”
“How about âPop John Paul George and Ringo'?” I suggested.
Bono referred to these chats as “our ongoing dialogue.” We had lunch one day and talked, just for a change, about God. “Religion is responsible for a lot of bad things that have happened in the world,” Bono admitted after one of my more stinging critiques. “But I have to say, it's probably done a lot of good things too. It's sort of politically incorrect but if you look around you, at practical things missionaries have achieved in some of the toughest areas of the world, hospitals and schools in Nicaragua and Calcutta, well, I don't want to be the defender of religion, but if I had to be, I probably could. Apart from the odd Spanish Inquisition.”
Afterward, we rambled around a labyrinth-like bookshop. When we were leaving, he handed me a copy of Leo Tolstoy's
The Kingdom of God Is Within You
.
I laughed, but I was flattered. “Do you still think there's hope for me?”
“There's always hope,” said Bono.
I was flown out to San Francisco to see the PopMart tour, watching from the mixing desk in the company of Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis. The biggest band in Britain had just played a support slot to the biggest band in the world. “Fuckin' mad, man. Mad!” Liam kept saying, in tones of wonder, at the unfolding of what was undoubtedly the most impressive multimedia extravaganza since, well, the last U2 tour. Never regarded as the most articulate of people, Liam nonetheless has a distinctive way of expressing himself. “This is the first time I've seen U2,” he declared. “Now I understand! It'sâ¦phwoarghghghgh!”