Killing Bono

by Neil McCormick

  Then there was the incident with the clothes. Ivan and I returned to the flat one day to find a whole lot of suits and jackets perched on top of the dustbins. This was a gold mine for a couple of impoverished scavengers used to shopping for clothes in charity stores. We scooped them up and took them into the flat, trying them on for size. There were some pretty sharp and stylish garments in there. Some we kept, some we liberally doled out to friends who popped by.

  A few days later, I ran into Jeff on the stairwell. He proceeded to tell me he had fought with his girlfriend, who had thrown out all his clothes in a rage.

  “That’s awful!” I said, thanking my lucky stars I wasn’t wearing one of his jackets. It was too late now to even begin to try and explain. I just told Ivan that the rest of the stuff had to go to Oxfam. And we’d better make sure Jeff didn’t see us dumping it there.

  Joan got a job as a photographer’s assistant. She often worked with model Annabel Giles, a former fiancée of Jeff’s, who mysteriously warned her that our neighbor was a more volatile character than he might appear. We got a rather dramatic demonstration of that when we returned to the flat one day to find that the door had been knocked down. We rushed in, looking to see if we had been robbed, but nothing appeared to be out of place. Apart from the door, that is, which had been violently removed from its hinges. Our flatmate Ross went up to speak to Jeff, to find out if he had suffered a similar attack.

  “That was me,” Jeff revealed unrepentantly. “I wanted my roasting tray back.”

  Apparently he had been planning to cook a chicken but had been unable to locate his roasting tray. Convinced we must have borrowed it without asking, he had angrily knocked on our door. Finding no one in, he ran the length of the corridor and karate-kicked the door down. As you would.

  The thing is, we were entirely innocent on this count. The tray he removed was ours, which we never used anyway because our cooking skills were pretty much limited to heating up tins.

  Jeff moved out not long after, which was a relief given the poisonous atmosphere that had descended. Nowadays, when I see him on TV in his guise as one of Britain’s best-loved fashion gurus, I wonder if his copresenters appreciate his martial-arts skills. But I wish Jeff well. He was nice to me when it really mattered. When I was just a young immigrant, adrift in London, in need of a friend.

  Given the increasingly boisterous nature of the household, it was hardly surprising when Ross also moved out. After that, the flat became a staging post for an Irish invasion. Tens of thousands of young Irish people emigrated every year and, for a while at least, it seemed that most of them passed through our flat, pausing briefly on their migrant journey to stay in the smallest bedroom or, if that was occupied, to sleep in the bath. Or, if the bath was taken, to put their sleeping bag down on any bit of spare floor they could find. For a whole month my sister Stella camped in the middle of the bedroom I shared with Joan, which played havoc with our love life. One time I counted fourteen Irish people sleeping in different parts of our three-room apartment. Things started to get a little crazy. The flat became party central, aided by the arrival of two girls, Lynn and Alison, in the flat below. The neighbors sometimes complained about the noise but our landlord did not seem to care. We lived in the most run-down house on the street and as long as he got his rent on time he left us to our own devices.

  One of the itinerants who wandered into my life around that time was Gerry Moore, a singer with an Irish band called Street Talk. Gerry was twenty-seven but looked ten years older, a grizzled, working-class, hard-drinking, dope-smoking Dubliner with a big hooter of a nose that looked like it might have been hit a few times and a voice, well…

  It was a voice you could set up home in, a big, expansive, oak-timbred voice, with enough room to raise a family in love and laughter, with a musty cellar reeking of whiskey and cigarettes and some quiet recesses for moments of solitary contemplation. Gerry was quite a singer and a whole lot more besides. Music poured out of him. He could snatch songs out of thin air, making them up as he went along. And he was a gifted mimic, capable of impersonating vocalists as varied as Frank Sinatra and Tina Turner. But there was more. There was something truly special about him. He was an incredibly dynamic individual, observant, clever, compassionate, outrageous, sometimes a little scary (Gerry had sharp edges), but more often than not hilariously funny.

