Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelganger

by Neil McCormick

  I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  After two encores, we descended into the crowd like a conquering army. Some of the A&R people had even hung around and they were full of praise, offering such over-the-top flattery that I felt it had to climax with the declaration “We want to sign you.” But the magic words never came.

  We went to see the man from London Records, who was umming and awwing, apparently having come down with a terminal case of vacillation. “Very entertaining, very good songs, great presentation,” he said, as if to himself.

  After a long silence, Ivan exploded. “What else do you want?!” he demanded.

  I don’t think he really knew what else he wanted. “There’s no doubt that it would sell,” he said after some thought. “But I’m interested in something with a little more substance as well.”

  He was sitting in front of a poster of Bananarama, London Records’ biggest act.

  But still, he didn’t say no. He did not throw us out and tell us never to darken his doorway again. He just asked to be kept informed of developments. This was one of the phrases we were beginning to hear with depressing regularity.

  “Don’t sign anything without talking to us first” was another.

  “Has anyone actually made you an offer?” That’s a good one.

  As we settled into a gigging routine, our shows became regular meeting places for London’s A&R community. Even journalists noticed. “Their opening gambit’s a good one, a commercial tour de force which grabs the attention before the watching A&R men can even think of turning down their deaf aids,” reported a Melody Maker review of a Shook Up! gig at the Embassy Rooms. ‘Love Is Stranger than Fiction’ states the band’s case to perfection, building from a solid bassline purpose-built for the 12-inch remix and erupting into a beautifully crafted melody.” The reviewer went on to say, “Forty minutes with Shook Up! is like listening to an embryonic Greatest Hits album.” For some reason, this did not seem to be enough to impress the watchful A&R community, although others benefited from their attendance. We were supported at that show by a band from Liverpool called Black, who played dirgey post-Bunnymen rock and trashed the dressing room while we were on stage, defacing our posters with witty slogans like “London wankers” and nicking anything that wasn’t pinned down. They were offered a deal by one of the A&R men who had come to see us, although I am happy to report that lead singer Colin Vearncombe immediately split from his backing band of thieving bastards and essentially went solo. I spoke to the A&R man in question afterward and he proudly told me that among the blizzard of noise he had spotted “an enormous hit.” And he was right. Ish. Black reached number nine with a song called “Wonderful Life” which had been transformed from its rocky origins into a kind of mournful, easy-listening ballad. Mind you, that was pretty much the last anybody ever heard of Colin, so there would be no Greatest Hits album for Black. But sucking on sour grapes never made anyone feel any better about their own misfortunes. Colin had his hit and, in the immortal words of Loudon Wainright III, it is “better to have been a has-been than a never was.”

  We dispensed with the services of our mercenary and expensive keyboard player and recruited a young maestro called Damien Le Gassic, who acted as if he might have been prepared to pay us to be in our wonderful group. Damien was a skinny, pale, wide-eyed whiz kid fresh from music college whose naïve enthusiasm made us feel like grizzled veterans but whose musical skills put us all to shame. We had to keep an eye on Damien, however. He was so small and frail, he once passed out while loading his equipment into a hired van on a freezing-cold morning and developed frostbite lying unconscious in the snow. He proved immensely popular with a particular section of our growing army of fans. Every gig, we noticed increasing numbers of Oriental girls in attendance. They turned out to be foreign students of English and they loved Shook Up!—though presumably, given their still rather basic grasp of the language, it was not my lyrics that got them going. One of the girls, a very cute, teenage, self-proclaimed virgin, offered herself to Steve for deflowerment. It was an experience which he later described as so stressful he was unable to perform—until he convinced her it would be better if her concerned friends waited outside the room, rather than sitting in attendance offering helpful tips. A couple of the girls succumbed to the charms of Ivan, who did not set much store by the concept of loyalty to his long-suffering girlfriend, Cassandra. But the Oriental favorite, by some distance, was shy Damien. In an apartment shared by several of the girls I saw a shrine to Damien, with flowers and memorabilia arranged around an artfully assembled montage of photographs, with candles and incense burning beneath. It was explained to me that in the East pale skin was considered very attractive; Damien was the palest white boy they had ever seen.

