Killing Bono

by Neil McCormick

  We had often been told it was a mistake to manage ourselves—if only from the point of view that, to the unimaginative at least (a category which definitely included A&R departments), artists should never appear to be interested in (or even capable of understanding) the brutal, cutthroat world of business. Managers made plans. Artists had visions. And besides, I knew I had upset a few too many people with my outspokenness. So, in the absence of the real thing, we decided to invent pseudo-management. Ivan’s friend trainee Doctor Martin and my friend Gloria (who had rather enjoyed the whole Melody Maker subterfuge) agreed to pose as a vibrant new management team and do the rounds of the record companies. I would brief Martin and Gloria on who they were about to see and what tack they should take, then sit at the back during the meeting and look as baffled by all this high-powered business talk as any self-respecting artist should be.

  We set up a showcase in the Theater Museum, an unusual and attractive space in the center of London. Everything was arranged for the convenience of the record companies. Elegant invitations (and subsequent reminders) were sent out with maps and offers of transport. It was early evening and midweek, so as not to disturb their doubtless hectic social lives. As our representatives, Martin and Gloria assured them that we would be performing only four songs, then they could be about their business. It was an entirely cynical and contrived attempt to bring the mountain to Mohammed, since Mohammed evidently was not prepared to go to the Rock Garden.

  The remarkable thing is, it worked like a dream. Virtually every record company turned up, even some we hadn’t invited. We dimmed the lights, blasted through four songs, and left them to discuss it among themselves.

  Afterward, Martin and Gloria were mingling when a senior record executive approached them. “This is the most impressive showcase I have ever attended,” he informed them. But he wasn’t interested in signing Shook Up! He wanted Martin and Gloria to manage one of his acts.

  Still, the prognosis was good. Well, it was OK. The head of Chrysalis Publishing wanted to see us the next day. Arista indicated positive interest. Various others nodded in approval. After all that effort, it was disappointing not to get a firm offer. But it was something. And something was better than nothing. Just about.

  We went to Browns that night (not for the first time). And slipped into the VIP room (again). And drank champagne (on someone else’s tab, naturally) and toasted the future, celebrating as if we had been granted the keys to the kingdom rather than just been allowed another glimmer of light through the crack of a partially opened door. Boy George was there and we chatted about Vlad, who was producing some tracks for George’s new album.

  “He’s a very strange man,” noted Boy George.

  “He certainly is,” we confirmed.

  “Do you think his girlfriend is really psychic?” wondered George.

  “Well, she said we were going to be the most successful group in the world,” said Ivan.

  “Funny, she said the same thing to me,” sniggered George. “I said, ‘Too late, dear. Been there, done that.’ ”

  Elton John was in the VIP room. And so was George Michael. And so were we! This was where we belonged. Only, I made the mistake of going downstairs to the dance floor and when I tried to return a bouncer blocked my way.

  “All my friends are up there,” I said.

  “That’s too bad,” he said.

  I thought I might as well try it on. I mean, if anybody looked like a pop star it was me. So I bristled with outrage and demanded, “Don’t you know who I am?”

  “Yeah, I do know who you are,” said the bouncer. “Now fuck off!”

  There was no single moment when I decided it was over. But if giving up this ghost of a career was the result of a series of little epiphanies, then I certainly experienced one there. I stood shaking with embarrassment in front of the bouncer, then snapped, “Fine!” turned around and walked out of the club. The bouncer knew who I was. But did I? I took the night bus home, on my own. I needed time to think.

  What was I supposed to do? I could feel it all slipping away now but I was clinging to the cliff face of my career by broken fingernails, hanging on with the grim determination of the truly desperate. I felt that if I let go I would be in freefall, not spinning toward the freedom of an unimagined future but plummeting helplessly to the jagged rocks below. Fame and Fortune were the twin peaks of my desire. But why did I feel it was so imperative to scale these particular mountains? And why would I feel such a failure if I never made it to the summit? These were questions that needed to be answered.

