Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelganger

by Neil McCormick

  Anyone interested in hearing the music of Yeah! Yeah! and Shook Up! that fills these pages can look it up on www.realshookup.com

  I have lots of people to thank but let me start with one who invades every corner of this book. Bono has been immensely encouraging to me ever since I called him to tell him I was thinking of putting my sorry saga in print. I told him my opening line and then listened to him guffaw with laughter for about two minutes. “It’s not that funny,” I grumbled. “I could have been famous!” And you can blame him for the title. In the U.K., the book is called I Was Bono’s Doppelganger (which was always my working title), but he came up with the alternative (favored by my American publishers) of Killing Bono, which he insisted was much more punchy. I told him I was worried it might give people ideas but I guess that’s the kind of weirdness he has to live with all the time. I would just like to say, one more time, for the record, how much I admire the man. I was particularly impressed that, after he read the manuscript, he wanted to make only one change. And that was to add the phrase “tongue-in-cheek” to my revelation that they played a version of the Bay City Rollers’ “Bye Bye Baby” at their first gig. “It’s been an ongoing debate between us,” said Bono, “but you have to believe me: when we did the Bay City Rollers it was because they were a fucking teen band and we thought it was funny! The track listing was unhip enough but, even so, cast your mind back to being a fifteen-year-old boy—if you were into rock music, you hated the Bay City Rollers. It wasn’t that we thought they were cool. No one thought they were cool! But as it happens the things we thought were cool were just as uncool! By the way, for the record, in those early gigs everyone in the band got a choice of material and Adam’s, I think, was the Eagles, Edge’s was Rory Gallagher but my uncool choice was the worst of all. I was responsible for ‘Nights in White Satin.’ ”

  I’m glad we cleared that up.

  I’d like to thank Ali, too, who is always fiercely protective of Bono. I suspect she viewed this enterprise with a healthy degree of skepticism but she has never been less than gracious to me. Well, almost never. I do remember driving (erratically) with Bono in Dublin one evening when Ali called on the car speakerphone. “Here’s a voice from your past,” said Bono, announcing my presence. After exchanging pleasantries, Ali said, rather pointedly, “Just remember to take everything he says with a pinch of salt.”

  “I always do,” I said.

  “I was talking to Bono!” she objected.

  After Bono hung up, he laughed. “I thought she meant me as well,” he admitted.

  People have asked how I remembered things with such clarity. Well, there were diaries, letters, tapes, photographs and lots of old friends to jog my memory, but it is worth making the point that this is my version of my life and not everyone remembers things exactly the same way. And so, in particular, I would like to express gratitude for the forbearance of my brother, Ivan, whose life story this also is. He did not agree with everything in the manuscript but asked for only one tiny change.

  I am acutely aware that people have full lives that intersect with mine only at various points, and so I apologize if any of my friends and relatives feel caricatured or reduced by my manuscript in any respect. I know my older sister, Stella, sometimes worries that the only way she will be known to the world at large will be through her imbalanced relationship with me. So, for the record, she’s a bright, vibrant woman, devoted to her son, Nicholas, with a very full social life. And she insists she did not scratch my copy of “Seasons in the Sun” in front of me with a nail file. Apparently she smashed it behind my back. At any rate, it’s all Terry Jacks deserved for making my adolescence such a misery.

  I love my family. There are many more dimensions to them than can be contained within the pages of this story…But, frankly, if they want to set the record straight they are going to have to write books of their own. I am happy to report that my parents are still as stubbornly proud of their children as ever, even if we never quite achieved the things that once seemed possible. When Ivan and I gave up on our musical dreams, my dad started saying that Louise was always the real musical talent in the family (she’s certainly a better singer than I could ever be). But eventually Louise also gave up on trying to make a living out of music, moving to Cork to raise her beautiful daughters, Juliet and Ophelia. And now that it looks like my album is going to get a major-label release, I can’t help but notice that Dad is starting to swing back around to the idea that I am the real talent in the family. He’s probably just waiting for me to repay all that money he invested in me.

