Killing Bono: I Was Bono's Doppelganger

by Neil McCormick

  “It’ll look good on a poster,” said Bono confidently. He was an admirer of my Undertakers posters, new variations of which kept appearing throughout the school. Graphic art was one of my private obsessions—not the high and mighty terrain of the fine arts, but the film posters, album sleeves, book covers, comic strips and advertisements of the commercial world. I considered myself something of an artist. My cartoons and caricatures of teachers and pupils adorned the covers of the annual school magazine, which I had renamed (over protestations from members of staff) The Ugly Truth. I planned to go to art college, primarily because that was what John Lennon had done when he left school. So I was flattered but not surprised when Bono asked me to design a poster for the band.

  My heart wasn’t in it, though. I really didn’t like the new name. The concept I came up with was so lame I was embarrassed to even show it to Bono and the Edge, who gathered around one day in the art room. On an A3 sheet of paper I had drawn a picture of a German WWII U-boat submarine and put a big red X through it. Next to it there was a drawing of an American U2 spy plane from the Cold War with a big red X through that. I left a space where, I explained to Bono, we would stick a photo of the band with a big red tick and the legend: “U2: The Rock Band.” “Very funny,” said Bono, who evidently thought I was joking. Edge just looked at me sympathetically.

  Who knows where life might have taken me had I risen to the task? Steve Averill, who had a day job in an advertising agency, eventually lent a hand, coming up with a simple but quite fantastic poster: a high-contrast, black-and-white image of the group over a huge, bold, red “U2” on a stark white background. It looked sleek and modern and cool and stood out from the run-of-the-mill band posters you could see plastered all over town. Steve has done most of U2’s graphic work ever since, designing all their record covers. He now runs his own highly successful graphic agency, Four 5 One, in Dublin. But hey, some you win…and some you are happy to have lost. That I never made it to the top as a world-beating graphic artist is not one of the great regrets of my life.

  The name change was celebrated with an extraordinary gig in Howth in March that served notice of U2’s ambitions. The smart new posters had gone up all along the lampposts of the Howth road but the show, in a small, out-of-the-way church hall, was sparsely attended. The Village were all there, dressed in their usual misalignments of fashion, standing out among a few heads from school and a smattering of locals. My friend Ronan and I stood in the middle of the dance floor, in a display of loyalty, but I could feel the space around us, with most of the thin crowd hugging the walls.

  The five-piece Hype opened the show, performing a set of cover versions. Stones, Neil Young, Lizzy: the familiar rockers warming up the audience. At the end of the set, to the strains of “Glad to See You Go,” the bearded figure of Dick Evans bade farewell, leaving the stage and the band. Bono announced that the Hype were no more. But they would be back, later, as U2.

  Like Ian Stewart, the unlucky piano player with the young Rolling Stones whose face just didn’t fit, Dick had never quite looked the part. More seriously, perhaps, with his younger brother’s guitar style developing to fill up sonic spaces with ever-more inventive flourishes, Dick’s rhythm guitar was increasingly extraneous. Displaying tact and timing, Evans senior opted to leave before his role really became an issue. He claimed he wanted to concentrate on his studies at Trinity College, although it was only a matter of weeks before he resurfaced as guitarist with U2’s dark alter egos, a band that would develop from the Howth gig’s strangest performance.

  On to an empty stage, to the backing of odd, disconcerting sound effects, strode Gavin Friday, in a raincoat and smoking a cigarette. Misapplied eyeliner streaked his face. He walked up to the microphone, eyeballing the audience with a sense of almost indifferent disdain. His coat fell open to reveal that he was wearing a dress. He took a long drag, blew some smoke, then leaned forward to say just two words. “Art. Fuck,” boomed from the PA.

  Now, they might have been used to this kind of thing in the alternative cabarets of London, but to an audience of Irish teenagers who had come to see a rock band Gavin’s appearance was genuinely perplexing. Still, this being Dublin, it was inevitable that some wag would let him know what he thought. “Fuck art!” someone bellowed, to a ripple of laughter.

