Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelganger

by Neil McCormick

  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”).

  What do you do when the winds of the world lose their howl?

  And you can hear the sighs in the silence that whispers around?

  There are voices in the shade, there are hands in the air,

  They are reaching for you, must they reach out forever?

  When the last laugh chokes, the last fire smokes

  And wheels of stone roll on cobbled hearts

  And beauty sleeps and lovers leap

  Armies meet and reason parts

  And hope breaks in your hand like glass

  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.

  In the photo studio (actually just a white-painted spare room) I produced, from a plastic bag, the tools I had brought along to create the desired effect: a wire coat hanger, a box of paraffin-soaked firelighters and some matches. “Very hi-tech,” joked Bono. “I can see we’re working with professionals here.”

  While Bono stood holding the Hot Press open in front of him, his mouth open and eyes popping in an expression of mock alarm, I lurked out of camera shot with a lit firelighter stuck on the end of the bent-out coat hanger, so the flames appeared to be shooting from the pages. It took a while to achieve the required result, with a moment of panic when my only copy of Hot Press caught ablaze. “Don’t set fire to his hair!” screeched Ali, as I endeavored to rescue the precious issue.

  There was much laughter after that, with Bono reminding us, in a thick Dublin accent, to “Moind the hair, roight? Can’t be a rock star wid no hair!”

  Afterward, at Bono’s behest, he posed for some photos with his girlfriend, Bono with his white shirt buttoned up to the neck, Ali in a flowery print dress. You don’t see them often photographed together and perhaps these rare pictures illustrate why. Bono is at ease with the camera, alternately playing to it and ignoring it completely, while Ali, as beautiful as she is, looks distinctly uncomfortable, either watching the camera with wary distrust or watching Bono perform with an air of suspicious curiosity. Ali was never a seeker of the limelight. She loved Bono (of that there could be no doubt). Everybody loved Bono. He was such a charismatic force and he always seemed to have so much love to give, enveloping everyone in the room around him, whether it
was a small photo studio or a huge rock venue. But Ali loved something different about him than the rest of us did, something vulnerable and unshowy, lurking deep within the extrovert exterior.

  The three of us went out to dinner in a Dublin restaurant. And there the conversation turned once more to God, with Bono earnestly trying to explain the roots of faith.

  “You have to trust your instincts,” he said. “You’re a writer, Neil. It’s like working on a hunch, using your imagination to try and see the real story underneath the surface. D’you know the story of Elijah going up to a cave where he has been told he will hear the voice of God? It’s in the Bible. Elijah gets to the cave and goes in but there’s nothing there, so he waits and eventually he hears a roll of thunder. He thinks, ‘Ah, yes, the voice of God!’ and goes to the entrance of the cave…But the thunder rolls again and he doesn’t hear God. So he goes back in the cave and waits. Then he sees a bolt of lightning flash across the sky and he thinks, ‘Ah, of course, the voice of God.’ Goes back to the entrance of the cave and waits…But God says nothing. And he starts to think maybe he’s been misled—maybe there is no God; whatever is going through his mind. Then a small puff of wind blows into the cave and he hears it, like a whisper, the voice of God…”

  Bono paused for dramatic effect. “I always liked the idea that God is in the small things. And when it gets too noisy and fucking crazy, and I’m running around like a madman, I have to quiet myself down to get in touch with God.”

  I kept running into Bono around this time, in the audience at gigs, at various openings and parties and once in a while just aimlessly wandering the city streets. Every time our conversation would revolve around the same subject, rambling debates about the spirit that always ended with his “God bless.” I suspect he thought there was purpose in the coincidence of our encounters and that I was ripe for conversion. And, in truth, he had succeeded in plunging me back into spiritual confusion. I found myself reexamining every aspect of the faith I had rejected, turning it all over in my mind during long, sleepless nights. I kept finding the same logical flaws that had first persuaded me of the fallacy of religious belief but now I had a new problem, caused in large part by my huge respect for Bono: did I really think I was smarter than every believer, every mystic, every guru and every religious philosopher in history? It probably won’t surprise you to learn that “yes” was my answer to that particular question. But what if I was wrong? Was I really prepared to take the chance of damning my soul to Hell? Besides, God was an appealing concept, representing the promise of immortality—a condition of considerable attraction to me.

  Bono invited me to a meeting of the Shalom Bible Group at Edge’s parents’ house in Malahide. He told me I’d get a chance to answer a lot of my questions. I took Ivan along for protection, relying on my brother’s studied spirit of irreverence to keep the forces of the spirit world at bay.

  Shalom were Charismatic Christians, evangelical and fundamentalist, committed to the surrender of the ego before the healing grace and fiery breath of the Holy Ghost. It was strange to find members of U2, who struck me as easy-going and liberal in their application of belief, keeping this kind of company but stranger still to learn that it was the provocative Virgin Prunes who had first been attracted to the Bible group; into the fold they’d brought Bono, who introduced the always inquisitive Edge, with Larry finding comfort there too following the death of his mother in a tragic road accident in 1978.

  We gathered in the Evanses’ front room, where a sixteen-millimeter projector had been set up and a white screen erected. There were familiar faces, including members of Lypton Village and ex-pupils from Mount Temple, cups of tea and biscuits and everybody was being very nice and solicitous, as committed Christians almost invariably are, but it was hard to escape the feeling that this was some kind of recruitment drive and that they were more interested in my soul than in me. Someone got up and gave a talk, telling us about some films we were going to see, which had been sent by an associated Christian group in America. Allegedly these films graphically demonstrated scientific proof of biblical miracles and the power of the Holy Spirit. The lights were turned off. The screen flickered into life.

