There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll

by Robinson, Lisa

  He wore black jeans that were too tight for his stocky frame, and boots outside those jeans. He wore sleeveless denim shirt vests. His whole look was somewhat . . . off, but girls thought he was sexy. The Edge had hair. The bass player, Adam Clayton, hardly ever talked. Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. was great looking. Even though they were lumped in with new wave, as soon as he could, Bono described his band as “punk”—even though, from the very beginning, Larry Mullen had asked Bono, with some trepidation, “We’re not a punk band, are we?” Bono also told me, on many occasions over many years, “We’re really the world’s loudest folk band.”

  *

  In May 1983, I was at a Mexican restaurant on New York’s Upper West Side when U2, whose music I had heard about but had not yet heard, walked in. They were accompanied by their tour manager Dennis Sheehan, who I knew well from his days as the road manager for Led Zeppelin and the Scottish singer Maggie Bell. I don’t remember exactly what happened or who said what, but I recall that when introductions were made, the then twenty-three-year-old Bono kissed my hand. This was no spontaneous, casual gesture. He was aware of columns I’d written in the NME about the Ramones, Patti Smith and the Clash. That hand-kissing would continue for the next three decades.

  That week, I went to see U2’s concert at the Palladium on 14th Street. During the show, Bono practically climbed up onto the lighting rig. U2 played loud, straight-ahead rock and roll. Their songs had melodies. Bono had a charismatic stage presence. They were a breath of electric guitar fresh air in a world that, at that time, was filled with synthesizers and dance pop. Two weeks later, at the US Festival in San Bernardino, California, the day after I’d been there with the Clash, I sat down backstage with Bono after U2’s set. He was exhausted and hoarse; he was losing his voice. “I spent a lot of money to see a throat specialist,” he said, “and he basically told me to shut up.” I would quickly learn that for Bono, this was an impossibility. In addition to the discussion about the Clash’s onstage fight the day before with their road crew, we talked about Bono’s onstage antics: climbing along the railing, leading the audience in singalongs and waving flags. He told me he was afraid of heights, but he climbed to the top of the stage because he wanted to engage the people all the way in the back who were in sleeping bags or buying hot dogs. “You saw the joy in the crowd,” he said. “They lifted me up and carried me. The people I respect—like Bob Dylan and John Lennon—they gave us their feelings because it was the truth. Our songs are a reflection of what’s going on in our lives. We take the music very seriously, but we don’t take ourselves all that seriously. We don’t have a poker up our backsides. Great music is possible. We don’t want to just have people get up and dance.”

  We talked about the New York punk scene, and I told him I’d send him some tapes I’d made of Patti Smith and Television. That day at the US Festival, I asked Bono about U2’s reputation as a “Christian” band. “People don’t fully understand U2,” he said. “They’re always reaching for a label. I’m nervous about that—calling us a ‘political’ band, a ‘spiritual’ band. I’m frightened of all that. We’re four people. We’re not hiding under haircuts. We’re not clothes hangers. We play music. We’re U2.”

  While Bono claimed that their attitude was punk, their music decidedly was not. I was surprised that he chose to identify with punk rock, because, if anything, their music sounded slightly reminiscent of Echo and the Bunnymen. But, even with musical influences of Irish bands such as the Waterboys, the Boomtown Rats and the Alarm, U2 sounded like no one else. They always had those melodic choruses that were described as “soaring” and “anthemic.” Occasionally, their rhythm was off and they didn’t play exactly in time. But they were exciting. On that day at the US Festival, Bono actually said to me, “I’m not the best at selling the group”—which was hilarious, because the most striking thing about U2, aside from their actual talent, was their actual ambition, fueled by Bono’s elaborate sales pitch. The reason some bands survive for years and others do not most often has to do with the drive, the lack of mistakes, the absence of drugs, the smart business decisions, and the hustle.

