19:28 Bill Flanagan - "U2 at The End of The World" | |
(Nancy Sinatra’s boots, you younger readers may not know, were made for walkin’.) Thank you  bluesteel_44 for the Bill Flanagan's book. Thank you Bill Flanagan for U2. Thank you U2 for just being who you are!I've never been fond of this type of books. It seemed to me that someone's thoughs and conceptualizations can broke my own conceptualizations of somebody else. But I don't like to be disappointed. But this book catches you from the first page and holds you till the very end. It involves you into that world which you won't want to leave. Sometimes it's like a movie. Like you're watching an interesting and informative movie. Sometimes it's like a dream. Yeah, like you're sleeping and see all these things around you. Some may think that biographical books must be boring, cause there is no characters, no stories. But it's not like that. There are characters and there are stories. These characters are just well-known and they are real. But you feel with them in some situations, laugh with them in other ones. There are not boring facts, there are exactly stories, very exciting and interesting. The end of the book is wonderful. Bill could finish the book in so sentimental way that I got tears in my eyes. Thank you! --- The text above I of course wrote when I finished reading the book. I just didn't post it, cause I decided to finish doing what I was intended. I decided to make a translation. I wasn't gonna translate before, but then I decided to do it. It took me I guess more than 2 weeks. Though I was translating a paragraph per day secretely at work. But anyway. Reading the book I was writing down pages' numbers where I foukd some funny situations or interesting facts. When I was typing it I deleted the half of pages I got, because they were hard to understand without a context. But in total there are 52 snippets. The last snippet I didn't plan to write and it's even not funny, but it's the end of the book and I think it's lovely. For a preview one of my favorite snippet: Page 363: (Bono is in the Frank Sinatra’s house – my note) As the whiskey continues to flow and Bono’s head spins, he begins to perceive that these old guys are drinking him under the table. Sunk in a chair, Bono watches dreamily as Sinatra pushes a switch and the wall opens to reveal a movie screen. An old film comes on and Bono falls asleep. He awakes with horror. His pants are soaking wet. Oh my God, Bono thinks, here I am watching a movie with Frank Sinatra and his friends in Frank Sinatra’s house and I’ve pissed myself. This goes beyond shaming himself; this is shaming Ireland before Italy, this is shaming rock & roll before the big bands. Gingerly, Bono slips his hand down toward his crotch. The liquid is cold. Thank you, Lord! If it were urine it would be warm! Bono gropes around and finds an upturned whiskey tumbler next to his leg. Yes! He passed out and poured the liquor on himself! He didn’t wet his pants! He won’t have to commit hara-kiri. Page 66: I just kicked Bono in the head. He didn’t notice. He’s asleep at my feet and I accidentally banged him with my shoe when Larry Mullen climbed across my lap to try to catch some winks on the seat at my right while the Edge, on my left, leans against the bus window, either dreaming or gazing out into the northern English night. I can’t tell for sure. Page 71: One woman present suggests to Bono that there’s an empty cabin available if he’s like to go lie down for a while. Thanks, Bono says, that would be great. She leads Bono in and stands there staring at him as he lies down on the cot. Bono is exhausted, he tries to ignore her. Than she says, ‘Aren’t you going to take off your pants?’ Er, Bono says, no that’s OK. I’m fine. Thank you. Then she climbs onto the cot next to him. Gently but firmly Bono explains that the young woman upstairs with the brown hair is his wife. Ahhh. And maybe she’d like to take a nap with me, hmmm? That’s right, OK, thank you. The woman goes off to fetch Ali and Bono lies back relieve. A couple of minutes later the door opens again, Ali comes back in and lies down next to her husband. It is the first time the two of them have been alone together in ages, what with Bono on the road, and the weary couple try to make the best of this odd circumstance. As they begin to cuddle, though, Ali lets out a yelp. Their hostess is back and has climbed into bad with them. Well, Bono says, jumping up, let’s see what’s going on deck. Page 72: By 7 a.m. the gruesome towers of Sellafield are looming on the horizon like Mordor. The Solo drops anchor about a mile out. The Greenpeace organizer announces it’s time for all those who are going ashore to get into their rubber boots, face masks and hooded radiation suits. We all look like big stuffed animals, except for the roguishly handsome Larry Mullen, who puts his radiation suit over his motorcycle jacket and then pulls his leather lapels out through the zipper. With his sunglasses and army camouflage cap, Larry is the epitome of combat rock. ‘I invented cool.’ he drawls, ‘and you’re on a boat with me.’ Bono and Edge, on the other hand, look like burritos with sunglasses. They stare at each other, trying not to laugh. Bono reaches out and takes his partner’s hand. ‘Edge,’ he says romantically and they embrace as the gawking Greenpeace giggle. ‘Talk about safe sex!’ Bono shouts from his space suit. ‘You can’t get much safer than this!’ Page 73: As U2 prepare to board their landing craft the Greenpeace organizer notices with a start that Bono has on his feet not wellies but his own leather motorcycle boots. ‘You can’t wear those!’ she insists. ‘That water is radioactive! Whatever you wear into it has to be discarded afterwards!’ ‘It’s OK,’ Bono says, ‘I won’t get my feet wet.’ ‘You don’t understand,’ she says. ‘Weighed down by the barrels the rafts can’t get all the way up to the shore. You’re going to have to wade in!’ ‘Get my feet wet!’ Bono sputters, adopting a spoiled, Spinal Tap accent. ‘Oh no no no, this whole thing is off!’ A quick search finds no spare rubber boots on the Solo. The weary Greenpeace leader says, ‘It’s all right, Bono, I understand you can walk on water.’ Page 75: Edge is the first one off the beach and a waiting broadcast journalist at a pay phone ropes the guitarist into a live radio interview. The local kids start poking each other and gasping, ‘It’s the Edge!’ One little boy calls out to his even littler friend, ‘Richie! You want to see Bono? That’s him down there!’ The smaller boy runs up and stares. He sees a figure in a hooded radiation suit. ‘That’s Bono?’ Page 75: Back on the bus Bono leans his head on his wife’s shoulder and waves to the children gathered around the coach. He adopts a broad American accent and brays, ‘Oh look, dear, aren’t they a-DOR-able. Oh, I’d just like to put them all in my suitcase and take them home!’ Page 75: As the bus begins to pull out Bono glances out the window – and sees that one of the juvenile U2 fans is proudly making off with his irradiated boots. ‘Oh hell! Stop the bus!’ The kid refuses to give up his souvenirs until all four members of U2 give him their autographs. Page 76: Bono lumbers up to the front of the bus, unwinds the tour guide microphone, and stars torturing us all with his imitation of a drunken Irish lounge singer. He mumbles inebriated dedications, sings awful songs and dares anyone to come take the microphone away from him. It’s too bad that much of the public thinks of Bono as a sourpuss. He’s a card. The problem is that when people get famous as U2, other people start treating them like gods or freaks. So they have to build a protective bubble in which they can be themselves. Inside the bubble they can be as they’re always been, with no rock-star baloney. But from outside the bubble they took strange and distorted. Page 77: When the bus trip resumes, Bono and I head to the back seat. As we approach Manchester I say, ‘Well, of course, Bono, everybody must be asking you about all the references to oral sex in your songs…’ ‘WHAT?’ Bono sputters. ‘Bill, you’ve turned to the wrong page in your notebook, you’re asking me Prince questions!’ Page 82: From Das and Dallas’ wing you can go up a short flight to a vast backstage hall, across which sits a small dressing room with a punching bag where band members hover during the encores, and where they can switch clothes during breaks. One night Bono came in raging during Edge’s guitar solo on ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’. Everything was going wrong that night and he was furious. Before he fell into the chair where stylist Nassim Khalifa dolls him up he punched the bag, threw a chair and kicked the wall. While Nassim was trying to brush his hair he pounded the table and screamed, ‘Fuck! Fuck!’ So she bonked him on the top of the head with the hairbrush as if he were a bad dog. Bono was startled. That hurt! He looked in the mirror and saw Nassim calmly combing, saying nothing. He shut up and behaved. Page 92: Bono: ‘Should I call you governor? Clinton: ‘No, call me Bill.” Bono: ‘And you can call me Betty.’ Page 93: Suddenly it’s the Secret Service’s turn to run through the corridors on the whims of their king. They wake Paul McGuinness, who jumps out of bed, clears his throat, flattens his hair and says, ‘Of course Bono would like to parlay with the Governor! Please tell Mr Clinton to head straight over to Bono’s suite! I’ll wake him!’ Then the manager hangs up and tears through his bag for a necktie. McGuinness rings Bono’s suite and THERE’S NO ANSWER. OK, fine, don’t panic – he’s probably just passed out. The manager hightails it down to Bono’s room, gets the hotel to unlock the door and BONO’S NOT HERE. The bed has not been slept in, the tub has not been bathed in, the spiral staircase has not been trod. There’s no Bono but here comes Bill Clinton! The hotel staff are as desperately helpful as elves at the North Pole, the Clinton campaign honchos are ruthlessly friendly, the Secret Service are coldly professional, and the Next President of the United States is cheerful as he surveys Bono’s fabulous suite. McGuinness, his welcoming grin frozen like rictus, says welcome, welcome and then slips into the next room to get on phone and wake every member of U2 to say (1) get up (2) get over here and (3) WHERE’S BONO? ‘We worked on a song here till dawn’, says a bleary Edge. ‘Then I went to bed. I don’t know where he is now.’ Edge hauls himself out of bed to brush his teeth and meet the candidate. On the way to the bathroom he notices a spare room and pushes open the door. There, unkempt, unshaven, and unconscious, lies Bono. ‘Get up,’ Edge prods, ‘Bill Clinton’s in your room.’ Bono doesn’t even know what time zone he is in. His mouth tastes like an ulcer and his head is swimming with ‘Two shots of happy, one shot of sad, you think I’m a good man…’ His dyed hair is in his red eyes and, like Lazarus, he stinketh. ‘Clinton’s in my room?’ Bono tries to straighten himself. He looks in the mirror. Dorian Gray. Fine. ‘OK,’ he mumbles, ‘let’s see how much of a politician this guy really is.’ Bono weaves through the hotel and slips into his suite through the upstairs. He hears Clinton talking in the room below. Bono puts his beetle shades back on, rubs at the wrinkles in his red velvet suit, and lights up a tiny black cigar. Elegantly wasted, Bono then descends his spiral staircase into the candidate’s company with the fuck-you aplomb of Bette Devis on a bad day. Clinton stops, Clinton stares and then Clinton falls over laughing. ‘Hey,’ Bono thinks, ‘this guy’s okay.’ Page 114: In the car Bono struggles to get the TV to switch channels but it stays stuck on one of those half-hour self-help commercials. Finally, in exasperation, Bono says, ‘Edge, you’re the scientist, can you get this to work?’ Edge leans over and tries to change the stations. Each time he does it clicks back to the self-help ad. This is very strange. Edge gets down and fiddles the switches with the furrow-browed dedication of Louis Pasteur at his bunsen burner, as oblivious as Bono to the fact that Larry is sitting with a remote control by his leg, clicking the channel back each time Edge tries to change it. Page 115: In the elevator Bono realizes he’s left his fly shades behind. The woman whips out a walkie-talkie and gets her security squad combing the holding room, the bathroom, the lounge to find them. Now bear in mind that Bono loses everything. In the last hour Edge grabbed the book that Bono left in the car, and just now McGuinness found the same book left on the table upstairs. So when Bono says of losing his glasses, ‘This is unbelievable!’ his bandmates correct him. ‘No, Bono,’ Larry says, ‘it’s not unbelievable.’ Adam claims, ‘It’s not uncommon.’ Edge adds, ‘It’s not unusual.’ Larry points out, ‘It’s not surprising at all.’ Page 127: Larry is a vegetarian; he asks me to taste those nachos and see if there’s any meat in them. I get nothing but cheese and beans and tell him it’s all clear. Larry takes a bit, swallows, and says, ‘Chicken! First time I’ve ever had chicken in four years and it’s your fault! I’ll never forget this!’ ‘What am I, the royal food taster?’ I say. ‘There was no chicken in the piece I ate.’ ‘You see, Larry,’ Adam says, ‘you let an outsider taste your food for you. I’m not jealous, but if you need someone to eat off your place you should always go to your bass player.’ Page 127: ‘Adam is going to check into a hotel for a week,’ McGuinness says. ‘So am I,’ Bono nods. ‘In Dublin?’ ‘Yeah,’ Bono admits. ‘I don’t want to but Ali says it’s better. A couple of days after I get back to Dublin we’ve got to be on a TV special. It will just confuse the kids if I come home and start working again right away, and she says they’ll be hurt if they talk to me and I don’t hear them. So I guess I’ll spend my first week at home in a hotel.’ I suggest that Bono go home but stay in the basement for a week. His kids could come to the top of the stairs and throw food down to him. But of course then they might keep doing that after he left on tour again which would be pathetic. Page 154: The newspapers say that Clinton told Reynolds that he had been trying to figure out Bono’s last name. ‘After a hour with him I realized he didn’t have one, but it didn’t matter.’ Page 181: When you first meet U2 you think that Adam has the most understandable personality of any of them, but eventually you realize that he is the most complicated. He registers everything, I think he feels everything. But he shows almost nothing. Contrast that with Bono who shows what he’s feeling in his face, what he’s thinking in his words, and what he had for breakfast on his shirt. Page 198: Larry says, he loves Adam’s bass part but hates a ghostly effects-altered bass track that the producers have echoing it. ‘So basically,’ Edge says, ‘your criticism is, too much bass, too many words, not enough drums.’ Everyone cracks up at the typical drummer’s review. Bono says that Larry really wishes he were the singer, Bono wants to be the guitarist, and Edge is a frustrated drummer. ‘Adam only wants to play the bass.’ Page 199: Bono is supposed to be where Ali is, where Adam is, at a friend’s wedding. He told his wife to go on, he’d meet her there after a quick stop at the studio. That was hours ago. When Flood says, ‘How ‘bout another take?’ Bono says, ‘How ‘bout a divorce?’ Page 204: Bono doesn’t want Larry to know he’s hurt (he hurt his leg – my note) or he’ll get a lecture and prescription. Larry takes a great interest in people’s medical problems. He’s been known to carry bags of vitamins, powders and pills – a portable cure for any malady. Larry pays careful attention to his health but has still had some real problems – trouble in the tendons of his hands once threatened his drumming career. After overcoming that he was cursed with a disc protruding from his spine which screwed up his back terribly. Bono says Larry tried different doctors without success until he went to a German who brought in a holistic healer who started giving Larry shots of bull’s blood. That did the trick! Larry’s Irish doctor refuses to accept it – he looks at x-rays of Larry’s crooked spine and says it’s impossible, but Larry feels fine. He flies to Germany for shots of bull’s blood regularly. Suzanne looks up from her desk. ‘Larry is full of bull’s blood?’ she asks. ‘That explains so much.’ Page 223: While Bono was on stage doing his solo opening of ‘One’ tonight, Larry slipped into the vast Underworld beneath the stage to stretch his legs. One of the crew took off his phone operator’s headset and handed it to Larry, who put it on and listened in to the video directors talking to each other, calling shots, ordering close-ups, and generally making sure the giant TV screens were jumping. Larry dialled up Monica Caston, the live video director, and said in an American drawl like one of the security crew, ‘Monica, Ah don’t like this shot of Bono.’ Her flustered voice came back, ‘What do mean you don’t like it? What’s wrong with it?’ ‘Ah don’t know, ah jest don’t like it. Why don’t you change it?’ ‘Blow me!’ ‘Monica,’ Larry said, switching back to his own stern voice, ‘this is Larry.’ Her scream almost blew out a few headsets. Laughing, Larry slipped back behind his drums. Page 223: At the hotel after the show everyone congregates in Bono’s suite in the hope of finding something to eat. Room service seem to have disappeared. The road crew are, as one of them describes it, lumbering around searching for food like a herd of migrating cattle. By 3 a.m. everyone's holding their belly and groaning. Sheila Roche, Suzanne Doyle and Regine Moylett have taken up seats on a couch by the phone and are calling the kitchen every half hour or so. Every time they get the same answer: ‘Ten minutes.’ Finally Bono decides to step in. He grandly picks up the receiver and purrs, ‘Hello! This is Mr Macphisto. I ordered french fries and sandwiches an hour and a half ago and if I don't get them immediately I will...’ and here he degenerates into a string of incomprehensible mumbles that must be sound even more threatening in the translating imagination of German room service than they do in their native gibberish. Anyway, it works. Within minutes tray after tray of french fries is wheeled in by frightened-looking bellboys and the entire touring party falls on them famished. I whisper to Bono as he sticks a chip in his mouth, ‘They probably spit on them.’ Page 228: The idea they‘ve come up with (that’s about a Numb video – my note) was partly inspired by an old Elvis Costello video (‘I Want to Be Loved’) set in a photo booth: What if we sit Edge facing the camera as if he’s starting at a TV, and he remains impassive, lip-synching the words, while all sorts of funny things happen to him. It just requires one shot, no real set, and some good ideas of things to be done to the deadpan Edge. The members of the band all grab pieces of paper and make lists of what they’d like to see happen to Edge in a chair. Edge’s list is full of suggestions like, ‘Beautiful women kiss Edge’. The guitarist is taken aback when his bandmates’ ideas are read out: ‘Edge gets punched in face’, ‘Cigarette pushed up Edge’s nose’, ‘Break egg on Edge’s head’. Bono sees the sick look on his pal’s mug and whispers that Edge may be a little nervous about having to be a video star. I don’t think that’s what Edge is nervous about. Page 231: Director Godley is in the middle of coaching a little girl, about five, on how to beat on Edge’s chest. ‘Harder! Hit harder!’ he tells her. Larry steps forward: ‘I’ll do it!’ Page 232: The director has an inspiration. He asks an assistant to throw a bunch of couch cushions on the floor behind Edge. Then he tells Larry to come over, put his hand on Edge’s face, and push him straight over backwards, stool and all. Larry says, great! Edge says, ‘Should we try it first with somebody expendable?’ Page 234: The director reads off the list of options: ‘Do you want Morleigh’s legs around your neck or her foot in your face?’ Bono, Adam and Larry say together, ‘The foot in the face!’ Edge: ‘I prefer the legs around the neck.’ Godley says if Edge really wants to, they can do it without film in the camera. Bono says it would be good if, when the solo ends, Larry comes in and puts his face in front of Edge as if he’s checking out what’s on the imaginary TV, but that creates a problem, ‘Then how do we get rid of Larry?’ Godley repeats the question. ‘Yeah, how do we get rid of Larry?’ Larry says, ‘Usually you get the manager to do it.’ Back on the set, Edge returns to his seat while Morleigh and Andrea climb up on card tables on either side of him and start rubbing their bare feet all over his face. Edge, his eyes closed, is enjoying it very much. Larry sneaks up, takes his shoe off and adds his smelly, socked foot to the facial, ruining Edge’s fun. Page 238: After we’ve drunk it in, Bono asks what I think. ‘The scale’s pretty inflated,’ I say. ‘It makes you think that Hitler had real problems of overcompensation. Maybe he wouldn’t have needed to conquer Europe if he’s just been a little taller and had both balls.’ Bono pulls himself up to his full five foot eight, glances nervously at his zipper and says. ‘Um, Bill – there’s something else about myself I’ve been meaning to tell you…’ Page 254: Adam smiles the wise smile of Archimedes overflowing the bathtub and says, ‘Let me go get some more wine and I’ll give you some more insights into the female pshyhology.’ He sashays off in his sarong and I say to Sheila, ‘I’ve got a new name for Adam Clayton.’ ‘What?’ ‘Madame Clayton.’ Page 270: Pearl Jam play a roaring set that is greeted with a bevy of plastic bottles and ‘Fucks yous’. ‘Fuck me?’ Eddie Vedder says. ‘OK, you fuck me and then Bono will come out and fuck you’. Page 295: He gets back in the car and eventually we do spot a small eatery that’s open. We seat ourselves between framed photographs of Jim Kerr and Wendy James. The waitress comes up and Bono says, ‘I won’t order until you put up one of me!’ She just rolls her eyes as if to say, What an asshole. Chastened, Bono makes his selection and she leaves. Eileen laughs and says, ‘You forgot, you’re back in Ireland. They don’t care.’ I excuse myself to go to the bathroom and discover the U2 poster – over the urinal. Page 297: Bono looks at the morning papers. ‘I look fat in these pictures,’ he says. ‘Am I?’ ‘No, you’re not,’ I say. Suzanne, Morleigh and Edge drift in and join us. There’s trouble with the ‘Numb’ video in Japan, Edge says. Apparently the bare feet on the face bit is obscene there. ‘You can take out your willie and piss in the street in Japan,’ Bono says while staring at his sausages. ‘But bare feet – woooo!’ Page 303: As Phil has turned out to be so cool about that, (they were recording a song "I've Got You Under My Skin" - a duet with Frank Sinatra – my note) Bono decides to hit him with this: ‘Since Frank is singing, “Don’t you know, little fool, you never can win”,’ Bono says with a huge smile, trying to slip in the singer, ‘how would it be if the second time through I say, “Don’t you know, OLD fool, you never can win”?’ Ramone and Rubin stare at him. ‘Like this,’ Bono says and he slaps on a big, toothy smile and emotes like a Methodist minister: ‘Don’t you know, old foooool.’ Ramone and Rubin stare at him. ‘Like a father and son,’ Bono says. ‘But not so much fighting over the car as fighting over the same girl.’ Ramone and Rubin stare at each other. They stare back at Bono. Finally Ramone says, ‘OK, we’ll try it. And if the old man doesn’t like it, what kind of boots do you like better? Rubber or cement?’ There’s a pregnant pause and then Bono smiles and says, ‘I want the kind of boots Nancy wears!’ Everybody laughs. (Nancy Sinatra’s boots, you younger readers may not know, were made for walkin’.) Page 319: The story goes like this: The property next door to Bono and Ali’s, consisting of a yard and a little gatehouse, was going up for auction. Bono wanted to buy it so that no-one could come in and, for example, put up and apartment building that would overlook his back garden. But he figured if he went out to bit for it himself the owner would see dollar signs and jack up the price. So Bono whispered word to his intimates that some false buyer should go to the auction and grab the property for Bono secretly. So tight was U2 secrecy, though, that somehow two different beards were sent to the auction, each unaware of the other and each with firm orders to spend whatever it took to get that gatehouse for Bono. Well, you don’t have to have grown up watching TV sitcoms to know what happened. The two beards chased each other’s bids through the roof. Bono ended up paying perhaps five times the value of the property. Page 327: (Edge is performing at the MTV awards – my note) He sits down in a chair facing the audience and intones ‘Numb’ while TVs around him crackle with images and sound effects – including Bono’s smirking face which seems to be subliminally saying, ‘I’m watching this at home with my shoes off and you’re stuck in Los Angeles, you sucker!’ Page 328: Pearl Jam clean up the awards portion of the evening winning four trophies, including Video of the Year for ‘Jeremy’. Eddie is not joking when he tells the audience that without music, he might have ended up like Jeremy in the video, shooting himself in front of the classroom. On a lighter note, he weights MTV's moonman trophy in his hand and observes, ‘It looks like Bono.’ Bono is watching on his TV in Dublin, talking to Edge on the trailer phone. ‘What do you make of that?’ he asks. Eddie is suddenly wondering the same thing. Coming backstage Eddie worries that he might have hurt Bono’s feelings. He finds the Edge and apologizes, asking if he can have Bono’s phone number so he can call and make amends and telling Edge to look into his eyes and know how sincere he is. ‘I just hung up with Bono,’ Edge replies, deadpan. ‘And, Eddie, he was crying.’ Eddie and Edge stare intently into each other's eyes for a few moments - then they both start laughing. Page 341: Edge was the first one to arrive today so he programmed the machines for the set. Now he’s standing in front of the bank of sequencers and keyboards that will be stashed in Underworld during the concerts playing ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ and ‘Angel of Harlem’, while his bandmates sprawl on the chairs in the next room delaying the start of another workday. Edge’s guitar stops. He comes into the room and picks up the phone. He calls Morleigh in Los Angeles – eight time zones earlier – to ask if she’ll be around next week when he stops on his way to Australia. When he gets off the phone he’s as happy as a sixteen-year-old with a prom date. Then he glances around at his partners with a look that says, ‘Work’, and they all struggle to their feet and file into the studio behind Edge like the cover of Abbey Road. Page 344: Bono and Gavin were driving in the northern part of the Irish Republic, on their way to visit Guggi in jail and became carried away with free-associating into a Walkman their plan to write a play called Malthead, about people who get in your ear and don’t let go until your brain is running out of your skull. They were having such a good time drinking whiskey and being creative that they didn’t notice they had accidentally driven across the border into Northern Ireland until a British soldier with a flowerpot on his head for camouflage leaped out of the tall grass screaming and waving a rifle at the car. ‘Get out of the car!’ – he shouted, holding the gun barrel in their faces. ‘Get our of the car!’ ‘Don’t get out of the car!’ Bono insisted under his breath. ‘GET OUT OF THE CAR NOW!’ ‘Don’t get out of the car!’ Slowly every flower in the meadow raised up to reveal itself attached to a British helmet. A squad of soldiers, rifles ready, moved out of the grass and surrounded the tipsy musicians. Gavin was ready to get out, Bono put his hand out to hold him in. The soldiers, fierce and shouting, fingers on triggers, moved in closer and closer and said… ‘Good Lord. It’s Bo-no!’ War was averted! The happy soldiers in their flower hats danced around the car like a scene out of Fantasia and asked for autographs. Page 346: One of the engineers opens a window to let some air in, and Bono ends up standing in that window with his microphone, singing ‘In the Name of the Father’. He’s been rehearsing with U2 all day every day this week and he’s having trouble catching his breath. To give himself a chance he adds little passing phrases that leave him time to breathe between longer lines. A little after eleven I say good night and head downstairs to the empty street. It’s cold. Winter has come to Dublin quick and early this year though it’s not yet Hallowe’en. The deserted street is filled with the sound of Bono’s voice, singing from the open window on the third floor. A couple of bleary-eyed boys stumble by on their way home from the pub and pay no attention at all. I’m sure they think it’s just another open window with a U2 record coming out of it, one of the thousand in this city. If they looked up they’d see Bono in the flesh, giving them a private concert. But they never look up. Page 363: (Bono is in the Frank Sinatra’s house – my note) As the whiskey continues to flow and Bono’s head spins, he begins to perceive that these old guys are drinking him under the table. Sunk in a chair, Bono watches dreamily as Sinatra pushes a switch and the wall opens to reveal a movie screen. An old film comes on and Bono falls asleep. He awakes with horror. His pants are soaking wet. Oh my God, Bono thinks, here I am watching a movie with Frank Sinatra and his friends in Frank Sinatra’s house and I’ve pissed myself. This goes beyond shaming himself; this is shaming Ireland before Italy, this is shaming rock & roll before the big bands. Gingerly, Bono slips his hand down toward his crotch. The liquid is cold. Thank you, Lord! If it were urine it would be warm! Bono gropes around and finds an upturned whiskey tumbler next to his leg. Yes! He passed out and poured the liquor on himself! He didn’t wet his pants! He won’t have to commit hara-kiri. Page 367: ‘Three more weeks of seeing your ugly face!’ Larry announces as he plops his plate of sushi down next to me in the backstage cafeteria. I tell him I’ve just run into a pal of mine who recently eloped with a friend of U2’s after a very quick courtship. Larry ain’t the most sentimental Irishman at the best of times, and today he’s feeling especially un-romantic. ‘What the hell is that marriage all about?’ he asks. ‘I think they’re madly in love,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry,’ Larry says, getting increasingly peeved at his inability to work his chopsticks and finally grabbing a fork to spear his dinner. ‘I’m a cynic about all that lovey-dovey stuff. A marriage is a partnership and you better look at it that way or you’re in trouble! All that lovey-dovey business gets in the way.’ Larry says lovey-dovey as if he’s describing a particularly unpleasant rectal disorder. ‘How’s she gonna feel about him in a couple of years when he’s pickin’ his nose? Or when he’s pickin’ HER nose?’ ‘Yeah, well,’ I say, ‘you better have a whole lot of that lovey-dovey stuff at the beginning to help carry you through the forty years of nose-picking.’ ‘Fair enough,’ Larry says and I ask him if he’s still thinking about moving to New York for a while after the tour. He glances around to emphasize that what he’s about to tell me is top secret and then confides, ‘I bought an apartment. I’m really excited.’ I ask where it is and he tells me, describes the building and I say, ‘Larry! My wife’s sister lives in that building! I’ll see you all the time!’ ‘Oh fuck!’ Larry cries. ‘I’m never going to get away from you! It’s never going to end!’ Page 370: During ‘New Year’s Day’ Bono’s microphone dies, leaving Edge howling the background ‘Aiii-Yas’ over and over while Bono signals the roadies, misunderstanding the signal, run out and put a cup of water in Bono’s hand. Finally his manic gesturing communicates and he is given a second mike – which he sings into and which turns out also to be dead. At this point any of our less brilliant rock stars might start weeping, stalk into the wings to fire people, or jump into the audience to beat someone up. Not Bono. He walks to the front lip of the stage, throws down the broken microphone and starts howling out the words unamplified. Not that anyone in the stadium can hear him – he almost surely cannot hear himself over the gigantic amplification of the band – but the dramatic gesture creates a surge of excitement in the audience, who sing the missing words themselves while Bono stands there, outstretched and glorious. Page 380: (There’s one thing you need to know about Bono - he likes to steal boats – my note) So it is with an impending sense of trouble that I go to the very back of the boat and find Bono and U2’s Australian friend Libby stripping down to their underwear. Bono turns and dives into Sydney Harbour. His head bobs up a few yards away, spitting out the little cigar he had between his teeth and calling ‘Maurice! Come on!’ Maurice, with his usual weary sign, puts down his drink, says, ‘Back to work,’ takes off his clothes and jumps into the water. On the upper decks some of U2’s guests are gathering to watch the show. Bono is swimming toward the cabin cruisers anchored in front of the fancy houses along this stretch of waterfront. Maurice is swimming along behind him. Bono climbs abroad one boat and furiously tries to get its engine to turn over. Maurice stays close, ready to throw himself in from of any bullet that might come Bono’s way. Giving up on his first choice, Bono swims from boat to boat. Clearly he is not the commando in charge of jump-starts. Despairing of getting a big boat going, he jumps back into the water and swims to a small private dock, where he swipes a dinghy and paddles. I can see a man coming out of one the houses in the hill over the dock, looking down toward the water. I have a vision of Bono being netted, gutted and fried for dinner. The man on the hill returns inside, perhaps to call to cops, perhaps to get a shotgun. Bono and Maurice, unaware, paddle away. Eventually Bono rows up to another dock and presents his stolen lifeboat to a gentleman named Herbie who is standing there staring at this dripping wet apparition in black underpants. Bono asks Herbie to please make sure the gentleman on the hill gets his boat back. Then he dives back into the harbour, Maurice still in escort, and swims back to our yacht. He takes off his soaking wet briefs, balls them up, tosses them overboard saying, ‘And Mrs Herbie asked for there.’ Bono tells Ali’s nephews that he hopes they’re learned an important lesson today: ‘It’s a good to steal.’ Page 385: A woman with very long legs in a very short mini-skirt knows the fellow guarding U2’s little podium, and she manages to get through the rope and starts dancing on the band’s periphery – as if she just happened to be there and hadn’t notice any rock stars. She moves closer and closer to Bono, keeping her eyes fixed across the room. Finally she succeeds in catching his attention. He is not, however, lovestruck. He is floating in alcohol. He leans into my ear like Henry Higgins studying an anthropological curiosity. ‘What color knickers do you think she’s wearing?’ he asks. ‘Well,’ I say, ‘her bra’s hanging out and it’s black, so her underpants must me black.’ ‘Hmmmm,’ Bono says with the detachment of a boozed-up professor. ‘I think she’s the type to wear a black bra and white little girl knickers.’ ‘You’re crazy.’ ‘Ten bucks says I’m right.’ ‘You’re on.’ Eric, Bono’s faithful security man, is as always standing nonchalantly within Bono’s sight lines. Bono waves for him to come over and whispers in his ear. Eric grins and studies the situation. He clears the drinks from a short glass coffee table in front of us, reaches out and takes the dancer by the hand, and suggests she climb up on it. She jumps at the chance and starts frugging before us, her head brushing the ceiling. Bono gives Eric the thumbs up and we lean forward to settle out bet. Just as we do a startlingly bright strobe flashes off in our faces. Someone has just shot an incredibly embarr | |
|
| |
| Всего комментариев: 0 | |