  When he paid a visit, guitars would come out and the cheap wine and the cider and the beer and the vodka and the spliff and we’d be singing and laughing all night. Gerry’s philosophy for life was simple: “Legalize hashish, listen to Nat King Cole and make music!” I remember Ivan strumming away one night while Gerry improvised a melodramatic country-and-western song about star-crossed love and unwanted pregnancy, entitled (for reasons I was not entirely clear about) “The Big O.” He ended with a perfectly pitched radio-style voice-over for an abortion clinic. “At thirty quid a shot, just remember: when in doubt, have it out!” “Jaysus, if me mother heard that she’d kill me,” he giggled as the song came to its natural conclusion.

  “I think you’ve got a hit there, Gerry,” I said. “But where on earth does the expression the ‘Big O’ come from?”

  He looked amazed at my stupidity. “Obortion!” he exclaimed.

  Gerry couldn’t spell too well but he was the most talented man I’d ever met who wasn’t a household name. And that was the thing that really fascinated me about him. He was a born star who wasn’t famous.

  “What’s ‘making it’?” Gerry said to me one time, when we were discussing our elusive dreams. “Making lots of money? Having musical fulfillment? Having a wife and kids? There was a girl called Rosie used to go to Sloopy’s Nite Club and I had a mate and his idea of makin’ it was gettin’ Rosie. Straight up. That’s all he wanted. And he worked really hard on it! I mean, when I was a kid, makin’ it was gettin’ a chance to sing. I’ve made it, man!”

  But I don’t think he really believed that. There was more than a touch of desperation creeping in by the time we met. Street Talk were a funky, gritty rock band who had been working the Irish circuit for a few years. They released a couple of singles but didn’t seem to be able to make the next step up. I was persuaded to accompany them on an overnight trip to play a gig in Rotterdam and got a glimpse of life on the bottom rung. We traveled by train and boat to a dirty venue for a fee that barely covered the drinks bill (mind you, there was a lot of drinking going on). There was no accommodation arranged so after the show (a blast of a gig, a rock ’n’ roll stonker) the band just opted to stay up all night with the aid of cocaine pilfered from the briefcase of a promoter known as Dik Heavy. The party was wild but it eventually reached the point of collapse, with musicians and a few hardcore fans crashing out in various corners of the venue. Gerry, almost the last to give up the ghost, passed out in mid-conversation, falling unconscious on the floor of a toilet. He started to vomit in his sleep. When his manager, Al Richardson, failed to wake him we turned him on his side so that he wouldn’t choke. “A rock ’n’ roll death. That’d be a fine thing,” said Al, wearily.

  Nobody could wake Gerry the next day. We shouted at him. Slapped him. Kicked him. Nothing. We were just starting to talk about calling an ambulance when his bloodshot eyes popped open. He sniffed the air and looked down at his yellow-stained clothes. “Who puked all over me shirt?” he yelled.

  I got to see the other side of the rock ’n’ roll coin the next time U2 came to town, to play two sold-out nights at Wembley Arena in November 1984. War had established U2 as a major attraction, with relentless touring and a mini live album (Under a Blood Red Sky) swelling their fan base, and they reaped the benefits when The Unforgettable Fire, in many ways their strangest, most free-flowing and impressionistic recording, swiftly gave them their first million-seller. A million! It was the magic number, six zeros representing global awareness. Could all those people around the planet really know and care about the band from Mount Temple school? Yet, on this night, the transition from gymnasium to arena
seemed seamless. Bono was the same dynamo, stalking the stage, relentless in his need to reach out and embrace the audience, not 100 screeching schoolkids now but 12,000 baying, singing, arm-waving fans. And the music, well, it was bigger now, of course—wilder, more emotional, more daring—but its core was the same: thunderous, electric three-piece rock that hauled you to your feet and dared you not to be involved. During a tumultous, epic version of “Bad,” Bono wrapped himself up in the song, encircled by Edge’s shimmering spectrum of guitar sounds, then kicked and scratched and punched his way back out, roaring his defiance. It was an astonishing performance in which one man’s spirit seemed more than the match for the thousands in front of him. The essence of this gig was everything I remembered and everything I had ever loved about U2; it just seemed the group had expanded somehow, swelling up to fill the available space.