  • • •

  In October 1984, I was staying at the Lenox, a small hotel on the Left Bank in Paris. It was inexpensive and filled with people who were there for Fashion Week—which, at the time, happened only twice a year. Also there were some friends, like the photographer Steven Meisel, his entourage of stylists, makeup artists, hairdressers and favored models, and the photographer Albert Watson and his wife Liz. I got ten tickets for a group of us to see U2 at the Espace Ballard—a cavernous tent outside of Paris. It was a time of excess in the music industry. It was not at all unusual to obtain ten free tickets to go to a concert, or to get a table for twelve at a club like the Ritz in New York City to see a band. Thanks to MTV exposure and radio airplay, U2 was now a big band. I had interviews scheduled with Bono and the Edge at noon the day after the show, at their hotel—the Warwick, on the Right Bank. Because of a demonstration on the Champs-Elysées and a taxi driver unfamiliar with the Warwick Hotel, I arrived an hour late. I was embarrassed, but Bono was barely awake. He wore a peach-colored, terrycloth bathrobe and clearly, nothing underneath. I was slightly hungover and forgot to bring a cassette with me for the interview. (Today, I bring three backup cassette recorders and many extra cassettes. And, to the amusement of every musician I’ve interviewed in the last two decades, I still use cassettes.) Bono and I went down the hall to borrow a cassette from Edge, who was in his suite, also wearing a peach-colored terry robe. I told them they looked like they were members of a cult. Edge kindly (and foolishly) turned over a tape of the band’s soundcheck from the night before, which I used for the interviews. (Years later, listening to those interviews, I thought, what was I thinking? Until I heard half the soundcheck still intact on the tape.)

  That day, while I drank coffee and Bono had tea, I asked him why he wasn’t hanging off of things or waving flags around onstage anymore. “I find the greater the crowd, the greater the charge,” he said, “but adrenaline can get me into trouble. One night I threw Larry’s drum kit into the audience, and it came to blows with the band. Edge actually socked me on the jaw, and you know him, he’s a real gentleman. If things go bad, everyone will be silent on the way back to the hotel and then there’ll be a phone call from Adam. He’s the diplomat, and he’ll say, ‘Can we have a word with you?’ I’ll have to go down there and face the firing squad. They’ll just say, ‘Come on, you don’t have to do this, you must keep control of this thing.’ It’s supportive; they know that if I fall off the stage I’ll break some bones. They tell me the music should speak for itself. A whisper can speak as loudly as a scream.” He said when he went into the audience, his original intention was to make the point that there were no barriers. That the band and the audience were on the same level. But he realized that it had been misconstrued as “the man meets the people,” that he might be expected to do it all the time, and that he’d have to top it every time. I added that those forays could easily turn into caricature. I asked if he felt that U2 was still considered a “serious” band. “Well,” he said, “we’re Irish,” as if that explained everything.

  *

  When U2 first came to the U.S., they shared rooms in motels. Here, in Paris, each band member had his own suite. I asked Bono if he was getting used to hotel suites and limousines. “The first ride we had in a limo was in 1980,” Bono said. “We arrived in Hollywood, and the record company laid on this long white stretch limo. We were completely red-faced riding around in it, but at the same time, sort of curious. I remember we went to an import record shop in L.A. that had been supportive of the band and we made the limo driver park around the corner and we all sort of slinked into the shop. We were so uncool. I try to avoid the rock and roll circus, which is a kind of clichéd lifestyle. We try to avoid clichés in music and in lifestyle. I’m not into that rock and roll star trip of surrounding yourself with people who applaud your every du
ll action as you invade yet another nightclub. We’ll always be rock and roll stars as long as we don’t become celebrities. That’s dangerous. Did you see the Scorsese movie The King of Comedy?”

  Bono talked—and talked—about music and the band’s new album, The Unforgettable Fire. How he was still “hungry” and “thirsty” for U2’s music. He said he felt that U2 was a soul band, and that soul music wasn’t a case of black or white. Bruce Springsteen and Van Morrison were soul singers, he said. Soul was a decision to “reveal rather than conceal.” He said that U2 had made straightforward rock and roll, but now it was time to stretch. They always wanted to “innovate and aggravate.” In the past, he said, U2 had done music that was “no bullshit.” Did that mean, I asked, that it was now time for bullshit?

