A Dreamboat Named Desire

“They went right through it. Took out every sock. Squeezed every tube of toothpaste. Then this guy says to me ‘You — come with me. NOW!’ I thought I was finished. But after 20 minutes they let me go.” Bono Vox smiles forgivingly and sips his tea. A rough ride through New York Customs doesn’t deter him from enjoying that. In a land where coffee and iced water are on the table almost before you’ve sat down, Bono usually asks for tea; and in this New Orleans hotel restaurant he and his fellow travellers in U2 have already charmed the staff into producing it on cue.

It is the start of U2’s fourth tour of America, commencing only three weeks after their third, October is in the middle reaches of the U.S. Top 100 and the group are doing their best to pummel it into the flab of American rock awareness.

“But we love being here, as far as playing is concerned,” says Bono. “The audience reaction is instinctive. There isn’t much reading on music. The only way people hear about things is by radio, which is very localised. You could be huge in Boston and people won’t have heard of you in Texas.”

The encapsulation of the problem which a zillion other bands before them have quailed at: the enormity of “cracking America.” This is big rock biz we’re talkin’! And it comes from the mouths of four extremely young, gentle, soft-spoken Dubliners, the most engaging groups of boys I’ve met in a long while. Just how did U2 get into all this?

In the year since NME‘s last U2 feature they have — in more than 200 gigs and a vast brouhaha of an LP — propelled their celestial dreamboat music into a great many ears, a high proportion of which have been transported or transfixed by the beckoning ecstasy in Bono’s voice and the Edge’s translucent guitar lock on the ragged dog of melody. It is working, this particular rock ‘n’ roll drug, to a remarkable degree.

In Irelands they have surpassed all their contemporaries. During our stay news comes in of the poll results in Hot Press, the Irish rock paper — they have won almost every category. In NME‘s poll their performance was (I respectfully suggest) even more impressive: Number Five for Best Group, Number Four for Best Album for October.

U2 are very popular. As popular as sin.

But they must continue their trek — and it starts here in a mild February New Orleans, two days before the start of Mardi Gras. U2 are to play on a riverboat on a moonlit cruise down the Mississippi.

The home of jazz has grown old with a good deal of grace, it seems to me. New Orleans is the rocking chair on the back porch of the American South, creaking a little as it sways. Its tower blocks are midgets as skyscrapers go; its cabdrivers talk slow and easy; its eateries serve red beans and rice, gumbo and muffuletas with an unforced gentility. It is cool for the time of year, or so we’re told, but a mid-morning stroll down a sunny Bourbon Street seems as warm as any English July day.

The French Quarter, the very cradle of hot Creole dance music 80 years before, seems to almost hide its legendary names — Decatur, Rampart, Burgundy, St. Philip — but the aura remains. The houses seem time-warped into their era: the balconies and brickwork and planked roofs look very much as they must have done when Buddy Bolden could be heard in the Vieux Carre.

The romance is halfway illusory, of course. By day Bourbon Street rattles its endless Mardi Gras tourist trivia like pennies in a cup. Bars open early and tuxedoed middle-aged Dixieland bands play what you want, for a few dollars. By night, the strip-joints have opened: slack-lidded bouncers keep entry doors swinging to allow glimpses of the activity inside, cowboy pimps wander the sidewalks and try and catch your arm and the restrooms out back sweat.

I guess Bourbon Street really hasn’t changed very much.

U2’s traditionalism — the hungry joy in their pillaging of the big bloated legacy of the Who, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones — is suited to the faded history of New Orleans. In a parallel universe U2 might be an Orleanian revivalist group jettisoning their crusty associations and stretching out for a wider world, not realising (or refusing to realise) where their rancid roots lie. Do they know the terrible weight of the stigmatic dark ages their ROCK music comes from?

If they do, it bothers them little. Perhaps it is some indication of their willingly taken place in any rock hierarchy that they have slipped so easily into the notion of the American rock dream and the infiltration of its incestuous FM ideal.

“A network is building up,” says Bono, still sipping tea and reflecting on U2’s master plan of assault. “In every state English music papers get through. College radio covers groups like U2, Scritti Politti, Teardrop Explodes. Because radio is going to go out of fashion if it doesn’t wake up. I spoke to a radio programmer who said people like Loverboy this year ‘cos they sounded like Foreigner last year. These are conservative times we’re going through and nobody likes ‘new,’ it isn’t a good word.”

Bono impersonates the American exec’s voice with the alacrity of a born mimic. The soft huskiness of his Dublin accent gives his conversation a slight singing edge, a natural vocalist.

“The audience for records is much older here,” says bassist Adam Clayton. “The radio is retrospective — it has to be.”

