Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelganger

by Neil McCormick

  “I haven’t heard it,” Jon admitted. “He’s been keeping it under wraps.”

  “Must be really good,” I said, glumly.

  We were all present at the next meeting for the unveiling of Billy’s hit, a track called “Photograph” by Phil Thornalley. Not him again! I settled down uneasily at the far end of the massive table, steeling myself to hear something so amazing it would put all our songwriting efforts to shame. I was ready for my resistance to melt. I was contemplating how it would actually feel to sacrifice all my artistic ambitions on the altar of fame.

  The sound of a monotone bass came thud-thud-thudding out of the speakers as a voice intoned “All I wanted was a photograph…” (“duh-duh-duh-duh” went the synths) “A small reminder of things gone past…” (“duh-duh-duh-duh”) “The way you looked and the way you laughed…” (“duh-duh-duh-duh”) “All I wanted was a photograph…”

  And so on.

  I was aghast. It was like Bucks Fizz without the fizz. Still, I hedged my bets and asked to hear it again. It was even worse second time around. I looked for confirmation from Ivan. He rolled his eyes and shrugged.

  Ossie had told us to nod and agree to anything. Oh, but I tried. I really tried.

  “So what do you think?” asked Billy.

  “It’s…awful,” I said.

  “What?” said Billy, apparently flabbergasted by my impertinence.

  “It’s drivel. It’s got drippy lyrics and a two-note melody.”

  “Who listens to lyrics?” said Billy, petulantly. “You could add some lyrics of your own, if that’s what’s bothering you.”

  “I think our songs are much better than that,” I insisted.

  Jon Astley, to his credit, piped up in our support. “They’ve got some good songs, Billy, you really should give them a listen.”

  I asked why Phil Thornalley didn’t release it himself and Billy glumly admitted that Phil thought it “a little bit twee.”

  The meeting did not end well. “What did you say to him?” asked Ossie, in an exasperated phone call. “He was quite upset. He described you as nasty.”

  Nasty! Me?

  Jon Astley went on to sign a solo deal with Atlantic, releasing two albums and scoring a minor hit in the States in the late eighties. The opening song on his second album, The Compleat Angler, was a sardonic take on the music business entitled “But Is It Commercial?” He never really graduated to the frontline of production but became well respected for his remastering work with the Who’s back catalogue.

  Phil Thornalley had a strange, disjointed career, producing and then briefly joining art-Goth rockers the Cure, departing for an equally brief stint producing and later singing with Johnny Hates Jazz (whose popularity crashed when he took over lead vocals), before settling for a successful role as a backroom writer/producer. He composed “Torn,” which became a worldwide hit for Natalie Imbruglia in 1998.

  Billy Gaff signed the Roaring Boys instead of us and landed them a £300,000 advance from CBS records. They flopped completely and were dropped after their first album.

  To the best of my knowledge, no one ever did record “Photograph.”

  Thirteen

  In July 1984, I was back in Ireland laying out Hot Press. My replacement as art director, Jaqui Doyle, had quit suddenly to take up the same position at Smash Hits in London. I agreed to temporarily step into the breach although I was so paranoid about losing my Unemployment and Housing Benefit (or Government Arts Grant, as Ivan and I referred to it) that I insisted the magazine fly me back to London on a Monday morning so that I could get a train from Heathrow to Camden, sign on the dole, then head straight back to the airport to fly to Dublin, returning to work at Hot Press by mid-afternoon after a around trip of 600 miles.

  Bob Dylan was playing a huge open-air concert at Slane Castle and the entire staff of Hot Press headed up to cover the great event. It was Dylan’s first visit to Ireland since the sixties, an occasion treated with due reverence by the nation’s large tribe of unreconstructed hippies. More than 100,000 gathered on the hillside to pay homage but, being a professional freeloader, I managed to wangle my way into Lord Henry Mountcharles’ castle. U2 had recently been recording sessions for a new album in the castle’s ballroom so I was not surprised to encounter Bono and Ali among those enjoying hospitality. “The very man!” said Bono, mysteriously, grabbing my arm.

  I hadn’t seen my old schoolfriend for over a year and a lot had happened in all our lives (or hadn’t happened, in my case) but he didn’t want to talk about it. Bono revealed that he was being taken to meet Dylan, who had expressed an interest in this young pretender. “Why don’t you come along?” Bono casually said to me. And, seeing as I had nothing better to do right then, I said I would love to, right after they picked me up off the floor where I had collapsed in a gibbering heap.

