#Zero the Hero. An Interview with Neil McCormick

The British Library in London is one of the largest libraries in the world, so what could be a better setting to meet Neil McCormick, whose first novel, #Zero, has just been published? The reading room is silent, however, with way too little privacy to hold a conversation, let alone an interview with the chief music critic of the UK broadsheet The Daily Telegraph. We decide to move to a hotel lounge, where the clink of bar glasses offers a suitable rock ’n’ roll setting.

McCormick will be familiar to followers of U2. In 2006, he was the author of the best-selling authorized biography U2 By U2, a review of the band’s formation and subsequent 30-year history. This was preceded in 2003 by another nonfiction work, a memoir of McCormick’s life as a (failed) pop star, known in the UK and Europe as I Was Bono’s Doppelganger and in the USA as Killing Bono. The latter title was retained for a film starring Ben Barnes as Neil and Robert Sheehan playing the role of his younger brother and bandmate Ivan (a founding member of Feedback in September 1976, before their metamorphosis into U2 by early 1978). Last year the book-turned-film found new success as a play in London, this time known as Chasing Bono.

McCormick has been a journalist for nearly all his adult life. Upon leaving school in 1978 — Mount Temple Comprehensive in Clontarf, where classmates included Bono — Neil joined the team at Ireland’s Hot Press music magazine, where he worked for several years before moving to England in 1983. There he combined the role of aspiring pop star (in conjunction with brother Ivan, he had formed Shook Up!) with that of freelance journalist. When the band broke up, he became a full-time writer. For five years starting in 1991, he was a contributing editor at GQ magazine in the UK before joining The Daily Telegraph in 1996.

McCormick has interviewed many people in the music business, and continues to attend and review concerts several times each week. In recent years he has also been the presenter of the Vintage TV program Neil McCormick’s Needle Time, interviewing many of his favorite musicians.

So following our podcast interview with Neil McCormick in 2017 that covered the genesis of #Zero, we’re here to discuss his critically acclaimed new novel, recently published via Unbound in the UK.

So Neil, why write a novel?

Like most writers, I have always wanted to write a novel. Books are at the heart of my life. I’ve defined myself as a reader ever since I was a small child, and I always thought I’d be an author someday, but I kind of allowed myself to be hijacked by all these other dreams of music and performing. I think in terms of stories, and I have started many novels over the years; this is just the first one I have finished! As a journalist, I write nonfiction essentially all of the time — and I’ve gotten pretty good at it over the years. I really enjoy it, and I enjoy being part of the conversation about music that is going on in the world, but in journalism you are always bound by the restraints of the factual. You can’t just make stuff up. That is the nonfiction challenge: to create narrative out of things that actually happened. But with fiction there are no limits at all, and writing with that sense of freedom has been incredibly rewarding and great fun.

I’ve been writing since I was a kid, and back in my band days I was working on a novel called The Cannibal Sheep-Eaters, an apocalyptic romantic comedy. It was the name of a made-up punk band in Ireland. I got quite far into that, but when you are young, I think you are still growing very fast, and writing a book takes a long time, and I had a feeling of constantly outgrowing the work. All the books I started fell by the wayside, and maybe I needed to mature and just slow down before I was ready to return to fiction.

The world of journalism has been very good to me, and I have made a good living from it. But I don’t define myself as a journalist. I write songs, poetry and fiction, for my own pleasure. I’ve scripted some short films and sold a screenplay in the mid-’90s that I was very proud of, but it never got made. Those are all tough places to make a living. I think it’s something like only one in 20 books make a profit. That’s not why you take on something like this. Writing a novel for me has been a long time coming, but it is a chance to try my hand at perhaps the highest form of the writer’s art.

You grew up in Dublin, and went to Mount Temple Comprehensive. Did you study the works of the great Irish writers such as Joyce, Yeats, Wilde, etc.?

I have read them all, but not in school. We didn’t study the Irish curriculum in that way; our reading list was actually more modern literature such as The Great Gatsby, 1984 and Lord Of The Rings. We did do a lot of Irish poetry, so I became very familiar with Yeats, who I read to this day, and you can certainly hear his influence in U2’s songs. I was a voracious reader all through my school days but unfortunately I was always a bit of a rebel, and didn’t particularly like to read what I was told to. I remember smuggling a copy of Spike Milligan’s Adolf Hitler: My Part In His Downfall into the classroom. I would stick it inside whatever book we were supposed to be reading but I was giggling so much it gave the game away, resulting in having that book confiscated for two weeks. Much to my frustration.