Adam is, at 22, the eldest of the four and the one most taken with the rock star trip. He loves parties, oysters and the backstage attention, though he is as honestly likeable as the others. He is the only one who is not an avowed Christian.

Bono asks me about the English scene and we bat about a few names — Haircut 100, the Alarm, Rip Rig & Panic, Altered Images.

“I think there’s not much rock ‘n’ about. I see rock ‘n’ roll as an emotional thing, a sweaty thing.”

The Edge, U2’s guitarist, thinks it over. When he speaks his voice is so mild it seems strangely at odds with the bursting nova sound he manages to coax from the amplifiers.

“I saw something Bill Wyman said — somebody asked him if the Stones had toned down over the years and he said, ‘No, the rest of the world has toned up.’ Hairstyles and drugs are accepted. The rock ‘n’ has gone out of rock ‘n’ roll.”

So what is your idea of rock ‘n’ roll rebellion now?

Bono: “We, as a garage band, believed you’ve got to be what you are and do what you want. Rebellion has to start inside you. Our music may not bow down to your idea of what it should be, but it has to be respected as an individual view. A refusal to give up what you believe under pressure.”

But what if these beliefs happen to coincide with a grey status quo? It is easy to point to U2 preserving traditions — Boy and October as mainstream rock records with a facade of modern emoting. They sound very much that way.

“You’re looking at it in a jazz way,” says Edge, in the closest he ever comes to aggression.

“What interests me are the three primary colours,” says Bono. “Guitar, bass and drums. The Moody Blues and the London Philharmonic Orchestra — well, is that rock ‘n’ roll? The three sounds are basic enough to have unlimited resources.”

Adam: “Anyway, the formula is always structured. It has to be to make any sense.”

Perhaps. But the overall feel of the U2 sound is grounded in a big, splashy convention — that sense of primeval exhilaration. They are speechless at my vocabulary.

Bono: “All we know is what we are. What we have in this band is very special. The sound may be classical in one sense but it’s naturally our own. We don’t sound like any other group. Our songs are different — they hold emotions of a spiritual nature. I don’t have anybody to look up to in rock ‘n’ roll. I find…I’m talking around it all the time.”

Bono often gives the impression in his torrent of talk that he is grasping after the articulation of something always out of reach. Like U2? They impress on me the importance of seeing the group live, which I have not yet done.

Larry, the drummer, speaks little. He is barely 20 and looks even younger. He still appears a trifle guilty at being in this rock ‘n’ roll band — his father wanted him to be a jazz drummer. He grins shyly when I ask him later if he’s ever thought of using brushes — very Philley Joe Jones! — but he’s glad to leave the talking to Bono, mostly. And Bono loves to talk.

At about 9:30 that evening the President chugs slowly out into the main current of the Mississippi. An audience of about 1,500 is aboard: many have seen U2 before and most seem to know the records well. The radio has done its work.

U2 appear after toothsome, Ramonesy locals RZA. They bound to their positions on the admittedly rather small stage and do not shift — literally or otherwise — from their chosen quarters. They proceed to crank up “Gloria,” the exultant anthem which opens October: it is the very essence of U2. As the song charges around the Edge’s flying guitar figure, Bono’s diminutive frame trembles and he clasps his hands in fervour — Gloria in te domine. The great crescendo spirals away from him and he’s lost in the music.

I stand near the back and gaze across the possessed forest of people reaching forward. Bono raised his arms and the lights behind him seem to fall on his shoulders like…I have to shake my head to snap out of it. Bono comes to with his usual “Thank you!” and I think I begin to understand the appeal of U2.

Their set is drawn entirely from their two LPs, plus the perennial “11 O’Clock Tick Tock.” If they are content to duplicate the form of their records, they do so with an unselfish power that is as much as can be asked of a rock ‘n’ roll band. Bono has the trick of audience masturbation down his alley — “I think we can say that the Mardi Gras begins here tonight!” but he makes it sound unsullied by contempt. He shouts the title of every song as it starts, unable to hold back from racing into them; sometimes he improvises his phrasing with bearings completely adrift, amazed at this music. His companions effect the customary strutting but they clearly draw off Bono’s rapture.

In the end I almost succumb to the rush. If “Rejoice,” “I Will Follow” or “Out of Control” — the canon of rock cannons rewritten in three momentous chords — encourage blind devotion as a response, it is at least directed at a rock music that desperately wants to be giving. U2 are trying their best, and their effect lingers. The paying public are sent ashore in a state of flushed, giggly excitement at the end of the trip.