  I spoke to Bono. We went for a long walk in the countryside and I poured it all out, my hopes, my fears, my feeling that I had so much to give, all this creativity bubbling up inside me with no outlet, until the pressure was building like a volcano in my head. I feared spontaneous combustion.

  “Get a life,” said Bono.

  “What?” I said, not sure if I heard right.

  “You’ve got a life,” repeated Bono. “You don’t even see it. You’re so occupied by some imaginary future life you barely even notice that you’re living now.”

  “I’m not living the life I want,” I wheedled.

  “You can’t always get what you want,” said Bono.

  “Don’t start quoting Rolling Stones songs at me as if they were Zen aphorisms,” I complained.

  “Life is what happens to you when you are busy making other plans,” said Bono.

  “John Lennon said that,” I pointed out.

  “I am John Lennon,” said Bono. I looked closely at him. His face was in shadow, silhouetted by the radiant sun behind his head. “I am John and I am Paul and I am Mick and I am Keith and I am Elvis and Jimi and Bob and Johnny and I am all of rock ’n’ roll. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”

  Shit! I woke up with my heart pounding. The Bono dreams were getting worse. Sometimes I would be on stage with U2 in front of a stadium full of roaring fans and suddenly realize I didn’t know the words to the songs and Adam, Edge and Larry would all be looking at me with exasperation and then Bono would come out and take the microphone from me. Sometimes we would be playing our guitars and talking about songs and having a rare old time but other people would come into the room and I would find myself getting pushed farther and farther away until they were all surrounding him, listening to him sing, and I was blocked out completely. Sometimes I would find myself outside the red rope that cordoned off the group from their fans. Sometimes I would find myself inside the red rope, happy and basking in the presence of my starry friends, acknowledged as one of them, which felt even more humiliating when I woke up. How could I be so craven in my need to be part of U2? I didn’t want to feel any different about Bono than I had ever felt, yet he was taking on this strange, archetypal role in my subconscious, a rock God presiding over all that I desired.

  U2 released a new album in October, Rattle and Hum. It’s a great album, I think, mixing live music with studio recordings while on tour in America in a rootsy attempt to embrace rock’s rich heritage. It has some fantastic songs on it. The Bo Diddleyesque evocation of naked hunger that is “Desire.” The broodingly atmospheric travelogue “Hawkmoon 269.” The sweeping, string-laden, epic love song “All I Want Is You.” But the truth is, it fucking annoyed me back then. I thought, “Who are they to declare themselves heirs to the all-time greats of rock ’n’ roll?” Bono barely even knew who Bob Dylan was back when we were teenagers and now he was writing songs with him, with Bono and Dylan cocredited as lyricists on “Love Rescue Me.” And on the opening track, “Helter Skelter,” the group who had once happily described themselves as the worst covers band in the world dared to take on my idols. “Charles Manson stole this song from the Beatles; we’re stealing it back,” proclaimed Bono, as they launched into a sloppy rendition of the White Album rock classic. I was really irritated by that. That song belonged to me as much as it belonged to anyone, more than it could ever belong to blowins who never even owned a Beatles record growing up. They did
a similarly hastily rehearsed cover of Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower.” When Jimi Hendrix recorded that song he made it his very own. The best that could be said about U2’s version was that they made it to the end.

  But the one that really got my goat was “God Part II,” their sequel to John Lennon’s myth-shattering “God,” which climaxed his first post-Beatles solo album. Lennon’s gentle, melodic epic had been an attack on belief systems, a litany of everything he had lost faith in (from “I don’t believe in Jesus” to “I don’t believe in Beatles”). “The dream is over,” he poignantly concluded.