  Bono has always been one of those interviews—Patti Smith is another—where you could just turn on the tape recorder and probably leave the room for a few hours, come back, and he’d still be talking. If one of his “minders” didn’t come in to nudge him about another appointment or an interview or a meeting, or if I didn’t wrap it up, there’s no telling how long he could go on. Some said he had the gift of gab. Others said it was a lot of malarkey. But in 1984, in that Paris hotel suite, he was eloquent, inspired, enthusiastic. And yet, while it certainly never came to pass, he actually told me he was considering not doing any more interviews. “Because there are a lot of people who have nothing to say,” he said, “and they say it all the time. I don’t want to devalue what the group has to say. And if you tell the truth, you will end up repeating yourself all the time.” Bono was not yet the global spokesman he would become. He was not yet the businessman that he would become. We talked only about our shared interest in music. And he was honing what would become his trademark flowery pronouncements: “We want our music to be all things to all men,” he said. “We want our feet on the ground as well as our head in the clouds.” He admitted that they thought in terms of the Beatles. “If you’ve got to drop a name,” he said, “drop that one.” He said the only big band able to show so many different musical sides was the Beatles. Which was, he said, “an arrogant, pompous goal for little Irishmen like ourselves.” He said U2 was always accused of being arrogant and pompous. By whom, I asked. “Well, people less kind than yourself, Lisa.”

  “I want to be a certain kind of person, a good person,” Bono continued, “and I don’t think I am one in my life. But when I get onstage, I’m a much better person, I’m the person I want to be.” I ventured that at least he had the chance to be the person he wanted to be somewhere. Which was more real, I asked, onstage or off? It was like that Kafka story about a man dreaming he’s a cockroach or a cockroach dreaming he’s a man. “Exactly,” Bono said. “But you know my favorite Kafka story? He met a little girl once who was crying and crying because she lost her favorite doll. And Kafka said to the little girl, ‘No, your doll is fine, I’ve seen her, she’s just taking a trip around the world and she’s having a wonderful time.’ The little girl looked at him with widened eyes and said, ‘really?’ And Kafka told her yes, it was true. And for years afterwards, he wrote her postcards from various places all over the world, signing the cards with the name of her doll.”

  Later, down the hall, I sat with Edge in his suite. “Our goal is to write the perfect album,” he said. “Every time we go into the studio we hope we’ll get closer to that. But I very much doubt we’ll ever attain that goal of perfection. It’s like Mount Everest. That must be a terribly depressing place; you’ve spent all your time preparing to get up there. And when you get up there, all you can do is walk down again.”

  • • •

  I spent a lot of time with U2 in the 1980s, and Bono said many things to me that even at the time, I thought could eventually come back to haunt him. “Rock and rollers generally do their best work in their first ten years,” he told me once, “and then they break up like the Beatles. Or they repeat themselves ad infinitum and just bore everyone to death. I just always believed that there was some special spark between us when we played and that we would continue to make records that people would want to hear. Plus, we were always on the lookout for the bullshit: like here comes bullshit ’round the corner. We want to protect our music and ourselves from all of that.” On April 12, 1985, I took the fashion models Christy Turlington and Naomi Campbell to see U2 at the Brendan Byrne Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey. Christy and Naomi were both around eighteen years old. We went backstage. Bono approached. All of a sudden, this man I’d known as a passionate lover of punk rock and a serious, earnest talker, turned into a major flirt. “Such lovely women,” he murmured, kissing hands all around. It would be the beginning of a long friendship that Bono and his wife Ali have with Christy. Naomi was another story.

  Bono and I often joked about the band’s image: he told me he’d heard that he lived in a castle, drove a hearse, and read the Bible on a daily basis. He was eminently quotable, telling me (and probably anyone else who would listen) such things as “Our music isn’t urban music—it’s about rivers and mountains and sky and earth.” He referred to the United States as “the promised land.” And, “U2’s music is too big to have a roof over its head.” In 1985 he told me, “People think that I must be some sort of guru because I write songs like ‘Pride (In the Name of Love)’ and am attracted to people like Martin Luther King and Gandhi. But the reason I’m attracted to men of peace is because I grew up in a violent way. I despise the violence I see in myself. I’m much more the guy with the broken bottle in my hand than the guy who would turn the other cheek.” Of the hours and hours I have on tape with Bono, he kept returning, year after year, to similar declarations: every time they went to make an album, U2 wanted to stretch, to make something different, something special. The albums had to be pried out of their hands. They never quite got the sound they wanted. Each night onstage they wanted it to be the best concert they ever played in their lives, but they never quite did it. They hadn’t made their best record yet. The best was always yet to come from U2.