  Oh, and, just to confirm that some things would never change, Adam made a couple of clunking mistakes.

  Afterward, Ivan and I made our way backstage. There were guest lists to be negotiated and colored VIP stickers to be collected. In keeping with the band’s rise up the ladder of success, access was starting to be restricted, yet we were ushered into a hospitality area where the band were greeting friends and admirers.

  “How’s the music?” asked Bono, after we had offered our congratulations on his performance.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “It’s a bit frustrating at the moment and we can’t seem to get hold of Ossie…”

  “Well, your prayers have been answered,” said Bono. “He’s here.”

  And indeed he was. U2’s gregarious accountant was in one corner of the room, beer in one hand and triangular sandwich in the other, engaged in animated conversation with Paul McGuinness. Ivan and I made a beeline for him, ready to give him a piece of our minds. He must have seen us coming out of the corner of his eye because he turned toward us, opening his arms in greeting as if we were the very people he had been waiting for all evening.

  “Lads, lads,” grinned Ossie. “I was just talking to Paul about you. Two of the finest songwriters to have come out of our little island. We’ve just got to find a way to persuade the music industry to share our opinion of your talents.”

  Oh, the devious shit. He could always outmaneuver us with his wily charm. Ossie assured us our career was uppermost on his mind and told us to give him a call in a couple of days, when he was back in Dublin.

  “But you never take our calls,” I complained.

  “My priorities are probably slightly different to yours. Some people actually pay for my counsel, you know,” chuckled Ossie, nodding toward U2’s manager. “Give me a call on Monday and we’ll discuss how to proceed.”

  It was difficult to talk to Bono backstage. There were so many people around, all demanding his attention, and I didn’t like to join that throng, pressing in on the hero of the hour. There was an element of vampiric bloodsucking about the whole experience. It seemed to be the boldest and pushiest interlopers who surrounded the band members in a noisy swarm of chatter. Ivan and I hung back, chatting with old acquaintances, drinking free beer. I wound up sitting alone on one side of the room, watching the action unfold, when Bono came and settled down next to me.

  “I’m glad you could make it,” he said. “What did you think? Really.”

  “You looked like you belonged up there, all of you,” I said. “But, you know, I was in the front row. I was probably closer than when I saw you in the school gym.”

  “I don’t think it’s about physical proximity,” said Bono. “You can be in some clubs and you can be right up a yard from the lead singer and it seems like you’re a million miles away. It’s something to do with generosity that makes for a great live event. It’s nothing to do with scale.”

  And then, before we could really get into a conversation, a young, attractive woman, vaguely familiar to me from television, squeezed into the nonexistent space between us and, behaving as if I wasn’t there at all, started enthusiastically telling Bono how excited she was to meet him. I got up to leave but Bono grabbed my arm. “We’re in the studio tomorrow—Good Earth, in the West End,” he told me. “Why don’t you come around and we’ll have a chat.” Then he slipped out of the clutches of the TV starlet, leaving her with me. She looked me up and down, trying to work out whether I was of any interest. “So,” she said, by way of an opening gambit, “how do you know Bono?”

  “Is that the measure of my significance,” I wondered. Not who I am but who I know. The next day in the studio, where U2 were working on some B-sides, we talked about that incident. “I’m starting to realize what it must be like to be a beautiful woman,” said Bono, who was adjusting to a whole new level of fame. “That’s what fame does to you. Everybody wants a piece of you. It’s hard on Ali. Because she is a beautiful woman, and she is used to getting that kind of attention in a way that she almost wouldn’t notice it. A year ago, if I walked into a restaurant with Ali, all eyes would have been on her. It’d be like, ‘Who’s the lucky gobshite with the babe?’ you know? But now, if she’s with me, people look right through her. They don’t see her at all. They push her out of the way to get to me. It’s as if she’s invisible.”