  Adam took up a position stage left and began banging out a propulsive line on his bass guitar. The Edge appeared stage right, contributing sudden shards of electric. Between them they were concocting an odd, spacious, disjointed, disconcerting sound, far removed from U2’s own brand of taut, melodic, hard rock.

  The favored term of the era was “new wave,” a phrase that was supposed to suggest rebirth: out of the fiery cauldron of punk, bathed in the spittle of Johnny Rotten, sonic warriors would emerge to create fresh vistas of sound, adhering to the modern principles—lean, mean, independent, creative. At least, that was the dream. While punk fell into the hands of shouters and skinheads, the vanguard was moving on with astonishing rapidity in a multitude of directions, experimenting with the reggae rhythms of ska and dub, rediscovering the tribalism of rockabilly and mod, embracing the icy electronics of Kraftwerk and detuned guitars of a new art school. Enthused by the achievements of their friends in U2, the Village were keen to embrace the new freedom rock music promised.

  The blond, androgynously handsome, glammed-up Guggi joined Gavin on stage in black stockings, torn lingerie and too much makeup. The Village yelled encouragement as their representatives began to roar and rage at the baffled onlookers, colliding and hugging each other in a homoerotic frenzy before breaking apart and turning vituperatively on the audience, screaming “Art fuck!” over and over. This went on for an uncomfortably long time, degenerating into a blizzard of white noise and verbal abuse from the audience. Then it was done. We had just witnessed the birth of the Virgin Prunes, a group who would become one of the prime movers in the Irish underground rock scene, polarizing opinion and dividing critics, the negative reflection of U2’s bright optimism.

  Adam, demonstrating previously unsuspected versatility, remained on stage to play with Steve Rapid’s new synth band, the Modern Heirs. A tinny drum machine provided the beat while Adam’s individual sense of rhythm brought a little bit of quirky humanity to the dry, dystopian sci-fi Muzak. It left me cold, which was probably the point.

  And then it was the turn of U2 to perform to an audience who had grown distinctly restless. The stripped-down four-piece attacked an all-original set with rabble-rousing vigor, playing as if they had something to prove. Dynamic, melodic, upbeat and gloriously aspirational, they swept me away once again. Edge was developing a distinctive, chiming guitar sound. Larry and Adam were tight and fast. Bono was all over the place, hyperactive in his attempt to get hold of the audience, clambering on the equipment, striking odd poses, pouring heart and soul into everything. They performed a juddering, slow-burning ballad of spiritual awakening, “Shadows and Tall Trees,” over the conclusion of which Bono demanded: “Are you out there? / Can you hear me? / Do you feel in me anything redeeming? / Any worthwhile feeling?”

  I was lost in the rapture of the moment when a commotion broke out around me: fists flailing, boots swinging, shouts and obscenities. With the alertness of a skinny boy used to dodging bullies, I scooted to the far side of the hall as some local hard lads, offended by what they had witnessed, tangled with the Virgin Prunes. If they thought Gavin and Guggi were going to be pushovers because they wore stockings and makeup, they were mistaken. The Village were used to fighting for their right to be different and all piled in. Bono, visibly dismayed, appealed for calm. “We didn’t come here to fight!” he pleaded. “We came to play music!” When his exortations fell on deaf ears, however, the peacemaker jumped off the stage to join in the mêlée, hustling the thugs out of the building in a rain of kicks and blows.

  Walking home along the Howth seafront at night, Ronan and I debated what we had seen. U2, we concluded, really were something special. But as for the Virg
in Prunes…

  “Are those two fellas into each other, you know what I mean?” Ronan wondered.

  I knew what he meant. Officially there was no homosexuality in Ireland. Along with no contraception, no divorce, no abortion and (if the Catholic church had its way) no sex for any unmarried person not engaged in the procreation of good Catholic babies. “I don’t think so,” I ventured. “They just like to wind people up.”