  *

  Of all the bands and musicians I’ve talked to, every single one of them, in the beginning, wrote songs for themselves. They had no idea if they’d get an audience. The entire career was a dream, a fantasy. Then, there was always a series of steps. First, they’d get on a stage in a bar, or a small club. Maybe they’d perform other people’s songs. If they were lucky, they earned around $50 a night. More often, they got free beer and each band member got $10 for dinner. They might have to pool the dinner money to buy gas for the van for the ten-hour ride to the next show. If there was a next show. When they got to the next club, often, there was no soundcheck. There might be eight people in the “audience” who stood around and watched them. This could be followed by a seventeen-hour ride through the desert—or the Everglades, or a snowstorm in the Midwest—to the next “show.” Maybe some fans would let the band sleep at their house. Or, band members would take turns driving the van while others slept. If enough money was made from those small shows, the band could stay in a cheap motel where four or five people would share one room. If and when they made more money, two people would share a motel room. Song demos were made in makeshift studios. Band members—or their first manager, or a girlfriend, or a fan—would stuff envelopes and mail those demos to record companies. In the 1980s, the 1990s and even early on in the 21st century, a demo from a new, young, “baby band” could sit in a pile on some record executive’s desk, unlistened to for months on end. Many of the piano players in cocktail lounges in strip malls, or cover bands in a local bar on a Saturday night, started out with the same dreams. One band in thousands makes it. Or, someone can come along, believe in the band, and help make something happen. In the case of U2, this was Paul McGuinness—their first, and longtime manager. Talking to me in 2004 about the early days of U2, Paul McGuinness said, “I didn’t want to go and see them because I didn’t like the idea of punk rock. I thought it was coarse.” He said when he finally did see U2,
they were doing exactly what they do now—“Only badly.” Every record label initially turned them down, but he thought they would be huge. It probably helped, he said, that he was naive.

  *

  In 1987, I talked at length to Larry Mullen Jr., who rarely did interviews. Larry was amused that people thought he was the dumb, pretty one who just played drums. While Larry credited Bono with having the “vision” for the band, Larry actually started U2 in his parents’ kitchen when he was seventeen. To my mind, Larry, who is stubborn and argues constantly with the other band members, is the conscience of U2. Talking about their early days, he said, “All the record companies in Ireland turned us down, and when we went to London, they turned us down as well. In a way, it was great that we were turned down, because right from the start, we were able to see the business for what it was. My parents were concerned, especially since I was seventeen and had never been out of the country before. London is like the big, bad world. Sex and drugs were very much a part of rock and roll. But coming from Ireland, and being brought up Catholic, I made a decision that I was young and impressionable, I’d read about what drugs did, so I just said no. Edge had a major conscience call about how the rock and roll lifestyle could work hand in hand with the Christian faith. I know he went through a very difficult time trying to figure that one out. We all questioned it. But in the end, it just seemed like the right thing to do.” (In 2004, Edge told me that he never thought it weird that the band had religious beliefs or that they didn’t have a lot of drugs or groupies around. “You have to understand,” he told me, “we were from Dublin, not a city where rock and roll existed like New York or London or Hamburg. Dublin had its own cultural resonance. The biggest influences in our lives were the trouble up North and a lot of religious bigotry. We related more to Bob Marley than to the Grateful Dead. We saw that you had to take everything into your life; you couldn’t exclude politics, you couldn’t exclude religion. We didn’t edit ourselves. It was all part of what made a complete band. We didn’t even have to think about it. It was a natural thing. It was only when we left Ireland and were exposed to the media elsewhere that we realized we had to be careful. A lot of time it was blown up into a creepy thing.”)