You describe novel writing as taking a long time. So how long did it take you to write #Zero?

It probably only took me a few weeks of actual writing … but spread over nearly 15 years. The procrastination-to-writing ratio was particularly bad with this one.

The book is set in the music business, which has changed so much in the last 10 years, especially with streaming and social media. Did that influence the content of the book?

Absolutely. In fact, that was driving me crazy. Things changed so rapidly that if I put the book down for a year to work on another thing, the next time I’d look at it everything would be out of date. When I started it, Myspace was a new thing, then virtually took over the music business, then disappeared without a trace. You write a draft in the age of CDs, then return to the draft and downloading has taken over. So you make changes to incorporate downloading, and suddenly everyone is streaming. But the constant thing at the center of the story is the corrosive power of fame, and the way that was changing actually fed into my narrative. Fame has always been a tough thing for individuals to cope with, but it’s probably worse now than it has ever been.

Examining fame was a big element of my memoir, although I was really looking at it from the point of view of not becoming famous. This is about fame from the inside. I started to dream this up as a follow-up to Bono’s Doppelganger back in 2003, and I wrote three chapters for my agent, none of which have survived to the finished draft. Then in 2004 I was asked to write the U2 biography, which was an offer I couldn’t refuse. I thought that would take a year, but actually it took two years. So when U2 By U2 was completed in mid-2006, I went back to the novel, but the internet was changing music and I realized I would have to rethink my story.

The trouble is, the internet was changing the face of journalism, too, and work demands became pretty intense. I really had to change the way I worked, and there was a period of several years where I was very absorbed by that. Like a lot of writers, I was a terrible procrastinator! But the internet demands speed, it demands instant reactions, and it is voracious for copy whilst simultaneously undermining the economics of journalism, so I focused on just getting the words on the page, becoming an instant responder. Write first; edit later.

I have become a very fast writer — I found processes that helped me really write with focus and intensity. Ultimately that has helped me so much in writing the book. But it took me a while to come back to it, and by then, of course, everything had changed again and I kind of had to start from scratch. I went back to completing the book in 2010, and stayed in a cottage in Wiltshire where there was no phone signal, and no internet, and no interruptions at all, and experienced a miraculous epiphany of writing and rapture — so much so that the book went through changes that I hadn’t planned on. I effectively completed the first draft of the book in isolation, writing like a demon, 80,000 words in two weeks. But even that is not the same as the book that is in the shops now. That version had my hero Zero operating in a meta-fictional world populated by real pop and rock stars. But therein lay another pitfall …

What happened?

Amy Winehouse was featured in the book, as one of many walk-on parts interacting with my lead character, Zero. I knew Amy a little bit, and I figured I could ask her permission. And after she died in 2011, I was confronted by the danger of fictionalizing real lives, and I just had to rethink that whole concept. I mean, she died from the very kind of things that haunt Zero — the intense glare of fame opening up fissures in unresolved emotional issues dating back to childhood. I saw her just a month or so before she died, and I really thought she was back, that she was going to make it. Such a talent, such a tragedy. Anyway, that necessitated another rewrite, which was actually to the benefit of the book, because I got to make up a whole galaxy of imaginary pop and rock stars, and I had so much fun doing that. So we’ve got a lairy Scottish diva called Amber Smack in there now

There are still a number of guest appearances by famous music stars who interact with Zero.

Just a smattering of superstars to give it a bit of a real-world spine. It’s a bit of an in joke really. It’s Bono, Elton John and Sting, because I get along with them all and I was confident they wouldn’t sue me!

Why did the novel take so long to appear?

The publishing world is slow. And to be honest, my agent struggled placing the book. Publishers seemed to like it but they were confused by it. I have been in meetings being asked, “What is the genre?” I have no idea. I mean, it’s a story. It’s funny. It’s emotional. It’s exciting. But I don’t know where you stack it in a book shop. So eventually, we went to Unbound, which has been great because they have an independent mentality and don’t concern themselves with genres. It means the author has to do a lot of crowd-funding to make the first edition happen, but that has been interesting; it puts you in a very close and symbiotic relationship with your readers.

The original title of the book wasn’t #Zero, as I understand?