  “Why?” asked Ronan. Which seemed fair enough.

  “To get a reaction.”

  “Well, they got a reaction tonight,” laughed Ronan. “Half the audience fucked off and the other half tried to kick the shit out of them. They were crap.”

  He had a point. Over time, the Virgin Prunes would, perversely, become the focus of the local rock scene’s resentment toward U2, attracting the kind of elitist audience who sneered at U2’s populism. Yet at that gig in Howth, I saw the Prunes emerge from the womb of U2, the bastard offspring proclaiming autonomy and scampering away into the night. The connection between these two camps always baffled the uninitiated. They were like yin and yang, opposite sides of the rock ’n’ roll coin. On one side you had a primal, four-piece guitar band reaching for the sky and trying to carry their audience with them and on the other were a gang of performance-art provocateurs, breathing fire and brimstone in an effort to shock audiences into reacting—positively or negatively; the Prunes didn’t seem to care which. Bono would joke that it was like having God and the Devil on the same bill, but it did not always serve U2 well, since they often had to play to a crowd who had been completely alienated by Gavin and Guggi’s antics. But for Bono it was about embracing extremes: the Prunes ventured into places U2 couldn’t or wouldn’t. Not for another decade anyway.

  That gig gave me food for thought. Rock music was entering a period of flux, there was room for sonic experimentation and artistic exploration but, despite my allegiance to the supposedly revolutionary aesthetic of punk, I began to realize that it was really the traditional musical virtues to which I adhered. I liked melody and lyrics, not noise and rhetoric. I wanted soul and substance, not pretension and provocation.

  U2’s growing creativity was rewarded with the first signs of local recognition. I was strolling down Nassau Street (home to Advance Records) one Saturday when I was hailed by Bono, who had in his hands the latest issue of the Hot Press, a fortnightly broadsheet magazine covering the burgeoning home-grown music scene under the banner: “Keeping Ireland Safe for Rock ’n’ Roll.” “Have you seen this?” asked Bono. In the corner of one page were four tiny, artily black-and-white head shots of my schoolfriends, over the comically banal headline “YEP! IT’SU 2.” A few short paragraphs by Bill Graham, the magazine’s leading critic, suggested that U2 might be “a band for the future,” although, quaintly, he revealed that they would not be around for inspection for a while as they were “currently studying for their Leaving Certs.” Bono was proudly showing it to everyone he knew.

  The appearance of U2 in print seemed revelatory to us at the time. Hot Press had been running for about a year. It may have been amateurishly laid out, badly printed and full of typographical errors, but, by celebrating the achievements of a handful of Irish rock icons (Van Morrison, Thin Lizzy, Rory Gallagher, Horslips and, latterly, the Boomtown Rats) alongside reviews of local concerts, it legitimized the native music scene, helping to shrug off the sense of inadequacy that pervaded Irish pop culture. To be written about in Hot Press was proof that your band existed in the wider world, not just in an imaginary scene consisting of friends.

  As the school year drew to a close, U2 were invited to perform an outdoor concert during a Mount Temple open day, and once again invited us to support. A problem soon developed, however, when Frank demanded to play the four-note guitar riff kicking off the Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant,” which we had just learned.

  “No way!” insisted Ivan, asserting his right as lead guitarist to play the lead guitar parts.

  “Maybe you could both play it,” I suggested.

  “No way!” Frank and Ivan chorused.

  This went on for days. Larry was called in to try to break the deadlock. “Lads, lads,” said Larry, reasonably, “it’s just a riff.”

  “But it’s my riff,” said Ivan, stubbornly.

  Frank declared that if we didn’t let him play the intro he wasn’t going to play anything at all. “I’ll just have to leave the band.”

  I realize that this might not seem a particularly significant incident in the annals of rock history but to me it felt as cataclysmic as the breakup of the Beatles. I had pinned a lot of hope on our little band of brothers, constructing elaborate hypotheses of our imaginary futures. Would it really all be over before it even began? In an instant, I could see how naïve my whole conceit about this group had been.

