Killing Bono

by Neil McCormick

  I was flown out to San Francisco to see the PopMart tour, watching from the mixing desk in the company of Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis. The biggest band in Britain had just played a support slot to the biggest band in the world. “Fuckin’ mad, man. Mad!” Liam kept saying, in tones of wonder, at the unfolding of what was undoubtedly the most impressive multimedia extravaganza since, well, the last U2 tour. Never regarded as the most articulate of people, Liam nonetheless has a distinctive way of expressing himself. “This is the first time I’ve seen U2,” he declared. “Now I understand! It’s…phwoarghghghgh!”

  I knew exactly how he felt. PopMart was insanely spectacular, appealing on every conceivable level: artistic, intellectual, emotional, visual and musical. U2 played beneath an arch of glittering neon, before an enormous video wall alive with inventive pop-art imagery. A guitar solo was delivered to a mind-bending psychedelic display, spread across 700 square meters of screen. The group arrived for encores inside their own glitterball UFO. The show had constant momentum and was delivered on a scale that made the full moon, suspended in a cloudless sky over the open-air baseball stadium, look like just another part of the lighting rig. Yet there remained room for personality, improvisation and intimacy. Bono displayed that gift he has for transcending the problem of physical distance with the generosity and humanity of his performance.

  After the show, Liam (who appeared to have made an early assault on the backstage supplies of alcohol) hijacked the sound system in U2’s dressing rooms. “You gotta listen to this,” he insisted. “This is fuckin’ great!” It was the new Oasis album, fresh from the studio. As music boomed from the speakers, Liam clutched Bono by the shoulders, singing the lyrics of every song directly into his face. Quickly catching hold of the choruses, Bono sang along. The Edge nodded his head approvingly.

  “People say Oasis songs are obvious, but the way the melodies relate to the chords is quite unusual,” he observed in his typically analytical manner. “You get the feeling you have heard the songs before, but they still surprise you.” Moving with the animal grace of some magnificent simian creature, Liam spread his arms wide and bellowed, “Stand by me, wherever you a-a-a-are…” An intimate gathering of backstage revelers (including film star Winona Ryder and her beau from U.S. punks Green Day, models and singers Lisa M and Lisa B, maverick Scottish DJ Howie B and producers Nellee Hooper and Hal Wilner) watched in open admiration, applauding this astonishing private performance. Noel sat on a sofa taking it all in, a perpetual, secret smile playing on his lips.

  Somehow I wound up in a corner with Bono, in a drunken conversation about the symbolic meaning of the giant olive perched on top of a giant stick which towered over the stage while U2 played songs of faith and doubt, passion and reflection, love and war. I mean, what was all that about, I wanted to know. Three chords, the truth…and an olive on top?

  “There’s an entire philosophy that comes with the word pop,” Bono was telling me. “You were always banging on about it and I can see that now. You were right. Did I ever tell you you were right?”

  “You’ve told me about ten times tonight already,” I said, “but you can keep telling me if you want. It’s music to my ears.”

  “We’re in a commercial world and pop artists like Warhol wanted to be part of the real world; they didn’t want to be on a gallery wall, they wanted to make prints and make it accessible. Warhol was one of those people who, rather than trying to dodge the contradictions of his situation as an artist working in the commercial world, actually enjoyed it and drew from it. He embraced the contradictions. There’s freedom in that. Freedom for us to get away with our songs, which are spiky and bitter and there’s a brokenness to them. You just wouldn’t get away with them unless you surrounded yourself with neon and cosmic glitter. This is the nineties! It’s a decade that’s like this great party and its hangover. And I think there’s something in facing that, in facing the other side of the party. Because no one can live that life without it turning in on you and getting shallow.”

  “So let me see if I’ve got this right,” I said. “The olive represents freedom. And it also symbolizes a decade of excess. The night before the millennium after.” Well, blame it on the late hour, blame it on the champagne, beer and wine flowing backstage, but all that seemed to make sense. Sort of. “But what about the forty-foot lemon beneath the giant olive?”

  “You’ve got to have a lemon,” said Bono. “A vodka and tonic without the lemon is just not the same thing.”