A few days later we have to drive to Austin, 600 miles of freeway and a chance for a leisurely interrogation of Bono and the Edge. The singer sits with a copy of The Ever Increasing Faith on his knee for much of the time; the Edge, his huge, noble face quieted by a calm wisdom unusual in a young man, embellishes Bono’s talk when he thinks further explanation is necessary.

We discuss the problematical way of life in their hometown and they express a sad concern for the sourness in the lives of many Dubliners. What sort of responsibility do they feel towards this as pop stars?

“As a person, I have a real love for these people,” says Bono. “We cancelled our Australian and Japanese tours because as a band we feel we don’t want to go all around the world at this time — we want to be at home. I don’t feel like Roy Rogers, a righter of wrongs, but I do feel this personal love for the people of Dublin.

“In Finglas they ripped all the people out of the city centre, broke up families and communities and stuffed them all in high-rise blocks. It encourages the use of drugs, these conditions — parents were giving their supply of Valium to their kids to keep them out of trouble.” He shakes his head at the thought.

“The week before we came away some friends and I went into a centre for itinerants in Dublin and offered our services. The social workers look so worn out there. One told me that the people they’re trying to help are so crazy, so arrogant that it seems impossible.”

Edge: “A lot of them are alcoholics, and some of them have got so bad that they’re actually mixing petrol and drink.”

Bono’s main concern lies with the youth. “If you’re walking in Dublin you can see five- or six-year-olds walk up to policemen and inhale from bags of glue, as if to say, ‘Look what I’m doing.’ ”

So what do you feel you should try to do about this? Bono ponders the gulf between righteousness and action.

“I can only give myself to it — I don’t have very much money. But I do have to justify it to myself and to my conscience. An idealist stance would make me seem like an asshole, though.”

Nevertheless, they claim that an excitement exists in Dublin which is still manifesting itself in a spate of young bands. What they have in common is an anti-fashion stance which U2 undeniably share. Only Adam is much given to dressing up; Bono’s jeans and the Edge’s pale blue cardigan are commendably dowdy, though they hold no special grudge against fashion.

Bono: “There is a stage where fashion becomes fascism. But I think people should always appear as they want.”

“England is the most fashion-conscious place in the world,” agrees the Edge. “Walking down the street is like walking through a zoo, everybody in his own place and cage.”

“Fashion is very conservative — not getting into a club because you’re not dressed right is like an old school tie thing. At least English youth culture is colourful,” Bono rubs his slightly coloured mane of hair without a hint of self-consciousness.

What would U2 do if they thought one of its members was growing apart from the others?

Bono again: “We used to have this thing — like John Lennon saying of Pete Best, ‘He’s not a Beatle. We’re all Beatles but we’re all radically different people.’ Three of us are Christians and Adam isn’t — that doesn’t mean we’re going to say to him at any time, ‘you’re not in the club.’

“I find it difficult to talk about the future. We just don’t have the tension that other bands seem to get on the road.” The sense of wonder creeps into his voice again. “There’s friction but it’s always constructive. The same with the Bunnymen, they’re very much a family. We’re a four-legged table.

“I don’t really feel U2 has been born yet. I’m 21, Larry’s just turned 20. In the past two years we’ve been directors of a very large business, worked till we thought we’d die, and the value of the experience is only now beginning to come out. I’m still learning.

“I grew up without a record collection. My brother had tapes of people like Free and Hendrix. Last time I was in London I wanted to get some soul music. I went into Rough Trade and felt very embarrassed because I didn’t know what to ask for. Yeah, we’re just starting.”

It seems like a well-rehearsed start by now though. Three U.S. tours, 217 dates drawing on the same set — don’t you get stale with all that?
“We just don’t get tired of it. Last night, playing after those three weeks away, I got the same electric feeling from singing again. I know, say, John Lydon’s view — I don’t want to talk about 30 date tours (a good shot at the Lydon sneer) — but I find the business of organisation creative too. I see working on the road like this, a real learning process. Every stage has a different sound and a different face. Coming from a very small place like Ireland and going on out into the world I feel privileged. And the only way to get things across is to take it to these countries and give people a chance to make up their own minds.”

But if you’re adopting an approach which is so steeped in an obese inflexible Rock Tradition what can be changed? Bono remains practical.

“The only way our music and that of bands associated with us is going to be heard, played on the radio out here, is by touring — and it’ll open the way for other bands. We go into stations and shout our mouths off about bands that we think are good. People will be saying, ‘Hey, I prefer U2 to the Cars or Aerosmith.’ That’s a change.”

I suggest it would be more of a breakthrough to get the Virgin Prunes (a wild collective which includes the Edge’s brother) on American radio, but Bono demurs at the idea.