  Bono took another tack. Over a pummeling, monotone bass and drum track attacked by savage guitar bursts, Bono snapped out short, pithy couplets acknowledging the contradictions between conviction and practice (“I don’t believe in excess, success is to give / I don’t believe in riches but you should see where I live…I don’t believe in deathrow, skidrow or the gangs / Don’t believe in the Uzi it just went off in my hands”). Each verse concluded with an almost wistful declaration: “I believe in love.” Bono’s faith in the power of love struck me as unconvincing in the harsh and cynical eighties. And it seemed to fly in the face of Lennon’s own disillusionment. I thought of Lennon’s weary, poignant put-down of his own failed idealism: “I really thought love was gonna save us all.” That could be the ironic inscription on his gravestone, the famous last words of a peace advocate who went down in a hail of bullets, slain by one of his own followers. Bono’s attempt to revive that idealism seemed at odds with the bleak things he had to say (‘Don’t believe in forced entry, I don’t believe in rape / But every time she passes by wild thoughts escape”). The most perplexing contradiction came when Bono sang: “I don’t believe in the sixties, the golden age of pop / You glorify the past when the future dries up.” Yet the song was written in homage to a sixties icon and included on an album that glorified the past in its musical styles and points of reference.

  It seems obvious with hindsight that my anger had more to do with my own frustrated desires to establish my place in the rock hierarchy than any inherent flaw in U2’s song, but I was incensed enough to compose a song of my own, a very raw blues in E minor that amounted to a kind of atheistic, nihilistic, existentialist declaration of disbelief.

  I don’t believe all men are equal, that’s a rumor put about

  By them who have it all and don’t want to let it out

  I don’t believe the meek will inherit the earth

  Till it’s been robbed of all its minerals and fucked for all it’s worth

  It was full of nasty couplets, including one about Bono: “I don’t believe in rock stars preaching from the stage / Instead of acting high and mighty, I wish they’d act their age.” And I let my maker have it too: “I don’t believe in nothing I can’t smell, taste, touch or see / I don’t believe in God and He don’t believe in me.”

  I called it “God Part III.” I sent it in a letter to Bono. I don’t know what I expected his response to be. Was he supposed to write back admitting that I was the real rock genius and it was time for him to step aside and let me take over?

  A couple of weeks later, I attended the premiere of the Rattle and Hum film in Leicester Square. There was Bono, on the big screen, where I had always wanted to be. Larger than life. The mixed emotions U2 inspired in me were impossible to ignore anymore. As much as I admired them, their success was costing me something deep inside, knocking chunks out of my already badly battered ego. Surely something you love shouldn’t make you feel bad? This was the music that had inspired me to want to be in a band yet, watching them in the cinema, I felt each uplifting chord and high-minded sentiment contrarily dragging me down. I had been upstaged even in the drama of my own life. The scale of U2’s fame seemed to mock me, making the minor achievements of my own existence seem pathetic. U2 made me feel small. The very idea that they could affect me in this way made me feel even smaller.

  Afterward there was a party in the Science Museum. Well, if you’ve got to throw a party somewhere…

  Ivan and I made our way down. Outside, huge searchlights arced across the night sky and crowds gathered in the cold to try to catch a glimpse of their heroes. We showed our invitations and strolled into the main hall, where the skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex stood tall and savage, making all the partygoers appear insignificant, mere mortals heading inevitably to our own personal extinction. There were a lot of people mingling about, none of whom I knew. I looked around for U2.

  And there it was: the red rope, just like in my dreams, cordoning off the stars from the rabble. A horrible shiver ran through me, a sense of hallucinatory déjà vu, as if my personal nightmare was being enacted in the real world. Stone-faced bouncers guarded the entrance to the sacred inner sanctum. Special passes were required, which we didn’t have. I didn’t know whether to approach the red rope and expose myself to the potential humiliation of rejection or just accept that my close connection to U2 had been severed. Our worlds had shifted out of alignment. Maybe I should count myself lucky to be at the party at all, drink the free beer and toast the success of my old friends. At least, one day, I could tell my grandchildren I was there when it all began.

  But Ivan was having none of it. He went up to the rope and waved. Edge turned and waved back. And the next thing I knew, we were inside the cordon and our old friends were greeting us like, well, old friends.