  What followed was absolutely gobsmacking. Men in white laboratory coats chatted about the power of faith, while volunteers were subjected to powerful electrical currents, apparently relying on prayer to keep them healthy as lightning bolts passed through their bodies. There were a series of experiments which appeared to defy the laws of physics. Experts in the fields of geology, paleontology and archaeology were trooped on to refute evidence of human evolution and to challenge conventional wisdom regarding the age of the earth, their own experiments conclusively demonstrating that the world was only a few thousand years old (correlating with figures laid out in the Bible) and had, in fact, been made in just seven days, complete with built-in fossilization.

  The film flickered to a close. There was much excited chatter. Ivan and I stared at each other, wide-eyed and speechless.

  “What d’you think, then, Neil?” one of the group leaders asked me. I could feel Bono’s watchful eyes on me.

  “I’m absolutely amazed,” I said, truthfully.

  “God is amazing,” replied the evangelist, sincerely.

  Ivan and I made our excuses and headed for the exit, thanking Edge for his hospitality. We were almost home free when Bono caught me by the front door. “What did you really think?” he said.

  “Oh, come on, man!” I sighed. “That was the biggest load of shit I’ve ever seen. Blind, stupid, illogical hocus fuckin’ pocus!”

  He smiled ruefully and shook his head. I even heard him say “God bless” as we headed off down the driveway. Always the “God bless”! Could nothing shake his conviction? At least the Shalom meeting had the effect of ending my crisis of faith. This lot, I was convinced, were several beads short of the full rosary.

  With the (dis)honorable exception of Adam, U2’s deep faith kept them from indulging in the traditional excesses of rock ’n’ roll, something which I think gave them extra reserves of strength to take on the world and helped them to avoid many of the obvious pitfalls that regularly derail the careers of young musicians. As Edge once said to me: “It’s such a sort of prostitute business that you would find it immensely difficult on your own steam to carry through a principle, single-mindedly.” Bill Graham, who knew the band as well as anyone and understood them better than most, speculated that, for Bono in particular, Christianity acted as a kind of shield. “As the focus of the audience’s apathy or acclaim, frontmen always have the most vulnerable and volatile egos,” Bill once wrote. “But imbued with a missionary sense—however unfocused—and believing his gift came from above, Bono may have been protected from those identity and ego problems that can upset those singers who find their fame has neither savor nor reason.” As far as I was concerned, if Bono, Edge and Larry wanted to surrender their egos to the mysteries of the Holy Spirit that was their own affair. I had another path to walk.

  I was ready to embrace the hedonism promised by rock ’n’ roll. Hell, I was eager to be corrupted. The problem was, I was actually a rather sensible, clean-living fellow. I didn’t drink, for one thing. Growing up in Ireland, where drinking is the national pastime, I had been put off the whole business by the regular carnage I witnessed around pubs at closing time, with grown men pissing on walls and spewing up in gutters and generally lurching about with all the gainliness and physical coordination of a herd of rhinos in zero gravity. My position on alcohol was considered quite controversial among my contemporaries, who were, for the most part, enthusiastic in their endeavors to prove themselves the equal of their pint-swilling forebears. Neither did I smoke, having witnessed my own parents’ heroic efforts to forsake this particular vice, so my few attempts to share a spliff usually ended up with me coughing my guts up and then complaining it had had no effect whatsoever.

  “You’ve got to inhale!” my friends would admonish me.

  “My lungs won�
��t let me!” I would protest.

  As for the other much-noted rock ’n’ roll vice, Yeah! Yeah! were not exactly proving a magnet for the kind of pneumatic groupies I entertained in my rich fantasy life. We did have a small group of female fans who had begun to follow us around, and to whom Leo unkindly referred as the Alsatians. This was a reference to their attractiveness rather than qualities of dogged loyalty.

  But while I did not drink or smoke and rarely got laid, I could secretly pride myself in having gone straight for the class-A narcotics in the form of Colombian marching powder (as it was known around the offices of Hot Press). We worked hard putting that magazine together. Indeed, such was the intensity of the work and the length of the hours, we used to mock bands who had the temerity to complain of the hardships of life on the road—a weekend spent with us would show them what it really took to keep Ireland safe for rock ’n’ roll. Operating on a fortnightly schedule, effectively there would be one week in which little was accomplished on the production side as we waited for the writers to produce their copy. Then it would be all hands on deck for the second week, with mounting pressure resulting in increasingly long nights, culminating in final production weekends that occasionally ran to forty hours or more of continual toil. Absolute deadlines were set by the schedule of the van departing from the depot of the Irish Independent newspaper, with whom we had an arrangement to deliver our pages to our printer in Kerry. We were supposed to rendezvous by one a.m. at the latest, but many was the time when I would still be frantically applying the final touches to the layout while the clock ticked and Liam or Mairin waited tensely beside me, snatching the page as soon as I was done and haring down the stairs to where Niall was already waiting, revving the engine of his beat-up mustard-yellow Austin Maxi. Then they would race through the streets in pursuit of the already departed van. One time they got all the way to Urlingford, Kilkenny, some seventy miles from Dublin, before they caught it.