  It quickly transpired that Bono had his own agenda in inviting me along. Niall Stokes had got wind of Bono’s meeting and had persuaded him to take a tape recorder and interview the great man. This was quite a coup for Hot Press but not so great for Bono, who was beginning to worry that he might be out of his depth. The truth was, he didn’t actually know much about Dylan, beyond the obvious (world’s greatest lyricist, voice like sand and glue, changed popular music forever, amen). It might be hard to believe given Bono’s latter-day status as keeper of the flame, regularly called upon to induct legends of yesteryear into the rock hall of fame, but there was a time when he did not express much interest in rock’s past. Bono was all about the future. When I originally interviewed U2 in London, questions about the origins of their style had been met with vociferous denials of any and all influences. “The way it is, there’s not much music I do like,” said Bono, emphatically. (Oh, he would probably try to deny it now…but I have it on tape!)

  So there he was, being summoned for an audience with the master but afraid he might betray his ignorance. But Bono is both a natural-born bluffer and a quick learner, and I think he figured with me there to back him up he couldn’t go wrong. While Bono, Ali and I were escorted to the sprawling backstage enclosure where performers were ensconced in gleaming Winnebagos, I gave Bono a crash course on the subject of Bob Almighty.

  I had a lot of information to impart. Now that Lennon was gone, Dylan had ascended to primary position in my personal pantheon of living rock gods. His dazzling wordplay, connecting the emotional with the philosophical, was something I returned to again and again. Dylan was my idol and my inspiration. And now I had the chance to meet him.

  Or not, as it so happened. I got as far as his Winnebago, where Ali and I were stopped by a mountain of muscle in a security jacket and Bono alone was ushered into the inner sanctum where Dylan and Van Morrison were sitting playing chess. I watched that door shut in front of me and felt a keen, sharp stab of exclusion. It was a reminder that I was in this VIP world as a guest, not an inhabitant.

  Ali and I wandered about backstage, observing the calm but concentrated activities of musicians, roadies and support crew preparing for the show. We were approached by an MTV airhead in micro-skirt and matching breasts who was in Ireland to film a segment for her program, which, she assured us, was, like, totally cool, especially since she was, like, one sixteenth part Irish herself, though she didn’t reveal what the other fifteen parts were constituted from. Silicone by the look of it. Standing with her were two young Americans, Sam and Jake, both adorned in MTV passes, with whom Ali and I chatted while Airhead practiced pouting. It transpired that they were avid fans of U2 and wanted to talk about Bono and the Irish rock scene but I found it hard to concentrate. While they rattled on, I kept thinking, “Bob Dylan is sitting in that caravan!” It seemed wonderful and absurd, like discovering that God had put up a tent in your garden.

  After a while Bono returned. I immediately seized upon him, demanding to know what had transpired, but he seemed uncharacteristically withdrawn. “He was…you know,” he said, which did little to assuage my curiosity. “I’ll tell you later.” By now, a cr
owd was milling around and there was a buzz of excitement in the atmosphere. I noticed this weird-looking fellow sidle up alongside us, his jowly face caked in orange makeup and baggy eyes ringed with thick black liner. I didn’t actually recognize him at first, perhaps because he bore so little resemblance to the skinny beatnik with the tangled psychedelic curls whose poster adorned my bedroom wall. “Hey, let’s get a picture taken here,” he said in a stoned drawl, throwing one arm around Bono’s shoulder and the other around the MTV airhead, who squealed with delight. It finally dawned on me that this paunchy, wrinkled old peach was Bob Dylan. I gaped at the strange vision, simultaneously amazed and disappointed. “He looks so old,” I whispered to my new American buddies. Then, gripping his electric guitar, Dylan waved imperiously with one hand and declared, in that strangely flexible drawl of his, “Let’s go,” whereupon he began to head toward the stage, while a whole crowd trooped in his wake, until the only people left behind were Ali, Bono, the young Americans and me.

  “Is he stoned?” I said, unable to contain the anticlimactic sense of disenchantment welling up in my chest. “He sounds so out of it, I can’t believe he’s going to go on stage like that. He looks like shit.”