  Bono announced a visit to a bar called Tosca’s, which was being kept open for the band. It was a favorite watering hole of his, a bohemian writers’ enclave, once a haunt of Charles Bukowski, Sam Shepherd and Tom Waits (Bono’s brother named his Dublin restaurant in honor of Tosca’s and their father’s lifelong love for opera). The last few diehards piled into a minibus. Edge and Liam were on the back seat, Noel squeezed in between Bono and me, clutching the singer’s knee as he babbled with excitement about the concert and enthused about U2 songs he admired. And then, with startling synchronicity, the minibus radio, tuned to a late-night station, began to play U2’s hit “One.”

  “This is the greatest song ever written!” yelled Noel. And he and Liam started to sing it at the top of their voices. Swept away by the brothers’ exuberance, Bono and Edge joined in. And as we rolled down some San Francisco highway, long after midnight, four of the world’s greatest rock stars raised their voices in an impassioned, impromptu rendition of a song of unity and brotherly love. “We are one,” they sang, “but we’re not the same / We’ve got to carry each other, carry each other…”

  And I sang, too. Because if this was anybody’s song it was my song. The song of Bono’s doppelganger.

  We are one. But we’re not the same.

  I recall, at some point in the ensuing drunken revelry, Bono clambering on to the bar at Tosca’s to deliver an operatic aria. And Nellee Hooper dragging his girlfriend Lisa B out by her hair, apparently enraged that she was talking to me. And the newly married Liam sneaking off into the night with Lisa M, with whom he conceived a child. And many, many hours later, Bono rounding up the stragglers (Edge, me and a couple of girls) to go watch the sun rise over the Golden Gate Bridge.

  And by the time I woke up, in the early afternoon, with a sore head and a smile on my face, whatever lingering envy and resentment I might have felt toward my old friends had faded in the California sunlight. And I thought about what a privilege it was knowing them. And getting to see their remarkable story unfold, up close and personal. And to be invited, from time to time, to join in, to sing along, to share the adventure.

  Like the time we went to Rome to visit the Pope.

  It was 1999 and Bono and Bob Geldof were campaigning for Jubilee 2000, a charitable organization that wanted to persuade world leaders to drop the debt crippling the Third World. They had been promised an audience with Pope John Paul II at his summer palace in the Alban hills. “He does command a very large constituency,” as Geldof (an avowed atheist) pointed out in typically pragmatic fashion. They wanted a journalist to accompany them, so I was invited along for the ride.

  Bono and Geldof made for an extremely odd couple: the former an upbeat, optimistic idealist motivated by his long-lasting commitment to Christianity; the latter a belligerent, pessimistic, atheist cynic who seems compelled to do good work almost despite himself. Together, however, they represented a genuinely dynamic duo: two Irish rock stars on a mission to save the world. The night before, conversation had dwelled on Irish show-bands of the seventies rather than global economics, but as soon as cameras or microphones were trained on them Bono and Geldof turned into impressive advocates for their cause. They had clearly done their homework, confidently backing up punchy, emotive soundbites with an impressive grasp of salient facts and figures. “You know the funny thing,” Bono confided, “in school, you couldn’t have paid me to learn this stuff. You couldn’t have beaten it into me. But guess what? It turns out I have a facility for it. I read brief
ing notes and find I can memorize them, no problem at all.”

  Maybe it was because this was something that really mattered to him. Still, I knew Bono actually had grave doubts about being a figurehead for the campaign. “It is absurd if not obscene that celebrity is a door that such serious issues need to pass through before politicians take note,” he complained. “But there it is. Jubilee can’t get into some of these offices and I can. But the idea has a kind of force of its own. I’m just making it louder. And, you know, making noise is a job description really for a rock star.”