Yes, that’s right. I called my book Motherless Child, but my editor didn’t like it, and said it came across as a book title that only women would read! I hate that distinction. I kind of think it is in the Nick Hornby vein, who is like a woman’s writer for men. I have actually been in meetings where publishers have said, “We think this is a man’s book, but the problem is men don’t read books.” To which the only possible response is, “I’m a man, and I read books!” How did books become divided by gender? It’s nuts.

Anyway, the theme of Zero being a Motherless Child is at the core of the story. There are so many rock stars who grew up without their mother being present. John Lennon and Paul McCartney famously, and Bono, too. Is that absence part of the equation of fame? Over the years Bono and I have talked about the “God-shaped hole,” as he calls it — the need for love to replace the unconditional mother love most of us just took for granted. But Zero is certainly not Bono, as you will know if you can get past the sweary, obnoxious, drug-taking opening chapter!

Bono did give me the title #Zero, though. When I wrote I Was Bono’s Doppelganger, the American publishers didn’t like having the word doppelganger in the title. They thought their readers wouldn’t understand it. It was Bono who suggested calling it Killing Bono. He said, “There’s a lot of people who would wear that T-shirt.” And my publishers loved it. So similarly, when I had the same problem with Motherless Child, I was actually in Dublin with Bono, on the set of a video. I mentioned this to him, and he said, “What is the name of your character?” When I told him, he said, “That’s it — Zero — that’s the name of your book.” And I thought to myself, well this is someone who knows a thing or two about titles, and so I went with it. I added the hashtag though. So he can’t take all the credit.

Did Bono help with any aspects in the book?

I was writing about a young pop superstar, and I was intrigued how such a person would be able to pay for things. Bono told me about the American Express Black that features in the book, which is a kind of rock-star credit card. Just talking to him and being around his world gave me a lot of ideas, but there was one particular conversation about one aspect of the story that actually went on to become a major element of the narrative. He has a very quick-fire mind; he is always a good person to talk to about creative things. And he has always been very supportive [of] my writing and was very encouraging about my taking on a novel. He knows he’s in it. I sent him the offending chapter, and we’re still friends, so I will take that as a sign of approval!

I think Bono could write a novel. What do you think?

I believe he is writing his autobiography and that will be great. But the art of writing a novel is different to that of a memoir. It’s a whole other area of narrative and character skills. His thing is actually poetry; his lyrics stand up on the page. He often writes in character — The Fly being a good example, this devilish character dispensing bad wisdom. My hero’s manager, Beasley, has a bit of The Fly about him.

Bono is a great writer, and we’ve known that for a long time. Back in the 1980s he would sometimes write a journalistic piece and sent them to me via fax to give him an editorial opinion. And I’d look at them and they were depressingly brilliant! I’d just have to admit he didn’t need to make any changes. Maybe correct his spelling! He could definitely have been a critic; he has a very perceptive way of looking into art.

But he would have been really dangerous if he ever went into advertising or marketing. He is a great phrase maker. Imagine Bono trying to sell you expensive gadgets instead of saving the world. It doesn’t bear thinking about. His phrase-making is so good that when he quotes famous writers such as Sam Shepherd, more often than not he misremembers the phrases and actually improves them! I hope he is getting on with his memoir as it will be utterly rich and fascinating. I don’t think he needs a ghostwriter. But I’m available to correct his spelling.

How difficult was it to write U2 By U2?

It wouldn’t describe it as difficult, although it was a challenge putting the historical narrative structure in place. The early stuff was easy for me to work on, as I had the advantage of being there! I used ATU2 a lot in my research. There is a fabulous amount of fan-based resources out there packed with day-to-day factual detail. Most bands don’t have this at all; probably only The Beatles and Bob Dylan have as much written about them. In addition, I carried out over 100 hours of interviews. One of the challenges was to construct a narrative, to get to the truth, by simply using the four voices of the band.

Actually, Neil, I noticed some anomalies in U2 By U2, such as Bono stating that he remembers his mother (who died in 1974) coming to his bedroom to tell him that Elvis had died (Presley died in 1977). Those quotes make a good story, but did you deliberately leave them in?