  By now I had entered into what was simultaneously the most rewarding and most frustrating phase of my twisted relationship with the music business. This was the best band lineup I had ever played in. Superb musicians, intelligent people, all getting off on the music and fired by a common cause. Even rehearsals were thrilling as we assembled intricate arrangements of new songs. And as for playing live, well, it was positively euphoric. There were moments when every element of the musical puzzle would fall perfectly into place. It was like an alignment of the planets. We would achieve lift-off, rocketing into space on a groove, the aftershock sending a musical vibration through the room that would drag the whole crowd into orbit in our wake, everybody communicating on the same wavelength, floating in zero musical gravity. This band was everything a musician could dream about. It was, surely, undeniable. Why, then, did the music business continue to deny us?

  Reviews were glowing and audiences growing. Every performance ended in multiple encores. We stole the thunder of any act we supported and got invited back to every venue we appeared at. Soon we were regularly filling London nightspots like the Rock Garden, the Embassy Rooms and Fulham Greyhound in our own right. U2 played Live Aid at Wembley Stadium and, for once, I paid for my ticket and went to see them. I was moved and impressed by Bob Geldof’s extravaganza; it seemed incredible that an Irishman could bring the world together like this. And I was enthralled by U2’s part in it, a strangely manic performance in which Bono, desperate as ever to make a connection, disappeared for huge periods of time into the flag-waving crowd while the band, shorn of their lead singer, improvised sections of “Ruby Tuesday,” “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Walk on the Wild Side.” But I did not feel in any way belittled to see my old friends on such a stage, for Shook Up! contributed in their own small way to Live Aid, headlining a bill of fifteen up-and-coming bands at a charity event hosted by Radio One DJ Bruno Brookes at Le Beat Route, raising a few hundred pounds for our efforts. The music industry might not be impressed but fuck them, we were creating our own momentum.

  We did not have to pay for demos anymore, as studios started to invite us to work with them. We recorded a live favorite, “Stop the World,” with talented producer Terry Thomas, who went on to work with Bad Company, Foreigner, Richard Marx and Three Colors Red. It was a punchy little Motown-influenced rock song about global anxiety, a typical Shook Up! subject.

  We got ourselves an agent, a dour Northern Irishman called Barry Campbell who specialized in reggae and indie rock, a roster from which we protruded like the proverbial sore thumb. But he could get us into colleges, where you could actually make some money. We toured Ireland twice, with the help of In Tua Nua’s manager, Mark Clinton, where we were greeted like returning heroes. We appeared on a prime-time RTE TV show performing “Stop the World.” We were written up in every newspaper in the country. “Shaking Their Way to Fame and Fortune” trumpeted the Sunday Press, who quaintly noted that “Shook Up! received tumultuous applause from raving teenagers and well-known stars such as Bono.”

  Bono and Ali had joined an appreciative audience at Trinity College. Bono declared himself suitably impressed. “I don’t know much about pop,” he joked, “but I know what I like!” He told us that what we were do
ing reminded him of Queen, which we took as a compliment, even though they were probably one of the least hip bands in the universe. “The showmanship is great, the songs are classic. I don’t see how record companies can fail to go for it.”

  Oh, but they could. Our reviews were astonishing. I am convinced that we had more enthusiastic reviews than any other unsigned band in history. I put together a ten-page booklet featuring the best of them and circulated it among record companies. The front page of the booklet read:

  “A REALLY EXCITING NEW BAND”

  —Capital Radio

  “SHAKING THEIR WAY TO FAME AND FORTUNE”

  —Sunday Press

  “DANCE-ORIENTED ROCK SOUND THAT BURSTS WITH ENERGY”

  —Record Mirror

  “CATCHY CHORUSES AND WELL-STRUCTURED SONGS”

  —In Dublin

  “A SET FULL OF GUSTO, NIFTY LITTLE DANCE ROUTINES AND LOUD, DISTINCTLY POPPY DANCE MUSIC”

  —Evening Press

  “SHOOK UP! REALLY GET STUCK IN”

  —Sounds

  “MEGA SUCCESS APPROACHETH. DEFINITELY NOT TO BE MISSED”

  —Record Mirror

  I spoke to one of our regular contacts in A&R (or “Uhm & Ahh” as we had started to refer to it). “The quotes are a bit over-the-top,” he said. “I suppose you made them up yourself?”

