Today Bono wears a rosary. It was give to him by the Pope last year when he and Bob Geldof — somewhat miraculously, given the Vatican’s notorious fiscal conservatism — managed to secure the pontiff’s support for the Third World debt cancellation campaign, Jubilee 2000. In return, the Pope took Bono’s sunglasses.
“I wish I could live up to the idea of Christianity,” shrugs Bono. “It’s like I’m a fan; I’m not actually in the band.”
For a rock star, he is powerful — closer on a global level to Tony Blair than he is to, say Martin Rossiter. Powerful enough, certainly, to persuade record producer and Kennedy nephew Bobby Shiver to hassle his brother-in-law Arnold Schwarzenegger to phone House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich and arrange a hearing for the Jubilee 2000 cause. Kasich’s first call to Bono began with the words: “What’s best? The Bends or OK Computer…?”
“Thom Yorke was a bit freaked when I told him about that,” laughs Bono. “He was like, ‘you mean, bad guys like our music too?’ “
Bono talks all the time about how “rock stars” do this and when “rock stars” do that. Like the others, he refers to U2’s “job” rather than their vocation or prerogative and, when he juggles with ideas, he shifts his posture, squinting behind his sunglasses as if a concept is the process of physically manifesting in front of him. Disarmingly, he undercuts his more pretentious proclamations with an extra t’ick Oirish navvy brogue.
Behind us, as we lounge on U2’s waterside patio, the final mix of discursive travelogue “New York” wobbles out of a crap Sony boom box. With little Eve Hewson on his lap, Bono sings along…
“I hit an iceberg in my life/But here I am still afloat/Lose your balance, lose your wife/In the queue for the lifeboat/You’ve got to put the women and children first/But you’ve got an unquenchable thirst…for New York.”
Like a few of Bono’s characters on All That You Can’t Leave Behind, the lyric outlines a man on a moral holiday, braving the temptations of escape and infidelity. Encouraging the theory that it’s autobiographical is the fact that Bono has just bought an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.
“It’s important to describe your demons in order to deal with them,” says Bono. “I have a side of me that wants to run really fast away from everything that you could call home and responsibilities. But I have another side, which is stronger, that draws me towards home and those very same responsibilities. When I’m at work I play out those things…but maybe if I hadn’t found Ali and this community of people, then maybe I’m just lazy enough to have surrendered”
You kept in the bit about midlife crisis…
“I was seriously wondering whether to or not. Just looking at you when we played it to you in Dublin, I could see you writing the headline [laughs]. But it’s just funnier, that line. From this character, it’s believable.”
Bono laughs, then frowns.
“It’s not autobiography. It’s quite the opposite in the sense that I’m coming out of a period: I have run off, I’m back now. I’m more at home…with myself. I had a bit of fright, basically, and the song ‘Kite’ comes out of that too. I hadn’t been around for a while and was determined to do the proper Dad thing. I took the kids to Killiney Hill in Dublin county to fly a kite. Up it went and immediately down it came, and smashed to smithereens. The kids just looked at me: [affects unimpressed child look] ‘Come on Dad, let’s go and play some video games.’ How cruel is that?”
In “Kite” you sing of “the last of the rock stars/When hip hop drove the big cars.” Do you think rock stars have waved the white flag? Have rock bands given up on the idea of mass communication?
“A lot of them have. But we haven’t. From the beginning we were excited when music met the real world, and, going into this, we reckoned that people aren’t buying rock records any more because of this progressive rock lurgy, which is on the rise, where the single has been forgotten. In our heads we’ve written 11 singles for this record.”
AT 11 P.M., OUTSIDE the Grand Casino, Monte Carlo, there is little evidence of U2’s appeal becoming more selective. Within seconds of the band exploding out of Jags and Space Cruisers to take up their positions in Q‘s photo shoot, a whirlpool of onlookers has developed around them.
“Oooo Tooo! Oooo Tooo!” yelp moneyed French people of all ages. “Thank God this isn’t Italy,” declares a stern U2 staffer. “They’d have been torn apart by now.”
Police shepherd the mob. Fat cars driven by fat roulette victims idle and bottleneck. Bono looks delighted; Mullen looks like he’d rather be anywhere else; rock ‘n’ roll stops the traffic all over again.