Does it say that? OK, I am going to claim I left it in deliberately. I did leave some anomalies in for the fun of it, but you’d think I would have spotted a ghost of Bono’s mother. From the start of the project, I wanted it to be first-person: It is actually an autobiography, not a biography. The book is called U2 By U2, and I thought it was important that it come from their perspective, their four voices, and also of then manager Paul McGuinness. But everybody remembers things differently. I came across many contradictions and if they were insurmountable then I would insist that it was so wrong that it didn’t happen and couldn’t be included.

Bono has a creative imagination, and he tells a story to dig out a bigger truth, but I frequently had to explain that he was misremembering the timeline of events. But in fact, the same kind of contradictions would come from all four members, so there is usually no definitive version of the truth, just subjective truths, and leaving them in actually helps form a multifaceted picture of events and how they subjectively shaped the band. At least, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Writing the book was like conducting an orchestra of voices, and I had to ensure that the voices were balanced and it wasn’t all just Bono and Edge, who are the most talkative. Larry and Adam’s perspectives are just as valuable, and very unique. As time went on, and we got to the end, they became more and more involved and changed some of their contributions. Even when the book was on the printing press, I can remember band members saying they wanted to change something! And we did it, too. At the end, Bono said to me, “Now you know what it’s like to be a producer of our albums.”

You have been involved in the music industry and music journalism for almost 40 years. If you were 21 years old again, what advice would you give yourself?

Well, interestingly, I was recently at a reunion of the Mount Temple class of 1978, where all the men are getting grayer and balder and the women have mysteriously gone blond! Ali was there and Edge usually comes, but Bono doesn’t tend to come as he thinks it might disturb the balance. And really he was class of ’77; he just got kept back because he failed his Irish exams and became a member of our class. Which suited him because it meant he could stay in school and practice with U2.

Anyway, we were sitting around a table late at night, and I remember someone saying, “What advice you would give to your teenage self?” And there was a kind of ruminative silence as we all thought about this weighty question. Finally, I piped up with: “Join U2!” To much laughter, it must be said. The only problem with that is I fancied myself as a singer, so we’d have had to kick Bono out. It doesn’t bear thinking about.

If I was really to give advice to my 21-year-old self, I might have said, “Calm down!” I was in a big hurry to get on with life. I grew up to become a writer, a newspaper columnist, a musician who released albums. I have had a play and a film and a TV show. I don’t know if my younger self would have been satisfied with that though. I was bent on superstardom. But this is my life and I wouldn’t have changed much.

It might have been nice to have had a more substantial music career. Would it have made me happier? Who knows? It is good to get validation for your art, and to be able to explore the most creative parts of yourself. But I have written this book about a character who achieves enormous fame, fortune and success and it tears him apart.

Success can destroy some people — and may have done so to me, to be honest. I was a bit too wild, too ready to indulge in reckless behavior. In U2, I think the friendship and religious faith has been so important in helping keep the ship steady. There was nothing particularly steady about my younger self. So yes, keep calm and don’t panic! That’s good advice for any young person venturing into the world.

#Zero by Neil McCormick is out now and available from all booksellers, Amazon US, Amazon UK and Unbound.

Neil McCormick links:

The Daily Telegraph profile

Twitter: @neil_mccormick

 Neil & Ivan McCormick at Zero Launch party

Neil McCormick and his brother Ivan (original member of Feedback in 1976) performing “Don’t Be Afraid” from the soundtrack of the book at the #Zero launch party.

(c) Govern/@U2, 2019

www.atu2.com

Bono has every right to bash Brexit onstage – rock is meant to provoke debate

by Neil McCormick

Bono performing with U2 at the O2 Arena, London

It seems fair to assume Bono is a Remainer.
“For us, this is more than a gold star falling off a blue flag,” the Irish rock superstar told London’s O2 Arena this week. “It’s a loss of shared dreams.”
Bono and his band mates in U2 were standing in front of a humongous European flag, in which one of the 12 stars had been filled with a Union Jack, enclosed in a red heart.
 “We’ve been touring across Europe,” he said, “and all we hear is that people love the UK and don’t want you to leave.” To drive the point home, U2 played One, written and recorded in a Berlin studio in 1990, with 20,000 British fans taking up its freshly politicised refrain:
“We are one, but we are not the same / We get to carry each other.”
 This was a fiercer, rockier U2 than I have seen in decades. It was also the band at their most nakedly political. A lot of people are put off by Bono’s relentless campaigning for various causes – mainly the charities he has supported and founded.
 It is the source of the most pervasive criticism of U2, a band who seem to be loathed as much as they are loved. Some people think politics has no place in pop music at all – presumably the same people who thought John Lennon should have stuck to singing love songs, and Bob Marley would have been better served rhapsodising ganja.
 For those people, U2’s latest tour will be their most provocative yet. Brexit is not a global humanitarian issue on which all people of sensitive natures can broadly agree, like the Make Poverty History campaign. It is much more narrowly focussed and locally divisive than that. But if you take political positions, you court division. You have to come off the fence where most entertainers delicately balance.