  Bono’s fame had reached quite outlandish proportions. In Italy, where he is a superstar among superstars, his every appearance would cause visible ripples to run through the surrounding area. Traffic would grind to a halt amid the celebratory beeping of horns. Mobs of pedestrians swirled around. Paparazzi jostled for position. Jubilee 2000 had provided a phalanx of bodyguards, all of whom were conspicuously better-dressed than the man they were assigned to protect. Their sharp, gray Italian suits, sleek haircuts and designer sunglasses made Bono (in tatty black jacket and jeans, huge purple shades and brothel creepers) look like a bum who had been rooting around in thrift shops. But, in an era when fame is portrayed more as a burden than a privilege, Bono cut a refreshingly fearless figure, unwilling to allow himself to be cut off from the world by overprotection. Whenever he ventured beyond the guarded confines of the hotel building, he was immediately mobbed by media and public alike. Not the tallest of men, he would at times disappear from view, leaving his bodyguards looking extremely tense as they hovered helplessly on the edges of the scrum. To their palpable relief, Bono would eventually emerge with limbs still attached, smiling as he signed a last autograph or dispensed another soundbite for the TV cameras.

  Outside the papal residence, a crowd of onlookers were all yelling for Bono, as a police escort led our minibus through an enormous archway into a vast, walled courtyard, home to the man considered by the Roman Catholic church to be God’s representative on earth. The biblical expression “in my father’s house there are many mansions” would be a fair description of the Pope’s residence. The house I grew up in would have fitted comfortably in a single room. Our small entourage was led from one vast chamber to another until we arrived at the aging pontiff’s quarters. I was really looking forward to meeting the Pope. After all, this was the guy who had broken up the Modulators. I wanted to see what God’s envoy looked like in the flesh. And I had solemnly promised Bono I would not use this opportunity to trot out my theories about the godless universe or ask embarrassing questions about the meaning of specific biblical passages. But when we approached the door, true to form, a glorified bouncer (albeit one dressed in the medieval costume of the Vatican Swiss Guard) insisted I wait outside.

  I might have fucking known. This was the story of my life with Bono. I never had quite the right pass or sufficient kudos to gain access to the final sanctum. “Just don’t tell them I’m not a Catholic,” Bono whispered to me as he was led inside by the Swiss Guard.

  I was left sitting on a stone bench awaiting his return. But I didn’t spit and fume and curse my luck. I sat and chuckled to myself about the absurdity of the whole situation. I thought about my friend, and what an amazing person he had turned out to be, a complex, gregarious, immensely compassionate individual who put himself on the line, again and again, for the things he believes in.

  Over the years, Bono and his bandmates had campaigned for Amnesty International, Artists United Against Apartheid, Live Aid, Self Aid (a charity set up to help the unemployed of Ireland), CND, Greenpeace and Warchild. U2 had protested against the construction of a nuclear-waste processing plant at Sell-afield, a power station in England that was notorious in Ireland for dumping waste into the Irish sea. The band did an enormous amount to highlight the plight of war victims in Bosnia and, throughout years of conflict, supported the besieged citizens of Sarajevo. They pledged time and significant funds (including all the profits from their single “One”) to raise AIDS awareness. And they played a small but significant part in the Northern Ireland peace process, when Bono brought the leader of the Democratic party, John Hume, and Unionist leader David Trimble out on stage to shake hands during a U2 concert in support of the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998. “We’re going to have to start finding other ways to get our message across,” Bono once joked to me. “I’m terrified that if U2 make another big statement about peace, war might break out just to knock me off my high horse.”

  Watching him in Rome, working the media, banging the drum for the starving of the world, pushing himself to the limit of exhaustion and beyond for a cause that had the potential to change the world, I was moved almost to tears. I saw what he put into it and what it was taking out of him. The Jubilee campaign had engaged so much of Bono’s time and energy it had knocked U2 for a loop, setting back the recording of their latest album by a year. “It is such a big idea, the biggest idea I have ever heard,” said Bono, “I just couldn’t walk away from it. This is not just throwing pennies at the poor; it is looking at the whole structure of poverty. But it’s getting to be a sore subject with the others. It really is. They’ve been very patient with me but it’s not easy for them waiting around in the studio while I go to visit the Pope!”