  Ali fixed me with a fierce glare, but I was never one to shut up just because people didn’t like what I had to say. “It’s true what they say,” I glumly declared. “You shouldn’t meet your heroes.”

  Ali kicked me fiercely but discreetly in one ankle.

  “What’s your problem?” I said.

  Sam and Jake made their excuses and departed. As they wandered toward the stage, Ali started laughing. “Do you know who you were talking to?” she asked between fits of giggles.

  I got a familiar sinking feeling.

  “They’re Dylan’s sons,” she said.

  Oops.

  After everyone had followed Dylan toward the stage, Bono asked if I knew the words to “Blowin’ in the Wind.” It seemed Dylan had asked if Bono would like to join him for an encore. Naturally, Bono said it would be an honor. “Do you know ‘It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry’?” inquired Dylan.

  “Uhm, no, I don’t think I know that one,” admitted Bono.

  “How about ‘Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again’?” suggested Dylan. But Bono once again had to confess ignorance.

  “Well, you must know ‘Blowin’ in the Wind,’ ” said Dylan, beginning to show the faintest signs of exasperation.

  Bono could feel his chance slipping away, so, recognizing the familiar title, he boldly seized the opportunity and announced that, yes, of course he knew “Blowin’ in the Wind.” And so it was settled. The problem was that Bono did not have the faintest idea what the lyrics were and, for that matter, had only the vaguest notion of the melody.

  So, while Dylan and his band were kicking off behind us, I tried to recall the words to “Blowin’ in the Wind” for him. This earnest folk ballad was not one of my personal favorites but I had a notion of what the first verse was from being made to sing it by the Christian Brothers in school assembly. Something about roads, white doves and cannonballs flying. I wrote down what I could remember and Bono wandered off to find someone who might have a better idea, while I went to watch the show from the side of the stage. Dylan was playing a blinder and I got sucked right in to the maelstrom. Even the orange makeup and black eyeliner didn’t look so ridiculous on stage. After a short while, Bono arrived stageside, entranced, eagerly watching the gig. His makeshift lyric sheet was nowhere to be seen.

  When it came to the encores, Dylan and his band launched into an epic, electrified “Blowin’ in the Wind.” “How many roads must a man walk down / Before you can call him a man?” he demanded to know, with a righteousness bordering on anger. “Yes, ’n’ how many times must a white dove sail / Before she sleeps in the sand? / Yes, ’n’ how many times must the cannonballs fly / Before they’re forever banned?” And the whole crowd hurled back the payoff line: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind / The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” Whereupon Dylan nodded to the wings and declared, “Ladeez and gentlemen…BoNo!” A roar went up as the local hero took the stage, grabbed a microphone and began to sing…

  …the first things to enter his head.

  Dylan looked rather startled as Bono improvised lines about the Northern Irish conflict. “How many times must the newspapers bleed / With the lives of innocent men?” Clearly Bono wasn’t about to let a little thing like not knowing the words stop him from performing the song. “And how much longer must the barbed wire stretch / Across this divided land?” Bono was always a confident extemporizer so, as the guest of a superstar, in front of the largest crowd of his fellow countrymen he had ever performed for, he decided to wing it. “How many times must people die / For a cause they don’t understand?”

  It was all going so well. And then the band launched as one unit into the famous chorus while Bono, oblivious to the chord change, continued making up lyrics to the verse. “How many times…?” he sang as the crowd bellowed, “The answer, my friend…” Dylan’s head swiveled as he turned to look at his guest with an expression of complete eye-popping, jaw-dropping disbelief. For one terrible moment, Bono’s ignorance of Dylan’s oeuvre was horribly exposed. Was he the only person among the 100,000 present who didn’t know “Blowin’ in the Wind”? I watched transfixed as Bono hovered above this abyss, on the verge of a spectacular crash, when, realizing his mistake, he started howling, “How many times? How many times?” like a blues mantra while the band brought the chorus home.

  Wisely, Bono let Dylan sing the final verse.

  Later, I caught up with Bono and Ali among the backstage revelers. He was still flushed and ecstatic after performing to the biggest audience of his life. “Nice lyrics,” I said.

  “D’you think anyone noticed?” said Bono, grinning.