U2 performing their Innocence + Experience show in London

Having watched this group all my life, from their very first show in a Dublin school in 1976, I have seen how flexible they can be in adapting each show to its audience.
But while other bands might tone things down to avoid offending local sensitivities, U2 do the opposite.
 The Experience + Innocence tour that U2 brought to the UK was almost entirely different from the production that launched in America six months ago.
 On its debut in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the visual imagery touched on Mexican immigration, gun control and the rise of the US alt-right. In London, there was footage of ruined European cities at the end of World War II, the implication being that the European Union was born from these ashes.
When the band reach their home town of Dublin for four concerts next week, the staging and message will undoubtedly change again.
 In Tulsa this May, when U2 showed footage of the Charlottesville Unite The Right rally from 2017 (in which a counter-protestor was killed) a section of the audience cheered the sight of American neo-Nazis waving swastikas. It was proof that U2 aren’t always playing to the converted.

It reminded me of a gig in Chile in 1998, when U2 played Mothers of the Disappeared – a song implicitly critical of former dictator General Augusto Pinochet – and a section of the crowd started booing the band. “It’s proof to me that a rock ‘n’ roll audience are not lemmings,” Bono later said to me.

“They’re not going to just follow you off the cliff, they’re not going to vote how you tell them to vote. If they don’t agree with you, they will let you know. That doesn’t mean they’re not fans. I was flattered that we weren’t just playing to people who agreed with us.”

Personally, I think it is one of the things rock and roll is built for: to challenge you, to make you feel, to make you think, to make you want to act.



www.telegraph.co.uk

Bono play focuses on star before he found the fame he was looking for

A new play about Bono is being brought to the stage in London by the writers behind Porridge and The Likely Lads.

 Chasing Bono, by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, is adapted from Neil McCormick’s memoir I Was Bono’s Doppelganger. 

The pair wrote the screenplay of Killing Bono, the film adaptation of the book. The play is billed as “a comedy about failed ambition” that “recounts a tale of life-long friendship and rivalry” between the U2 frontman and McCormick, who were friends as teenagers at Mount Temple school in Clontarf, Dublin.
Set in 70s and 80s Dublin, it follows the pair who “share the same ambition to form bands and become global superstars”.
In McCormick’s memoir, he wrote about Paul Hewson changing his name to Bono and forming U2. His own band, Shook Up!, failed to take off and he went on to become a music critic for The Daily Telegraph.
 When I Was Bono’s Doppelganger was published in 2004, Elton John called it “the best book I have ever read about trying to make it in the music business”.
 Killing Bono was released in 2011. Ben Barnes played Neil while Robert Sheehan starred as his brother Ivan, an earlier member of U2.
 In the play, as in the film, McCormick’s character is kidnapped by Danny Machin, “a Dublin gangster” as his friend enjoys global adoration.
 La Frenais and Clement said: “Chasing Bono has elements of some of our previous work. Like Porridge it is set in a captive situation. It’s Irish, like The Commitments, and it’s funny. Unless nobody laughs, in which case it’s a tragedy. It’s about music, aspiration and self-discovery.”

 The production will be directed by Gordon Anderson, who directed episodes of TV series including Shameless. Chasing Bono is at the Soho Theatre from December 6 to January 19.

U2's Songs of Experience is full of desperation and meaty hooks in equal measure

U2 performing at Twickenham in July  CREDIT: BRIAN RASIC/BRIAN RASIC

by Neil McCormick

U2’s 14th studio album opens with one of the most vulnerable and fragile songs of their 41-year-career.  Love Is All We Have Left swells on trembling strings and synths, with Bono’s close, cracked vocal blending into digital auto-tune as he conjures a space age lullaby for an impending apocalypse. “This is no time not to be alive,” he sings.