“What interests me most is the sort of music we play — energy, emotional music with a positive effect. We’re playing rock ‘n’ roll and we’re a change within rock ‘n’ roll. We had a lot of doubts in our early stages, and perhaps the change isn’t as dramatic as it could be if we were a different sort of band. But it’s how we want to be. It’s the music we are inspired to play.

“Rock ‘n’ roll is always married into theatre, poetry, lots of other mediums. The breaking down of barriers into areas like these isn’t something we aim for. The people we play for are into rock ‘n’ roll as well — it’s the excitement of Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones and U2.”

What, though, of reaction slipping over into the reactionary? I explain some of my doubt over their performance — the danger of simply surrendering to a graceless fall into bludgeoning “rock power” instead of the soaring above they seem to be aiming for. DO no audience and band simply get lost in the sound?

The Edge disagrees: “The audience were reacting to particulars songs, not the overall sound.”

Bono: “A guy told me afterwards that there hadn’t been a reaction like that at a New Orleans gig in a long time. Although it’s driven by power the music has a lot of subtlety.”

Has it?

“Of course. A lot of people think the power comes from the guitar, but it’s really from Larry’s drums. When we started it was hard to get the Edge to play aggressively. He is a gentleman and he plays guitar like a gentleman. And Adam is a very melodic bass player. He doesn’t play the usual lines.”

“You can take what we do and methodically strip it of value. Or you can take it as it is.”

Perhaps I am pushing them too hard…

Bono’s thoughts return to his customers. “Sometimes America’s audiences frighten me. In L.A. it was like a set thing, stage invasion and everything. But we need to get through to these audiences, Ted Nugent audiences, to show them something else.

“On our first two-week tour here we just went round supporting every band we could. Most people didn’t know who we were but they came away converted.”

A hit album is still the thing Stateside, of course. But at home U2 have struggled for a hit single. “Celebration” will be their next try. It shows not the slightest departure in style — the title is probably all you need to know to guess that, although the B-side, spontaneously worked out in the manner of Magazine’s “Twenty Years Ago,” sounds more interesting. They remain unmoved, however, by their failure with the 45.

“We’ve never thought about songs as singles,” murmurs the Edge. “We’ve just picked the best songs.”

Bono: “My attitude is ‘so what?’ We’ve still sold more records than most ‘hit single’ bands. We’ve excited audiences more. But the time may have come for us to sharpen our singles outlook,” he concedes.

The traffic clogs up as we draw nearer to Austin. The radio splurges its end-to-end drone of AC/DC, Hall & Oates, Joan Jett and Journey. On this endless grey ribbon the focus of its appeal comes clear, and it’s not hard to imagine U2 slipping into these airwaves. Meanwhile, Bono worries about the group.

“I dunno, we have the melodies of a great pop band. But we don’t have structures like that. Or hit singles.”

What, then, of the charge of empty young U2 fleeing the dangerous areas of rock/pop and taking refuge in idle celebration? What are U2 compared to a Fall or a Cabaret Voltaire?

“The only way I can judge is to gauge the effect on people. Compare a Fall and a U2 concert. When people come through the doors at one of our gigs there’s a tension in there being a broad spectrum of people there — then when we play a kind of unity takes over.” Bono’s eyes shine. “People walk out drenched in sweat, excited, talking to each other.

“I’ve been to gigs by other bands and felt tension at the start and the end. And I’ve seen excitement at other gigs that just wears off as soon as it’s over.”

I know what he means — and I think there is something in the U2 effect. Rocky old music it may be, but U2’s songs stick. Easily drawn in, not so easily expelled. Boy and October have so many strong tunes they defy the ponderous new dinosaur tag many want to tie on the group. If U2 see the Beatles, the Who and the Stones as ancestors then it is the eager young years of those groups they aspire to.

“It was the way those groups grew from adolescence as a unit that I wanted as a parallel. The other groups around Dublin were all musicians from different bands — we were just four people who wanted to play music as a band.

“I want to see the long-term effect of groups like ours or the Jam. Our emotions aren’t just glossy, throwaway things. Some people saw ‘A Day Without Me’ as escapism, but it was about suicide. I don’t expect people to dig into our material with a knife and fork but…

“I write at the microphone — with pen and paper. I start on the things I suppose I should be writing about rather than what I feel. As they take a long time to come out of me, they take a long time to sink in.

“Now, a lot of bands digging into ‘dangerous’ areas do it in an obvious way. U2 don’t need to do that. We can cover fear and love as part of a spectrum.”

What if I said that sounded like a refusal to deal with specifics?

“Probably very true. I don’t see that as bad or good. I’m very illogical. I sometimes wonder what is going on inside of me with all of these abstract emotions.