  What was the fucking use?

  There were so many great gigs, such fantastic reactions, so much confidence—we were convinced record companies could not see this and walk away from it. But they did. Again and again. I visited Ross Fitzsimons in MCA, where Lucien Grainge was no longer employed. I was playing Ross our “Stop the World” demo when the door of his office flew open and in stormed Gordon Charlton, the new head of A&R.

  “What are you listening to?” he demanded to know. “It’s bloody fantastic!” He wanted to know where he could hear more and I told him we would be appearing that very night at the Rock Garden. “I’ll be there!” he said. And he was true to his word. I saw him walk in halfway through the set, stand at the back and watch two numbers before walking out again, which (as you can imagine) was extremely disconcerting. The next day I rang for his reaction. “It’s too commercial for my taste,” he said.

  “Too commercial?” I spluttered. “How can something be too commercial? You mean it might be too popular? We might sell too many records?”

  “It was all a bit well played,” he said. How did this man get his job?

  “Maybe we should fucking rehearse a bit less,” I muttered.

  He told me he liked things rougher around the edges. He signed Cactus World News.

  I was beginning to faintly comprehend that the very area we had chosen to operate in was working against us. We were upbeat, danceable, unashamedly commercial but we had songs about rape, greed, fear, religion, love, pain and the whole damn thing. We were a square peg and no matter what angle the music business looked at us from (and, to be fair, they did keep coming back and taking another look), nobody could figure out how to fit us into the around hole labeled “pop.”

  And then the inevitable happened. At the end of the summer of 1986, after a year of gigging, Vlad announced he was leaving.

  “I thought you believed in fate,” I said.

  “I do,” said Vlad.

  “Well, didn’t your girlfriend tell you we were going to be the biggest band in the world?” I pleaded.

  “She spoke to her father about that last night,” said Vlad. As we knew, his girlfriend’s father was dead but made occasional appearances to bring her up to date with developments in the spirit world. His verdict was that “Destiny is not set in stone—there are different paths we can all choose,” Vlad reported. Apparently we had taken a wrong turning at a spiritual T-junction. “Cosmically speaking, you’re fucked,” said Vlad. I hoped he was joking. You could never really tell.

  Vlad hung up his bass and decided to concentrate on production. He signed a record deal with 10 (a subsidiary of Virgin) and, in January 1988, reached number six with “The Jack That House Built” by Jack’n’Chill (he was Jack), Britain’s first home-grown house record.

  Damien was the next to depart, going back to music college, disillusioned with the music business. We did not hear from him for years but, in the late nineties, started seeing his credit appear on major records. He cowrote material on Madonna’s Music album and produced an album for K. D. Lang. Ivan ran into him at a London club. Damien was reportedly very happy, living in L.A., his skills much sought after by A-list stars. Our former pale Oriental sex symbol was, according to Ivan, looking very tanned indeed.

  Steve was getting session work for busty female pop stars such as Taylor Dane, Tiffany and Samantha Fox (must have been those pheromones). Brother Beyond, a quartet of handsome lads signed to Parlophone, started to employ him and I went to see them play a showcase. I wondered what the difference was between them and us. They had two talented songwriters, Eg White and Carl Fysh, and a handsome lead vocalist, Nathan Moore, and crafted funky, modern, dance pop. It was all very smooth, lacking Shook Up!’s live extravagance and spiky edges. But the crucial difference emerged when their recording career began with material written for them by top Europop producers Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Eg quit the band in disgust. Steve, meanwhile, proved so popular with their fans (those pheromones again) that they asked him to become a full-time member. We were close friends and Steve was reluctant to leave us in the lurch but he was being presented with pop stardom on a plate. In any event, Brother Beyond enjoyed short-lived careers as pin-ups (they reached number two in 1988 but lost their grip on the top ten a year later and were bankrupt by 1991) before Steve returned to session work, playing with everyone from Duran Duran to Jeff Beck. He remains one of the leading session drummers in the recording industry.