  “We were wondering if you had made it,” said the Edge. “What did you think?” And we chatted a bit about the film, its strong points and its weaknesses. For someone who takes the role of guitar hero, the Edge seems curiously lacking in ego. Indeed, lacking in edges. He not only accepts criticism but also seems to be interested in it, turning it over with analytical detachment rather than engaging with it as if it were a personal attack. In school, he could bristle with the competitiveness of any of our contemporaries, sometimes resorting to sarcastic humor in his attempts to fight his corner, but over the years Edge has grown progressively calmer and more centered. Success, of course, breeds confidence, but it was clear that he was also fortified by the strong inner convictions of his faith.

  Adam was in ebullient form, grinning widely as he approached to ask if I still possessed that first bass guitar we had both owned.

  “I’m sure it’s around somewhere,” I said.

  “I’d like to buy it back off you,” he said.

  “It’ll cost you a bit more than sixty quid,” I said. “You really ripped me off when you sold me that plank.”

  “Name your price,” he said. “I’ve come into a bit of money since then.”

  At some point in the evening, I sat down with Bono.

  “That song!” he said, rather pointedly.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “You’ve got the sickness,” he said. “Your songs make Leonard Cohen sound cheerful.”

  “I’ve been feeling a bit jealous,” I admitted. “You know, I can’t believe in anything. I just can’t. But I look around at where people are in their lives and I find that the people who have a strong belief system seem to do better than those of us who have nothing but confusion.”

  “You’re suggesting that belief and confusion are mutually exclusive,” countered Bono. “I don’t think so. I think belief gives you a direction in the confusion. So what’s really bothering you?”

  “I can’t believe you wrote a song with Bob Dylan,” I said, barely able to disguise my envy.

  “How jammy is that?” laughed Bono. “You know the strange thing: I was staying in L.A., right, and I had a dream one night about Bob Dylan, and I woke up and just started writing that song. And it’s about a man who people keep turning to as a savior but whose own life is getting messed up and he could use a bit of salvation himself. I wrote a couple of verses and I didn’t really know what to do with it, but I thought, ‘I’m a rock star, right? And I’ve actually got Bob Dylan’s number…somewhere! So why don’t I give him a call.’ So I go over to his house and I told him I’ve got this
song, it’s not finished, and he says, ‘Play it to me,’ and he just started making up lyrics on the spot. It was incredible, whole verses just came pouring out. And so I actually got to finish the song with the man in my dream!”

  “I hate to admit this,” I said, “but I’ve been dreaming about you.”

  “I’m not sure if I want to know about that,” said Bono.

  “I’m not sure if I want to tell you!” I said. “I don’t want you in my dreams! They’re private!”

  “I’ll try to remember that next time I’m wandering about at night looking for somebody’s head to get into,” laughed Bono.

  “I’d appreciate it,” I said, but I couldn’t bring myself to take this matter any further, to tell him how I was really feeling. “So what was Dylan like to work with?” I asked instead, bringing the conversation back to safe ground.

  “You know, he recorded a lead vocal on that song but then he wouldn’t let us use it,” said Bono. “It’s incredible. People still say he can’t sing but I learned more about phrasing and delivery just listening to him sing that song than I think I’ve learned in ten years on stage. Every line he sings, it’s like the truth, he’s got absolute conviction. I wish he’d let us put it on the album but he had some excuse about not wanting to conflict with the Traveling Wilburys’ record. I don’t know if that was true or if the song was just a little close to the bone. There’s a lot of despair and regret in there. I think maybe he got cold feet about portraying himself in that way. I’ll tell you a funny thing, though. We’re in the studio, right, laying down the vocal, and he says, ‘Uh, can’t use that verse.’ I’m like, ‘What’s the problem, it’s a fantastic verse.’ It was one of his verses, which he’d just sung off the top of his head. And he says, ‘Uh-uh, can’t use it.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ He said, ‘I’ve used it before!’ And he had!”