Killing Bono

by Neil McCormick

  Too long. I may have given up on dreams of rock stardom (or, fairer to say, they had given up on me) but our nostalgic excursion pungently reminded me of the pleasures of performing music for its own sake. Our little band was made up of regular civilians, none of whose job description included the word “musician,” but they were all talented players who had once been in bands and never lost the love of their chosen instrument.

  “You know what?” I said to Bono, when he rang to wish me a happy birthday. “Music is for life, not just for Christmas!”

  Bono laughed. But he pronounced himself much enamored of this concept, pointing out that the very notion of making a living out of music is a relatively recent phenomenon. As young men growing up in Ireland, we could witness astonishingly resonant folk sessions in pubs where the players were local fishermen or farmers. “There’s a strange idea that music is a way to get rich quick,” said Bono. “But it never even used to be a paying job. It was a part of the community, something people did on the side.”

  And it became something I did on the side. I started an occasional, informal gathering of musical friends under the name Songwriters Anonymous. I billed it as a “twelve-step program for singers and songwriters who cannot resist the urge to perform.” Except that I could only come up with six steps:

  Turn up

  Tune up

  Sing up

  Hit the bar

  …er…

  That’s it

  I was a bit concerned about the Daily Telegraph’s pop critic straying from the realm of gamekeeper into the terrain of the poacher, so, to preserve my anonymity, I performed as The Ghost Who Walks, a name from an old comic book. It seemed appropriate. Because, as far as music was concerned, I felt like a ghost slowly coming back to life.

  Those evenings were a lot of fun. The quality of the music played was fantastic. Old bandmates like my brother and Margo Buchanan turned up and did their bit; new friends came along too, successful working musicians such as Robyn Hitchcock, Steve Balsamo and Jamie Catto; but the real revelation was how many civilians who had never pursued a musical career got up to perform songs they had written themselves, wonderful songs full of heart, soul, wit, insight and passion. It occurred to me that whatever problems the music business has in developing new stars, it is not for want of talent.

  A friend had started a small label, Map Music, and frequently prevailed upon me for advice and guidance. In return, I got the use of his cramped but well-equipped studio. I started to record some of my songs, drafting in Reid as coproducer. Our philosophy was simple. Get the best musicians we could find and let them do their stuff. Bang it down fast. Worry about it later. The idea was to have some fun. We weren’t concerned with what anyone else might make of it because it wasn’t for anybody else. For the first time in my life, I was making music solely to satisfy myself. And the result (to no one’s surprise more than my own) was the richest, most fully realized music I had ever made. Other musicians would come in and rave about what we were doing. “You could get a deal with this,” my friends kept telling me. But I wasn’t sure about that at all. I had been bitten too many times by the music business. I thought we could stick it out quietly and anonymously on Map as a no-budget, Internet-only release, so that it would exist, at least. Maybe I could have a bit of fun with The Ghost Who Walks in my column. Get my fellow rock critics to review it without actually telling them who it was.

  One morning, I woke up from a vivid musical dream. All night in my sleep I had been singing a song. I was singing to God, even though I did not believe He could hear me. I was singing about the idea of God in all its heavenly glory and earthly cruelty, addressing a living universe with the questions that had tormented me all my life. And as I sang my song to God, the music I could hear in my sleepy head was suitably divine (there is no music like the music of your dreams), a huge gospel choir of voices, raised in praise and torment. And then, the strangest thing happened. God sang back to me. The really peculiar thing is He sounded quite like Bono.

  I pulled myself awake, jumped out of bed and started scribbling down everything I could remember. It just came pouring out, in short, sharp couplets with an A-A, B-B rhyming scheme. It took me about fifteen minutes to write it all down. And there it was. Complete on the page, like a gift from Heaven or my subconscious: my whole lifelong struggle with divinity captured in a song. I picked up my guitar and started strumming. And the first chords I played fitted perfectly. It was the fastest song I had ever written. And maybe the best.

  And another strange thing happened. A weird moment of synchronicity. Bono phoned. It was not like he called every day. We seemed to be speaking more often than ever before but still, months could pass between calls. But there he was, on the end of the line while I was still bursting with enthusiasm and excitement for my new creation.

  “I’ve written a song,” I told him. “It’s called ‘I Found God.’ ”

  “That’ll be the day,” he laughed.

  “Well, at least I’m still looking,” I said. “Do you want to hear it?”

  “Do I have a choice?” he joked.

  I had him on the speakerphone. So I picked up my guitar, and sang him my new song.

  I found God in the first place that I looked

  I found God in the crannies and the nooks

  I found God underneath a stone

  I found God, didn’t even have to leave my home

  I found God

  I found the Buddha sitting cross-legged by the door

  I found Jesus nailed and bleeding on the floor

  I found the Prophet up to his neck in sand

  I found God wherever I found man

  I found God in a hundred different places

  With a thousand different voices and a million different faces

  I found God

  And I found God down the smoking barrel of a gun

  I found God in bones bleached white beneath the sun

  I found God among the killers and the rapists

  I found God between the proddies and the papists

  I found God in temples turned to rubble

  I found God on the pulpit stirring up more trouble

  I found God on both sides of the war

  With the bigots and the fascists, kicking down my door

  I found God

  And I said, “My God, my God, what have You done?