  As for Ivan and I, well, we briefly contemplated tracing our steps back down the cosmic highway to try to work out where we had gone wrong. But fuck it. We didn’t believe in that shit anyway. We’d just have to press on and hope we were still traveling in roughly the right direction.

  Sixteen

  I was summoned to interview-room number 4 in the Department of Health and Social Security. Mysteriously, the door had “No. 58” stuck on it and was consequently quite hard to find, resulting in my arriving some five minutes after my name had crackled over the tannoy.

  It was my third visit to the DHSS offices in as many weeks. Each time, I had made the journey to Euston, waited around for hours, only to be informed that (because of backlogs of work or other such excuses) my appointment would have to be postponed. I had a feeling they were testing me.

  “So, we meet at last!” I joked to the somber, matronly, fifty-ish woman sitting at the other side of a thick file, presumably mine. She did not respond, other than to pointedly look at her watch. I wasn’t sure what was in store. I had always been confident that if I kept my wits about me I could spin this whole dole racket out indefinitely. My previous interviewer was a skinny, nervous pushover who seemed to expect to get pushed. But I had the distinct feeling my new case officer was a step up and a stage heavier.

  “Do you know you have signed on late every fortnight for the last three years?” my interrogator commented, perusing my notes.

  “Really?” I said. “You know, it’s not easy getting to the dole office at that time of the morning when you’ve got no money for transport.” I had mentally debated what attitude to adopt (indignant? Stupid? Penitent?) and decided the safest best was to smile and be as pleasant as possible while I worked out what she was after. She launched into a stern lecture about my responsibilities to the state. “You haven’t held a job since you left college five years ago,” she noted.

  “Is it that long?” I asked, innocently. Well, what was I supposed to say? “I’m sorry, officer, I’ll give up all my foolish ambitions and take the first paid work that comes my way”? This occasional hour of boredom was the price I paid to follow my rock ’n’ roll dream. But then she made a tactical mistake.
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br />   “You’ve got to play by the rules of the game,” she said. I couldn’t believe my ears. Her and Ossie and the music business and all these fucking games! I considered boldly declaring “This is no game, this is my life!” but decided it would be too corny. So I let her ramble on until she bullishly announced: “These are the rules of the game…”

  That was quite enough. “This is no game,” I declared passionately. “This is my life!” She actually bought it. She became flustered and apologized for her comments while I pressed home my advantage with a sincere, slightly desperate: “Do you know what it’s like to live on twenty-four pounds a week?”

  No, of course she didn’t. But then neither did I.

  I was still doing bits and pieces for Hot Press. I drew a regular cartoon strip, the subject matter of which is rather revealing. It was called “Situations Vacant,” and it featured a couple of unemployed scoundrels sitting at a bar discussing matters of the world. For example:

  “Did you hear Mad Mick got done for joyriding?” says one scoundrel.

  “No, what happened?” says the other.

  “He went to a nightclub, got really drunk and couldn’t get a taxi, so he stole a BMW and crashed into a police car on the way home!” reports the scoundrel.

  “That’s becoming a serious problem in the city today!” says his gloomy friend.

  “Yeah,” agrees the scoundrel, “you can never find a taxi when you need one.”

  Boom! Boom!

  The interview ended with another stay of execution. In order to satisfy my unemployment officer, however, I needed evidence that I was actively seeking work. So I sat down to apply for several creative jobs gleaned from the Media section of the Guardian newspaper. The problem was I wanted replies but I didn’t want interviews, which would be too time-consuming by far and might result in my accidentally finding myself employed.