  We talked about fame and I became belligerent when Bono linked the concepts of talent and destiny. “I don’t believe in destiny anymore,” I rebuffed him. “The reason you believe in destiny is because everything is working out the way you always thought it would.” I told him about Gerry Moore, so copiously talented and yet struggling to be heard.

  “Maybe talent on its own isn’t enough,” said Bono. “It comes back to faith. And that’s a hard thing to explain to another person. It hasn’t happened to you, so why should you believe it?”

  This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that talent would conquer all. Fuck faith.

  I called Ossie at the appointed time. Lines to Ireland back then were notorious, buzzing and crackling, cutting off with no warning or invading your conversation with the ghostly traces of other people’s calls. Often, even if you got through, people on the other end would tell you they couldn’t make out a word and just hang up. If you really wanted to avoid somebody, it provided a built-in excuse: blame it on a bad line. But this time I was fortified and ready for anything. There was no way Ossie was going to get rid of me. Through the usual crackle, I made out the buzz-buzz of a dialing tone. I had a connection!

  “Kilkenny and Company,” said the secretary’s voice, faint but audible.

  “Is Ossie there?” I inquired.

  “Who’s calling?” she replied. As if she didn’t know. She must have been well used to my miserable voice by now.

  “Neil McCormick,” I said.

  “Hold on a moment…”

  Long pause. I could feel my heart beating. So much was riding on this phone call for me. I had made up my mind, I was not going to be fobbed off with some pathetic excuse this time. I wanted to know where Ossie stood.

  “I’m afraid he’s on another call at the moment, Mr. McCormick, and he has two calls waiting…”

  That wasn’t going to get rid of me. I was ready to give her a piece of my mind. I’d keep calling back all day if necessary. Hell, I would get on the next plane to Dublin, head straight for his office and kick the fucking door down if it was the only way to get his attention.

  “But he does want to talk to you…,” she continued.

  Eh? This wasn’t the way these calls usually went.

  “So can he call you back?”

  “Uh…Yes, of course,” I mumbled.

  “It may be after five thirty. Are you at your usual number?”

  “Uh…Yes.”

  “Thanks for calling.”

  The line went dead.

  The sly bugger had turned the tables on me again. Taking the initiative like that was about the only thing he could have said that would have got me off his case, temporarily at least.

  I sat by the phone all day. He didn’t call back, of course.

 
; As someone with a keen interest in pop history, I wonder why it took me so long to recognize that we had made a classic botch-up? Ossie and David were music businessmen who wanted to score a big, juicy deal and couldn’t get fired up over a small one. When it boiled down to it, we were more interested in making music than making money. But I don’t think we ever discussed that. I don’t think we ever sat down and talked with them about our motivations, our creativity, our love of pop, all the things that made us tick. So it was hardly surprising that, in the end, nobody got what they wanted. Ossie and Dave didn’t make any money. And we didn’t make any music.

  I walked Hampstead Heath, churning things over. My frustration was physically palpable. I felt as if electricity was coursing through my body, about to erupt from my fingers in crackling bursts of static. I felt like a racehorse trapped behind a faulty starting gate, snorting, kicking and stamping the ground in frustration, straining to be set loose. I found myself at the top of Parliament Hill, looking down over the enormous vista of this foreign city that seemed to hold nothing for me but frustration. I stood up there and yelled out at the top of my voice: “Give me a fucking chance!” I just wanted someone out there to hear me. I imagined my words floating out into the city and being carried on a magical breeze into the offices of a record company, where they would take up residence in the mind of an executive looking for the next big thing. But all that happened was a couple of people flying kites shot me nervous glances and shifted a few paces down the hill.