  Why is this life so hard for everyone?”

  And God said…

  “I found you before it all began

  I found you when the universe went bang

  I found you in the cooling of the stars

  I watched worlds collide, I wondered how we got this far

  I found you crawling from the sea

  I found you hanging with the monkeys in the trees

  I found you before you found me

  I found you and I set you free

  Free to stand on your own feet, free to watch the sunrise

  Free to be what you can be, free to be what you despise

  Free to glory in the truth, free to swallow your own lies

  ’Cause I’m coursing through your bloodstream, I’m staring through your eyes

  I found you.”

  And I said, “My God, my God, what have we done?

  Why is this life so hard for everyone?”

  At the end of my impromptu performance there was a moment of silence. And then Bono declared, “I wrote that song!”

  “You wish!” I said.

  “I have been trying to write that song my whole life,” he said.

  I played “I Found God” at the next gathering of Songwriters Anonymous. And all these great singers in the room started joining in with the coda, until I could hear the gospel choir of my dreams. And afterward people kept coming up to talk to me about the lyrics. Everybody seemed to hear different things in it, finding a reflection of their own beliefs. Some heard a religious devotional. Some heard a philosophical discourse. Some heard an atheist anthem. That song had a po
wer all of its own.

  I recorded it at Map studio, with eight of the best singers I knew backing me. The album (because I now realized that that’s what it was) was coming together and I started seriously wondering what I was going to do with it. Still, I was busy writing my column. I could record only when the studio was free and I wasn’t too busy and I had a bit of money to spare to pay for musicians and engineers, so the whole process was dragging on, which suited me fine. It meant I could delay deciding where this was all going.

  One day, I was working in my office when my phone rang. My caller had a bold opening gambit. “I believe you have described me as the biggest asshole you’ve ever met!” boomed a patrician voice.

  “Who is this?” I inquired cautiously.

  “Nick Stewart,” my caller replied.

  I had to think for a minute, but finally the penny dropped. It was the Island A&R man who had signed U2 but rejected Shook Up! “Mr. Stewart,” I said. “I did not call you the biggest arsehole I ever met. I called you one of the biggest arseholes I’ve ever met! There were plenty of other A&R men in my black book.”

  Laughter rolled down the telephone line. It turned out that Nick was a big fan of my newspaper column. He was head of international A&R at BMG now, where he also ran his own label, Gravity. Nick invited me to dinner. We got along famously, the disappointments of the past long forgotten. At the end of the evening I gave him a four-track CD of The Ghost Who Walks without telling him what it was. I just asked him to give it a listen and let me know what he thought.

  Now Nick also had a late-night weekend show on Virgin radio, for which he was known as Captain America, in which he would play a mix of alternative country, Americana and classic singer-songwriters. And, unbeknownst to me, on his next show he played one of my tracks.

  You’ll never guess what song he played (and no, it wasn’t “I Found God”)…

  It was a new version of “Sleepwalking.” It was the only old song of Ivan’s and mine that I had recorded. It’s just such a gorgeous song, I couldn’t resist laying it down again with the great musicians I was working with. And the radio phone lines lit up while it was on. Callers wanted to know where they could get their hands on this record.

  “I don’t think it’s actually available,” admitted Captain America.

  He invited me out to dinner again. “Tell me about The Ghost Who Walks,” he said.

  “Well,” I said, uncomfortably. “He’s a singer-songwriter. He’s been around. He’s not that young.”

  “Hmm,” said Nick, thoughtfully. “Can I meet him?”

  “Uh, I don’t know,” I said. “He doesn’t like publicity.”

  “This is you, isn’t it?” he laughed.

  “My secret is out,” I confessed.

  “Can I put this out on Gravity?” he politely inquired.

  I was genuinely taken aback. I didn’t know if I wanted to put it out on a major label, with everything that would entail: promotion, touring, driving in a van up the M1 to play some god-awful toilet in the middle of nowhere to a bunch of drunken students. I had responsibilities these days. A mortgage. Children. A life. A nice, easy life, supported by a good job that I really enjoyed.

  I suggested he let me finish the album and then we would talk again.

  I discovered something very strange then. When you say no to a record company, they become even more eager. Nick kept calling up to see how things were progressing.

  And I kept putting him off. It was ironic. After all those years chasing a deal, I had a record company chasing me and I wasn’t even sure if I still wanted a deal. I didn’t want to get excited. I didn’t want to start dreaming of stardom. I didn’t want to get caught up in the mania of my youth. And maybe I didn’t want to risk disappointment. My heart had been broken by the music business too many times before.