When the shoot ends, Bono and Edge pose for the odd fan photo. Mullen and Clayton, with the look of men who’ve done this before, vault athletically over a high stone parapet and sniff out the swiftest, least congested route back to safety.
The Q contingent are flung into the U2 Jaguar and we’re off, heads spinning, through a vista of glass hotels and ’70s neon to Jimmy Z’s, the Principality’s premier nite spot. Here, landscaped shrubs and ponds light up green and the tiled dancefloor illuminates a la Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” video. Sporadically, as if to mock the porno ambience, a long jet of water shoots out of a tube and describes an emerald jizz-arc into the ornamental lake.
It comes as no surprise to learn that Bono was introduced to this place by Michael Hutchence. The last time the U2-er was here, he claims, was for Beronado Bertolucci’s birthday party, where Bertolucci’s dwarf brother DJed (the house anthem is R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly”) and a wild time (not to mention a few �48 G&Ts) was had by all. In sampling this sort of lifestyle, have U2 ever let go of terra firma?
“I’m sure, a lot of the time,” replies Bono. “Fame is a bit silly, really, but I think that we’ve escaped some of the extremely silly bits. Even so, you can become guilty of a certain mindedness, expecting to be let into places, and that’s where it can start…Then there’s the spoils, the guilt [laughs], and that awful relationship between fame and envy. It’s a venal human characteristic to want to be that skinny, to want to be beautiful. But when you’re this skinny and this beautiful what can you do?”
Is the way you seem comfortable with fame something that protects you? “Bono Enjoys Fame Shock” wouldn’t be much of a tabloid story, would it?
“Well, the way the rot sneaks under your door is by telling you that the reason that you’ve had all this good fortune is because you are somehow special, rather than to make you aware that you have a gift. It’s a gift. It’s given to you in trust. If you’re able to sing, or able to describe things through your voice, yes you work at it and yes, the worker is worthy of his wages, but not this much, you know what I mean?”
Other bands must seek your advice all the time…
“The most asked question is: How are you in a band? Don’t people grow out of bands? Most people find it hard, as they grow up, to deal with friction. But the friction is a sign of being really alive. People going solo, sitting in dressing rooms with their employees: more cash, less fun, not a good bargain…
“They’re miracles, bands,” he chuckles. “If you see one, you should set up a shrine. That’s what your magazine should be doing. Bands defy gravity and they defy basic human…needs. Like the need for independence, or the desire not to want to be told to fuck off over 30.”
Radiohead recently threatened to split up over their album’s track sequence…
“I think that’s OK. Over the sequencing is fine, but not over womenfolk or the royalties.”
Your best piece of advice for bands?
“Only move house on the live album.”
U2 are men. They must be because they keep telling us they are. Clayton, Bono and Edge are 40 and Mullen very nearly so. They all look good on it, especially Mullen. Clayton thinks he’s looking pudgy but he’s wrong.
“It’s something we discussed a lot,” says Mullen. “We actually are men. Oh my god, we’re men and what are we going to do about it? Do we dye our hair? This is serious. We’re out there fighting for our lives because we don’t wanna be written off. We don’t want people going, ‘Oh those old guys…’ “
“I don’t want to get philosophical here,” adds Clayton, getting philosophical, “but bands don’t have long lifespans, and maybe one of the reasons why we’ve lasted is that people have to accept the manhood growth: the taking of responsibility, examining the bigger issues of love and loyalty…”
Clayton, central to the group’s metamorphosis into a more glamorous rock ‘n’ roll incarnation, thanks in part to his early ’90s cavortings with Naomi Campbell and his hangover-based to play a ’93 Sydney show on the Zoo TV tour (his part was played by his roadie), has his own growing-up to do. He hasn’t had a drink since 1996.
“It was a difficult decision to get to,” he recalls, “because so much of what I thought being creative and being relevant was about, was staying up late, having a good time and living it large. But I got to the point where I realised that it didn’t suit me anymore. I wasn’t any good at it. I wasn’t living a particularly musical life, I was living a more isolated life. I was paranoid, uncomfortable. It was very hard being in that place of really facing yourself and overcoming layers of denial. But I’m very happy with the way things turned out.”
What do you do with the money you would have spent on drink?