“The last song on October is ‘Is That All?’ — “I’ll sing you a song to make you happy, but I’m not happy with you.’ It’s about wanting more out of pop music. I do want more.”

But October is not about that. It is an almost liturgical record — consider these:

“Kingdoms rise and kingdoms fall/But you go on” (“October”) “Open up to the love of God/To the love of he who made the blind to see/He’s coming back/Oh, believe” (“Tomorrow”) “Oh Lord, if I had anything at all/I’d give it to you” (“Gloria”)

At the core of “Gloria” the Latin exclamation rings out — Gloria in te domine — and it almost burns me with the cross of my own Catholicism.

“It goes, ‘I had to sing this song,’ ” says Bono, “and it’s about trying to express feelings and failing and resorting to another language.”

It is, though, the heart of U2. October‘s contents remind me of a transmogrification of the Catholic litany — and all of this at the forefront of Godless rock music.

Bono doesn’t flinch. “Yes, I have this hunger in me. Everywhere I look I see the evidence of a creator. I don’t see it as religion, which has cut my people in two. I don’t see Jesus Christ as being in any part of religion. Religion to me is almost like when God leaves — and then people devise a set of rules to fill the space.”

Isn’t there some awful irony here — this spiritualism thriving in the extreme atheism of rock music, full of would-be anti-Christs on both sides of the stage front?

“But when Christ was on earth he spent all his time with ordinary people, trying to give them something. I don’t see any audience as being full of anti-Christs, you have to look beneath the surface. There are probably more people like that in a church on Sunday. The audience cannot be oblivious to the spiritual side. People usually just sweep it under a carpet, but it’s there in their heads.”

So this is the primary force behind U2?

Bono: “It’s the central force to me. Though I see things crumbling around me I always have hope. And it comes through in the music.”

The Edge: “It is essential. And it shows we’re not avoiding specifics — we’re regarding things which tend to be looked on by others as side issues.”

I look at their young faces and feel weary. How will you tackle growing up?

The Edge: “With anticipation! I’m looking forward to it.”

Bono: “Every second of every hour is to be enjoyed. There’s a passage in Jeremiah 29 ‘And you will seek me and find me when you shall search for me with all your heart.’

“There is a very cold atmosphere in the world at the moment. We called our record October to reflect that, but also to suggest a revaluation. I do believe that there is a purpose to everyone’s lives, if they yield to that purpose.”

And you wonder why people worry about naive young U2.

“Age isn’t very important in considering what we say,” offers the Edge. “We could equally be totally pessimistic and cynical now.”

Bono: “I’m not stupid. I’ve already experienced more emotionally than many people would in 100 years. We’ve been involved in this business at a high level and come this far — it’s too easy to categorise us at naive.”

Will you be able to keep up the drive for success?

Bono laughs: “As a band we have a giant collective ego. It picks us up. Anyway, I don’t think I’d be a good bank clerk. Or a hot dog salesman.” He muses on it for a moment. “I might be a good president.”

Born again?

“I prefer the phrase born again again. The fundamentalist thing frightens me. Political Christianity. A lot of what the preachers say is true, but the way they say it makes me uneasy.”

And the Austin gig, at the Opry House, is also uneasy. Bono tells me later he didn’t seem to know where he was and the Edge complains of too many bum notes; I thought it was an intriguing set this time, all kinds of tension and fallibilities coming to the surface, several songs virtually smouldering in the giant effort of putting them across. Rejoice? The task of doing it on schedule can be intimidating.

There is a coda to this story. After the Austin show two followers invite Bono, the Edge and Larry to a service of the Westlake Bible Church next morning. I go along with them and we drive to a bright modern schoolhouse where it is held: the church is $180,000 short of the money needed to acquire its own property.

We sit at the back. The service lasts about an hour — a few hymns, some informal prayers and a long sermon which, for all its happy heart and amused manners, strikes me as shrewdly calculated, rationalised cleansing of the brimstone preaching pitilessly depicted in Huston’s Wise Blood. American religion is bulging with bucks and buckteeth, and it’s hard to sift the intentions.

There are some 200 present. Many of them are students or of student age, with America’s future in their hands. Many rush to speak to us afterwards and ask God to bless us. The three of U2 speak quietly in return. Bono is impressed by the preacher. I finger my St. Christopher.

It is a hard labour they have set for themselves: to change fusty old ROCK music from the inside, to stay unafraid in the knowledge of their purpose, to rejoice in the Lord always. I didn’t worry about U2 before and I won’t now, but I do want to see how they get on.

Saviours? All too often the good guys finish last.

© NME, 1982. All rights reserved.