  Bono could give an interview master class. At the center of a veritable media riot, he remained impressively focused on his cause, stating and restating the case for debt relief with a potent combination of charm, sincerity, wit and conviction. While Geldof discussed strategy with the Jubilee 2000 delegates before departing for business meetings in Rome, Bono answered the same questions over and over again, gamefully attempting to inject something fresh into each interview. Though he visibly tired as the day wore on, his voice growing hoarse from ceaseless talk, the subject matter always seemed capable of engaging him. “It’s a moral question more than an intellectual one,” he insisted during a telephone interview with Newsweek. “You can argue all you want with the idea—and I’ve had some extraordinary arguments with some extraordinary minds—but in the end it’s a moral issue and if we can’t make this happen it says much about moral torpor.”

  “Just how unhip is this?” Bono laughed as he put down the phone. “I might as well get myself a bowler hat and briefcase.”

  A day that had begun with an early-morning phone interview with Radio Four’s Today program finally ground to a halt close to midnight in a chaotic little office in Rome, where an old rug had been taped to a wall to provide a colorful backdrop for a live satellite link-up with CNN’s American news team. Bono was clearly beginning to lose it, stumbling over his sentences and improvising a reggae song about the funky pontiff when the link went down for the fourth time. “You better get me out of here before I start saying things like ‘The poor should give the rich what they want,’ ” he jokingly warned an assistant.

  We dined al fresco at a swish restaurant beneath a full moon in Rome, toasting the health of the frail, eighty-two-year-old pontiff who had released a strong statement in support of their cause. Geldof, true to form, provided a lone dissenting voice, casting doubts on whether they were really any closer to their goal, but with wine flowing freely even his pessimism was considered grounds for another toast. A few hours earlier Geldof had cheekily asked the Pope for a set of rosaries for his dad but now launched into a not untypical rant about the sheer ridiculousness of religious belief. I pointed out that he and Bono made quite a pair. “Bono is a Jesuit priest,” declared Geldof to much laughter. “With a mullet hairdo! Have you ever noticed how he walks with his hands clasped in front of him?” Geldof was talking loud enough to be sure Bono was paying attention. “And I walk with my fists clenched by my side! You don’t have to believe in order to have a sense that things ain’t right, and they can be put right. God is such a psychedelic notion anyway, this superbeing who fixes everything. Is the whole world on drugs? It’s just so improbable!”

  “When you come out with all that stuff it makes me laugh,” declared Bono, thr
owing an arm around Geldof’s shoulder. “You are so close to God. Closer than most people I know.”

  It was the only time I have seen Geldof lost for words.

  By two in the morning, only a few stragglers were left. Even Geldof had made his excuses, declaring that he owned a flat in Rome he had never seen (ah, the trials of the multimillionaire life). Bono, however, was resisting all attempts to persuade him to call it a night. Although due to catch a six a.m. flight to Washington with Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs to meet American senators, he was apparently determined to re-establish his rock ’n’ roll credentials. “Sleep is for economists,” he joked. Late-night traffic was still streaming by as Bono slipped away from his minders, beckoning me to follow. I wasn’t sure what he was up to but tagged along as he strode out into the middle of the road, holding up a hand to dramatically halt an oncoming car.

  Had I been on my own, I’d have undoubtedly been run over by an irate motorist and left for dead in a Roman thoroughfare. But Bono brought the traffic to a complete standstill. The driver of the car in front of us was practically squealing with delight as a rock star leaned in his window, cheerfully inquiring if he knew anywhere around here we could get a drink. It was then that I noticed the car was full of transsexuals. Before Bono’s minders had worked out what was going on, we were squeezing into the back seat to perch on the knees of some hairy Italian ladyboys. Which is how come at four in the morning we were seated at a small table in a packed nightclub between beautiful people of indeterminate gender, drinking complimentary champagne while a scantily clad babe tried to attract Bono’s attention by dancing on the table. “Remind me, what’s this rock-star thing all about?” Bono mused, puffing on a giant cigar. “Ah yes. Screaming girls. Fashionable clothes. People playing guitars. Got it!”

  And I thought, “Rock stardom couldn’t have happened to a nicer and, frankly, more deserving guy. He’s certainly put it to a lot better use than I ever would have.”