  I want to express my gratitude to all the other people who have become characters in my book. In particular, my ex-girlfriend Joan Cody. I am sorry that I broke your heart once. I hope reading about it has not been too painful. All I can say in my defense is that I was young and had a lot to learn about love. Joan is back in Ireland now; she has two fantastic children but currently no man in her life. She has, however, an abundance of admirers. When I go back to Howth, I am most renowned among the younger men of the village for having once squired the divine Ms. Cody!

  I’ve lost touch with Barbara McCarney. She married my old bassist John McGlue and they moved to Australia. I gather that they are now happily divorced.

  This is in danger of turning into an Oscars acceptance speech, but I’d like to thank all the musicians who put up with the battling McCormick brothers over the years. Great bonds are formed in bands, and Frank, Deco, Vlad, Damien and Steve will always be in my heart. But in particular Leo Regan remains my very close friend, a man of immense integrity who helps keep me on the straight and narrow. Leo has gone on to become a Bafta-winning director, no small achievement.

  In the U2 camp, I’d like to thank Edge, Adam and Larry, who have always treated me with friendship and respect, even though I still don’t know which one of those bastards vetoed Shook Up!’s single behind my back. Paul McGuinness has always been extremely friendly toward me, perhaps because he still harbors the delusion that I was once a member of U2. Sheila Roche, former number two at Principle Management, has been kind and helpful over the years and did everything in her power to facilitate this book. Anton Corjbin was extremely kind to let me use one of his classic photos for the British cover, especially given that he was initially very reluctant to let anyone tamper with his picture. But he read the book and got the joke. I have never met Candida Bottaci at Principle but she has always been at the end of an e-mail and willing to help out. I would like to thank Louise Butterly and, in particular, Regine Moylett at RMP, publicists to U2. Regine was a contemporary of mine on the punk scene in Dublin, where she played in bands and ran a clothing shop, No Romance (and can therefore be directly held responsible for some of my worst fashion excesses). Bono (who is very good at deciding what other people should do for a living) persuaded her to get into PR, where she has been a fantastic success. Regine has a quality of kindness, thoughtfulness and consideration rare in this business, and she has always been available to help me out even though this project really runs right outside her remit. Thanks also to Regine’s husband, Kevin Davies, who supplied the fantastic U.S. cover shot. And a special mention to my great friend Darren Filkins, the photographer who dropped into Anton’s picture. Darren could have written his own saga of life as a might-have-been, having quit the embryonic Blur to devote himself to photography, but, in his case, the choice never weighed heavily upon him. He is a superb guitarist (who guests on The Ghost Who Walks album) but a better photographer.

  This book owes a great deal to the encouragement, perspective and advice of my hugely experienced agent, Araminta Whitley, her fantastic assistant, Celia Hayley, and my enthusiastic and thoughtful U.K. publisher, Rowland White. And I am immensely grateful for the kind words and ongoing support of my American publisher, Lauren McKenna, and U.S. agent, Sarah Lazin.

  I would never have got this far without the support of my dearly beloved Gloria, whose giggling as she read selected highlights was immensely encouraging. Mind you, she s
till hasn’t seen the passages dealing with sexual and narcotic excesses. I’m a different man since I met you, babe. And this book is especially for her sons, the lights of my life, Abner and Kamma. I hope you’re not too shocked by what I got up to when I was your age! Remember, just say no to drugs, kids. And for my beautiful Finn—one day you’ll read this and find out more about your dad than you really want to know. Just remember, we all had to start somewhere!

  This has now run on longer than the credits on a hip-hop album. But, as I said at the start, books have to end somewhere. So this is it.

  … or is it?

  Post script to second edition, 2011

  As I may have already pointed out, life goes on. And on.