“I buy socks.”
Do you throw them away rather than wash them?
“I’m still the kind of rich that likes a familiar pair of socks. You know, when you’re on that party trip socks and underwear are hard to keep together.”
Would you ever pose naked on a U2 album cover again, like you did on Achtung Baby?
“Yes. Provided my bits were looking good. I’m not sure whether it’s something I’d like to do past the age of…55. But I think there should be more male nudes. Men should be encouraged to look at each other bits. Penises, I’m inclined to believe — and I’m not just talking about my own — are good things. They needn’t be hidden under a bushel.”
What’s the closest U2 have come to splitting up?
“I don’t know if it’s ever been contemplated. Maybe around the second album, October, when people decided that maybe this was too hard. And maybe around the time of Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV tour. That seemed an immense challenge at the time. But I think splitting up is something we can’t imagine.”
What bridged the October album crisis?
“The realisation that rock ‘n’ roll could be anything that you wanted it to be.”
Right now, U2 are so gung ho you wonder if any minute Larry Mullen is going to stick on a U.S. marine corps helmet, slip a packet of 20 American Spirit into the band and go charging into the Mediterranean hollering “Death or glory!” There are plans, though not finalised, to tour arenas next year with a stripped-down presentation and, if that goes well, to graduate to stadiums. It’s a realistic agenda, based on altered expectations of the world’s biggest rock ‘n’ roll band — on altered expectations for rock ‘n’ roll itself. At the same time, there’s a sly inkling that U2 think All That You Can’t Leave Behind (“Its not looking good on a T-shirt,” joshes Mullen) will actually be enormous.
“I hear people say it’s great and it’s going to be big,” concludes Mullen, “but I don’t know that. But if we went down in flames on this one then I’d die happy.”
Everyone’s using words like “direct” and “connecting” and “tunes.” High-falutin’ concepts such as consumerism-as-religion and the death of God are, for the moment at least, placed on the back burner in favour of things much closer to home.
“Bono’s lyrics this time,” ponders Adam Clayton, “in a sense they’re less poetic, less romantic and more real. To me they’re much more about where he’s coming from and what he’s dealing with. I think this record has a great tenderness. And I’m sure it addresses the way he feels about the commitment to the band and to his family, to his children and Ali.”
Bono himself — joyously wallowing in the rich intensity that his singing seems currently to impart and gabbling on about how his opera-trained voice coach is convinced he has achieved the “bel canto,” i.e. the stage at which singers find their one true voice — has one little problem. It’s how he looks in the Jonas Akerlund-directed video for “Beautiful Day.”
“I wanted to look more honest,” he complains. “In the end I’m coming on a bit too Bono for some tastes…including my own [laughs]. You know, you forget you have to do this stuff when you’re opening your arteries with a rusty blade in some fucking basement, making music. You forget how to be insincere. It’s my rock star face. It’s not quite sitting on me well at the moment.
“It’s so important for us that we climb down from this past decade of artifice in the presentation of the material. There’s never any artifice in the material itself — it’s always been the same for us. The irony is, there’s no irony in those songs on Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Pop. You know, Nellee Hooper came up to me at a party recently and said, ‘Irony, you’re ruined it for everybody.’ “
IN THE COOL of the Cote D’Azur evening, U2’s extended family eat pizzas as their mouthpiece pokes unconvincingly at a salade Nicoise. A nearby villa, someone explains, once served as accommodation for Mahatma Gandhi, and the revelation somehow causes dinner conversation to left-turn sharply into Islamic fundamentalism, the policing of ecstasy and Adolf Hitler’s kerazy cocaine habit.
“Do you know,” lectures Larry Mullen Jr., “One of Hitler’s first military acts was to carpet bomb the village of his birth? He was obsessed by obliterating his past.”
“We should do that to the Q photo library,” muses Edge. “Destroy all evidence of mullets!”
“Ah, but listen,” counters Bono. “Have you not seen Jonas Akerlund? He’s a hip guy isn’t he? Well, we’re waiting for him in this Dublin cafe and in he comes, cool as a breeze, with what on his head? Oh yes, they tell me its back. In Hoxton Square it’s wall-to-wall mullets.”
It was then that U2 really knew that it was going to be their year.
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