  Ivan grumpily caved in. Frank could play the intro, then, if it really mattered so much to him. Frank cheered up immediately. We were all friends again, as if nothing had ever happened.

  But something had. At seventeen, there are moments when you really feel like you are accelerating toward adulthood. Tiny revelations flare like fireworks, leaving their afterimage burning in your mind. With a blush of something approaching shame, you sense the innocent illusions you have maintained throughout childhood being suddenly stripped away. I knew then that we were just rank amateurs, schoolkids playing at being a band, and that if we were ever going to achieve anything we would have to raise our game.

  There was a meeting in the changing rooms of the school gymnasium before the show. A stocky, watchful man in his late twenties was quietly seated in a corner as U2 and the Undertakers discussed running times and set lists. I assumed the interloper must be an elder sibling of one of the band. Bono was doing all the talking, which was not unusual, until the conversation turned to the schedule for our half-hour set.

  “Half an hour is out of the question,” the interloper quietly but firmly interjected.

  “What?” I spluttered, struggling to understand what one of U2’s relatives could possibly have against us.

  “Guys, this is Paul McGuinness,” said Bono. “He’s our manager.”

  With a friendly smile that belied his firm, no-nonsense tone, McGuinness ran through the afternoon’s schedule, explaining that (due to time pressures) we had to be on stage by three o’clock and off by three fifteen. “We’ve been practicing a half-hour set,” I muttered sullenly.

  “Sorry, fellas,” said McGuinness, not looking sorry at all. “You’re here because you’re friends of the band. It’s U2’s show, U2’s equipment. There has to be a little give and take.”

  So that’s how it was going to be, then. “We’ll just have to play faster,” said Frank.

  At the appointed hour we took our positions on a makeshift stage on the low, flat concrete roof of the boiler room, overlooking the school car park. Frank started picking out the opening riff to “Pretty Vacant.”

  For us, this was an apocalyptic anthem of sneering teenage-outsider attitude but (despite the enthusiastic pogoing of three of our punk allies) the smattering of parents spread about the car park seemed largely unimpressed. There is something very dispiriting about yelling your heart out into a microphone to be confronted by the sight of onlookers chattering among themselves, sticking their fingers in their ears with pained expressions on their faces or, worst of all, drifting off to see if there is something more interesting going on elsewhere. When we finished—with a snarled “And we don’t care!”—our efforts were mortifyingly greeted with polite applause.

  As we kicked into “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,” I was fighting a losing battle with my bass guitar, struggling to stay in time with drumbeats enveloped in multiple echoes off the back wall of the school building. I stared at my fingers with horror. I could count the beats in my head but somehow I could not communicate the information to these rebellious digits at the end of my own hands. Even our loyal fellow punks were looking confused and had halted their desultory attempts to jump up and down
in time. When it came to performing the Buzzcocks’ “Fiction Romance,” I did something that had been at the back of my mind for some time. “What are you doing?” hissed Ivan as I put down my instrument. “Just start the song,” I insisted. It was a complicated bass part which I had never really mastered and, in front of all these critical gazes, it finally dawned on me that I was never going to. Indeed, that I did not even want to. I did not belong in the fraternity of bass guitarists, the backroom boys of the band! I was here for one thing only. Lights! Music! Action! It was rock stardom or nothing! So, while Frank and Ivan concentrated on the interaction of their jagged guitar parts, I grabbed the microphone and started singing.

  Now this was more like it!

  “Fiction romance! Fiction romance!” I yelped. I bent the microphone stand and leaned out to the audience, snarling and whining and roaring the lyrics of the song. I waved my fist at the disinterested faces. I grabbed the mic and prowled the stage. I held my arms aloft. I demanded attention!

  As the song came to a tinny, bassless conclusion, Paul McGuinness appeared in the corner of my vision, making a vigorous chopping motion with his hands. It quickly dawned on me that this was not applause. “That’s it, lads,” he mouthed, imperiously waving us off.