  And so it was that, in February 2010, I found myself sitting in a ramshackle social club somewhere in the hills outside Belfast with my brother, Ivan, brooding over a black, black pint of Guinness, while a primped-up band pranced about on a dingy stage beneath cheap red-and-blue spotlights. Cigarette smoke hung in the air, a naked girl was shaking her tassled tits in my face, and I was battling an almost vertiginous sense of unreality, a whirling vortex of conflicting emotions, breathless nostalgia, stabbing shame, overwhelming pity, empathy, pride, anger, and embarrassment.

  Onstage, a handsome singer in a red shirt and black tie postured and hiccupped, his every move and vocal inflection reeking of youthful ego, ambition and pretension, while his deluded band murdered a half-decent song.

  My song.

  Which he had every right to trash within an inch of its life, because the naïve, precocious, prancing idiot onstage was me, thirty years younger.

  So what did that make the gray haired cynic twitching nervously in the shadows?

  A different me, with decades of lines and weight and experience weighing him down. I felt like a chasm in the space/time continuum had ripped opened and was about to swallow me up when, mercifully, a voice called out “cut,” the music suddenly stopped, the band froze, and a different thrum of chatter and activity filled the room, as if everyone present had been mysteriously released from a spell. As my narrow point of focus pulled back to once again take in the cameras, lights, clipboards, microphones, and cables of the film set, a creamy English voice broke through the shadowy buzz of action, bringing me back to Earth with a bump.

  “So what did you think of that, darling?” enquired Nick Hamm, the director. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  “That was great!” announced my brother, who has never really suffered from the curse of self-consciousness.

  I could still feel my younger self’s eyes on me. The actor, Ben Barnes, was probably only looking for some approbation from the character he was playing, but to me it felt like so much more. I wanted to go up to myself, shake me by the shoulders, and say, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  Imagine that. Imagine having the opportunity to address your younger self, explain some of the facts of life, avert mistakes that haven’t yet been made, put yourself on the right track. Who hasn’t had the thought, “if only I knew then what I know now”? I could spell out some home truths and maybe spare myself a world of pain to come. I might even have been able to ease my younger mind, persuade myself not to treat everything as a matter of life and death, enjoy the moment and the music and the people, and accept wherever it was taking me, and maybe get through that thick skull that success and failure are not diametric opposites but merely illusory staging posts on a much bigger journey.

  Fat chance, of course. I know how my twenty-year-old self would have reacted to some middle aged music critic quoting Kipling’s advice to “meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.” I’d have thought, “out of the way you balding, bitter old Buddha. Can’t you see I’m going to be a star?” And then maybe tried to cadge a drink and explain my latest theories about the future of pop. But if none of my older self’s words of philosophical wisdom were getting through, I could have at least passed on some practical tips and helpful phone numbers. That’s something I know my younger self would have appreciated.

  Of course, I didn’t say any of that. It was just a film, after all. And just an actor. “Ben,” I said, “It’s uncanny. Watching you is just like looking in a mirror.” Well, maybe one of those mirrors they have in designer-clothing-shop dressing rooms, with very flattering lighting and subtly curved to make you look thinner.

  Most people who have films made about them have done something worthwhile, or at least of historical significance. There are warriors and world leaders (from Alexander the Great to Joan of Arc, Ghandi to Che Guevara), sportsmen and rock stars (Ali, Babe Ruth, Elvis, Buddy Holly), movie icons and artists (Chaplin, Van Gogh, Picasso), and sometimes notorious outlaws (Jesse James, Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger). Not me, though. All I did was fail, repeatedly, abjectly and quite unheroically. Then they made a film about it. I have been immortalized in celluloid as a total loser.

  Nick Hamm contacted me quite soon after my book was first published in 2003 to say that he wanted to option the film rights. Now that was a call I had been secretly waiting for my whole life. Still, I thought he was mad. It’s such a sprawling, anecdotal story, spread over a lifetime, in which redemption—if it occurs—is almost all internal, a slow, psychological and philosophical acceptance of fate. Nick saw it as an everyman story, because most people have much more experience of failure than success. The world may have become obsessed with fame and fortune but the pyramid geometry of show business requires far more of us to be propping up the bottom than standing in glory at the peak. Nick had made a few films in his time, with varying degrees of success and, perhaps more importantly, failure. Something about my story spoke to him, and he impressed on me how determined he was to get it made.