  Oh, I was sure they had noticed. Wasn’t that the whole point? Being heard. Bono had stood up there naked, with nothing to rely upon but his own self-belief and somehow he had made it work for him, carrying all before him, plucking another personal triumph from the jaws of disaster.

  As for me…

  Let me bring you up to speed with life back in London. A room came free in Belsize Crescent and Ivan moved in. We bought a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder and spent a great deal of time making primitive home demos. Things had gone very quiet with Ossie and Dave after the debacle with Billy Gaff. Still, there seemed no reason to panic. On the infrequent occasions when we did speak to them they insisted they were still actively supporting our cause. They encouraged us to keep writing songs and we assured them that was exactly what we were doing. When other things weren’t getting in the way. Like life.

  One day Joan, my ex-girlfriend from Ireland, arrived with all her belongings in a bulging yellow suitcase. She had effectively run away from home. Hers was a loving but somewhat complicated family, where everything seemed to be conducted in an atmosphere of high melodrama. I think Joan’s parents liked me well enough but they had difficulty in adjusting to the notion that their daughter might be dating such an obvious reprobate with dangerous libertarian tendencies. Her father once interrogated me, quite out of the blue, on my views regarding that great Catholic bête noire, abortion. “I suppose you approve of abortion?” had been his rather leading question.

  Joan was shooting me warning glances across the kitchen table but her concern was misplaced. I wasn’t stupid enough to be sucked into that one! So I neatly sidestepped by saying: “A girlfriend of mine would never have to have an abortion, because she wouldn’t get pregnant in the first place…”

  Joan’s father looked at me suspiciously. “I’m glad to hear that, Neil.”

  “Because I use condoms,” I said. Oh, it was worth it just to see his face!

  “That’s it!” he roared, looking like he was going to have a heart attack. “You! Out of this house!”

  Our romance had been conducted guerilla fashion, with Joan often climbing out of her bedro
om and across the roof of the garage to rendezvous with me. Even in my absence the soap opera continued and Joan had had enough, dropping out of college, against her parents’ wishes, to flee to London.

  Joan was madly in love with me, I had never been in doubt about that. She was brokenhearted when I left but we kept in touch with a constant stream of letters and our romance was re-animated with each trip home to Ireland. I was happy to see her in London but a little worried about the implications. I was not ready for the commitment of cohabitation. It was agreed the flat would just be a resting point while she got herself together but somehow things became more complicated, as things are wont to do. We were lovers, our lives inexorably and increasingly inter-twined, and it was gradually accepted that we were living together until…well, until I got my record deal. And then things would have to change. Joan lived with the insecurity of threatened abandonment while I worried about being tied down. It was very brittle, fragile terrain for a relationship that veered wildly between passion and antagonism. We were constantly breaking up and making up in the cramped environment of a three-room flat.

  None of this was helped by the fact that Ivan did not approve of Joan in the least. I don’t know whether Ivan felt threatened by her connection to me, or whether it was just some particular incompatibility of personalities. Joan was not the easiest person to get along with, striving to hide her insecurities behind a proud exterior, but Ivan always managed to make situations worse, seeking out weakness with cruel humor.

  And somehow we fell out, rather dramatically, with Jeff Banks. I was never entirely clear on the sequence of events leading up to this, though he had every right to be fed up with us. He had a televison (which we did not) and so we always trooped up to watch Top of the Pops. When he went away on a business trip to Japan, Jeff gave us the keys to his flat and invited us to make use of it. A bit of a party broke out there one night, as parties were liable to do at the time. Now, Jeff was a Buddhist and extolled the virtues of daily meditation, which he used to practice in front of a ceramic dish full of ashes and burning incense. During the evening’s revelry someone knocked the dish over, spilling the ashes on the floor. We guiltily cleaned up the next day, restoring the flat to a state of spotless order, but the ashes provided a bit of a conundrum. Quite apart from the question of whether they might be the remains of someone dear to him (in fact, they were just the remnants of incense sticks), I had noticed that the surface of the ash seemed to be arranged in a pattern, which may have been random or may have held spiritual significance. I had no idea. If it was the former, I figured the various replacement lines and squiggles I etched might go unremarked. But if it was the latter, I imagined Jeff’s next meditation session was going to be somewhat puzzling. I comforted myself with the thought that Buddhists were known to be very forgiving and put the whole matter out of my mind.