  But the time came when I had to admit I was finished. I had twelve tracks that I really liked, enough for an album. Musically, it was wildly varied stuff. I wanted it to sound like all the music I had ever loved jumbled together, as if the listener was lost in their favorite record store. Lyrically, there was a darkness to it, perhaps because the inspiration to write usually came to me when I was suffering. There were songs about death, addiction, loss, apocalypse and man’s inhumanity to man, the same kind of stuff I used to write for Shook Up! really, but without the pop froth. I sent copies to a few close friends. The response was very encouraging. But the card from Bono meant most of all to me.

  Neil,

  Heard your CD: it’s extraordinary. A row of 10s. A couple of 7s on the production. “I Found God” is a classic. “My Black Heart”…these songs are as good as it gets. The palsy has made your sickness even deeper!! You’re disturbed…you will never be released from Songwriters Anon.

  Your fan,

  Bono

  As it happened, Nick had spoken to Bono too. “He talks very highly of you,” Nick reported. He asked me to come and see him in his office at BMG.

  “This is a work of godlike genius,” said Nick, perhaps exaggerating somewhat, but I wasn’t complaining. “It deserves to be heard.” And he offered me a deal. It was a small deal, a long way removed from the kind of figures Ossie Kilkenny used to bandy about, but it was tailored to my unusual circumstances. Which was that I made it clear there was no way I was going to give up everything to hit the road and promote this with the desperate energy of a young wannabe. “In publishing terms,” I explained, “I don’t need to be a best-selling author. I’d be quite happy being a minor poet.”

  “I believe we can shift ten thousand,” he said, which would make it economically viable. “It deserves to sell a hundred thousand. But most of all it deserves to be out there. I’d be proud to have this on my label.”

  And so we shook hands on a deal. He said he would get contracts drawn up. I said I’d get a solicitor.

  I left the office in a daze. I could hardly believe what had just taken place. “Better twenty-five years late than never,” I thought.

  I called my brother. He had remarried and lived down the country these days. He had a covers band called 29 Fingers who played weddings and he composed music for low-budget TV programs. He was proud to make his living as a working musician even if it was a long way from the fantasies of fame and fortune we had once mutually entertained. “You’re never going to believe this,” I said. “I’ve been offered a record deal.”

  “Congratulations,” he said grumpily. I knew enough about envy to understand how he was feeling.

  “It’s just a small deal,” I said, to try to make him feel better. But a dangerous thought was cannoning off the walls of my mind. “Nick said it deserves to sell a hundred thousand. What if I was to get out there and really work it?”

  When I got home, I popped some champagne with Gloria. “I was thinking I might take a couple of months off when the record comes out,” I told her. “Give it a real go. You never know. I’m too old to be a pop star now but there’s a lot of people my age out there looking for quality music and if I can just get this in front of them, Nick reckons we could shift a hundred thousand. And that’s only the beginning. I’m already thinking about the next album. I know I can make a better record than this. I want to make a masterpiece. I want to make a record that moves the world. This could be the start of something big, babe. It could change our lives.”

  A week later, Nick Stewart was made redundant.

  Addendum and Acknowledgments

  It’s hard to know where to end a life story, since life rolls remorselessly on. But let me fill you in on a few delicious ironies that have unfolded since I completed the manuscript.

  I gave up on The Ghost for a while there. I had wasted enough time flogging dead horses. Gloria and I moved house and had a gorgeous baby boy, whom we have saddled with the name Finn Gabriel Cosmo Else McCormick (I figure if he ever decides he wants to be a rock star, he should have a range of names to choose from). So, one day, I was sitting in my temporary office in my basement, surrounded by packing cr
ates, when the telephone rang. It was Mel Gibson’s office calling from Los Angeles and they wanted to know if they could use my song “Harm’s Way” on an album of music inspired by his film The Passion of the Christ. Naturally, I tried to act as if this kind of thing happened to me every day. I certainly didn’t want to blow my cool by asking how on earth they had even heard my music. The truth emerged the next time I spoke to Bono. “It was Ali,” he told me. “She listens to your album a lot. It was on around the house and she just kind of took control of it. Then Mel’s office called to talk about music that might suit The Passion and she said, ‘You’ve got to hear this song,’ and played it down the phone to them! But here’s the really funny thing: she didn’t even know who it was! She asked me and you should have seen her face when I told her it was you. It was very funny. And the crushing irony is that the first song released by you on a major label is from The Passion of the Christ! Come on! And you say you don’t believe in God!”

  “Obviously He works in very mysterious ways,” I said.

  “It just proves that God has a great sense of humor,” said Bono.

  Meanwhile, Nick Stewart, a music man to his core, resurfaced with a new label, Endeavour, at Universal Records, where one of my old adversaries, Lucien Grainge, has risen to the ranks of MD. Nick immediately contacted me to find out if he could still release my album. I warned him that I had a bit of a history with Lucien. “Is there anyone in this business you haven’t offended?” asked Nick. So, if Lucien has forgiven me for my rudeness back in the eighties, my album, Mortal Coil, should be available to the general public by September 2004.

  The saga continues on www.neilmccormick.com

  Anyone interested in hearing the music of Yeah! Yeah! and Shook Up! that fills these pages can look it up on www.realshookup.com