  It took six years from that first meeting to the cameras rolling in Belfast. The movie business is a bastard. I may have had a horrible time trying to make it as a rock star but I still count myself lucky I didn’t pursue my earlier ambition to become an actor.

  You need so much money to make a film, and so many people are involved, and so many things can go wrong, that, watching from the sidelines as the production rose and fell, scripts were written and revised, money was offered and retracted, shooting dates came and went, I began to think it is a miracle any film ever gets made at all. After a while, my initially rather delightful interactions with Nick became limited to annual phone calls to renew the rights, in which he tried to negotiate me down with pleas of impending poverty and nervous exhaustion. “You have ruined my life, darling,” he told me during one late night phone call. “You have ruined my life.”

  At least, in best theatrical tradition, he was still calling me “darling.”

  Things began to heat up in 2009, with a new producer, Ian Flooks, onboard, who used to be U2’s booking agent. But as the production started to come together, and the script went through its fourteenth revision, new issues emerged. “The problem with your life, darling,” Nick told me, “is that there’s no third act.”

  “That is because it’s a life, Nick,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t worry though,” he smirked. “We’re going to give you one.”

  I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that.

  Meanwhile, my real life had got even more entwined with U2’s. Bono liked my book so much, he asked me to write his. And so I became U2’s ghostwriter on their autobiography U2 by U2. It was the best-selling music book in the world in 2006, although I’m not kidding myself it was because I had my name attached.

  It was an interesting journey. I got to see how U2 operate from the inside and saw for myself how they earn their luck with talent, honor, commitment and sheer bloody mindedness. We wrote that book, took it apart, and put it back together. It was supposed to take a year but it took two, sucking up my life in pursuit of something idealized and intangible, because U2 didn’t just want a hagiography to take up space on the shelves, they wanted a book that got to the very heart of what it meant to be in this
band. We took it right to the wire, making last-minute adjustments even as the printing presses ran. And, at the end, after all the work I had done, the hundreds of hours of interviews, the painstaking weaving of a poetic narrative from so many different voices, the endless discussions and debates with designers and publishers, the band went off to take all the plaudits. I didn’t even bother going to the book launch. Who wants to speak to a ghost? As Bono said, toasting me at an after-hours bar, “You have joined a very exclusive club of people this band has driven mad. Now you know how U2’s producers feel.”

  Oh but we had some more adventures. I was around for the final recording sessions of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. I walked into the studio during a take of “Vertigo,” and as Bono sang “Your love is teaching me how to kneel,” he dropped to his knees and said, “Hey, Neil!” I hung out on Vertigo tour dates, spent a week on the road in America, and I was in on the start of Live8, as Bono’s and Geldof’s expanding campaign to persuade rich nations to drop African debt came to a head with a massive concert in London, and a lobbying campaign at the G8 summit of world leaders at Gleneagles, in Edinburgh. I took my little boy on his first protest march. Well, I marched. He rolled along in his buggy.

  And I was there for the opening night of the 360 tour in Barcelona, when their space-age adventure with a circular stage beneath a giant alien claw almost never got off the launch pad. At the end of a remarkable show filled with technical breakdowns, the controls of Bono’s LED suit had somehow fused with the sweat and heat of his body so that he couldn’t turn off his laser-firing jacket. I watched him being bundled into a people carrier for a quick exit, disappearing down a Spanish highway, firing random red lasers through tinted windows into the dark sky. I imagined ground control trying to bring him back to earth: “Hewson, we have a problem.” It seemed a curiously fitting exit, as the hi-tech and the human fused in unpredictable fashion. The future never quite works the way you want it.