It’s a short, strange, sparse vignette, its spectral beauty interrupted by a gnarly distorted guitar riff as the veteran band turn on the power, and roll exultantly into Lights of Home, a chunky anthem brushing off near-death experience (“I shouldn’t be here cos I should be dead”) to reach for the light at the end of the tunnel. “Free yourself to be yourself,” choral voices command in a coda purpose built for mass singalongs. This is surely closer to the idea that most listeners have of U2 as an upbeat, inspirational, anthemic rock band. And Songs of Experience is full of such moments: big meaty hooks matched by singalong aphorisms (“Get out of your own way!” “Love is bigger than anything in its way”). But the sound of a man in conflict and crisis also runs through the centre of this highly personal collection of songs, undercutting and ultimately deepening the spirit of can do positivity.

Songs of Experience is a companion to 2014’s Songs of Innocence (the one they controversially gave away free on iTunes, whether you wanted it or not). It even reuses some themes. A fantastic throwaway coda from that album’s Volcano returns as the hook to anti-Trump political anthem American Soul. Closing track There Is A Light is a tender reworking of Song For Someone, shifting its focus from the singer’s wife Ali to their four children, urging them to summon the strength to face uncertain times: “I know the world is done but you don’t have to be.”

As chief U2 lyricist, Bono has been at his most confessional on these two albums. Innocence was an autobiographical look back at the forces that shaped U2 growing up, its modern pop textures filtered through their new wave rock roots, as if debut album Boy was being revisited through the prism of a grown-up. On Experience, that same Man is in the grips of mid-life crisis, confronting problems in the world and himself. It was conceived by Bono as a series of letters to loved ones, something that you might write if you knew you were going to die. There have been hints of a health scare in recent interviews, although the big surprise to anyone who has known him as long as I have is that he admits to his first real crisis of faith. “Oh Jesus if you’re still my friend / What the hell you done for me?” he cries out on Lights of Home. “Sometimes the end is not coming, the end is here,” he sings with a tone of shattered bewilderment on existential ballad The Little Things That Give You Away.

U2’s familiar optimism is still present on good humoured songs like The Showman and Landlady, but it’s undercut by the inescapable impression that this is music made to keep pessimism at bay. Meanwhile personal struggles are made explicitly political on the album’s punchiest sequence, where he moves from grappling with America’s swing to the right on Get Out of Your Way (“You got to bite back / The face of Liberty’s starting to crack / She had a plan until she got smacked in the mouth / And it all went South”) to the human cost of Europe’s refugee crisis on Summer of Love (“In the rubble of Aleppo / Flowers blooming in the shadows” ).

Musically, though, Experience is perhaps their most old fashioned album, in part because they are no longer so reliant on conjuring science fiction soundscapes to compensate for musical limitations. Adam Clayton’s bass playing has never been as nimble, Larry Mullen’s drumming never more loosely free-spirited. Even inventive guitarist the Edge seems less reliant on effects, relishing juicy Beatle chords and carefully articulated slide guitar solos. As a lifelong fan, I’m not sure I entirely approve of this development, however.  There are harmonic shades of the California soft rock of Fleetwood Mac, while You’re The Best thing About Me essays the raunch of the Rolling Stones – the kind of band the young U2 wanted to sweep away but now cite as role models. Jacknife Lee and a whole team of state-of-the-art producers and engineers have been brought on board to lend everything a detailed, dynamic, up-to-date sonic polish but only one track, The Blackout, pushes towards the kind of audacious cyberpunk energy of Achtung Baby.  This is a band who are now perhaps over eager to compete on the radio and in the charts with their successors, Coldplay and The Killers, but might be better served following artier trajectories of their own.

But as the title makes plain, Songs of Experience is not the work of young men. It showcases U2 at their most mature and assured, playing songs of passion and purpose, shot through and enlivened with a piercing bolt of desperation. “The showman gives you front row to his heart / Making a spectacle of falling apart,” Bono sings with defiant humour on The Showman, and it is this spectacle that makes Experience so compelling. A little battered by time and bloodied by events, U2 remain defiantly unbowed, as determined as ever to make mass market music that really matters.

'Songs of Experience' is released on Friday

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

U2 played together for the first time 40 years ago - and I was there

by NEIL MCCORMICK

U2 at the 2009 Brit Awards CREDIT: DAVE HOGAN/GETTY

Forty years ago, on Saturday 24th September, 1976, one of the most loved and hated, popular and influential rock groups of the modern era got together for the very first time.

It was in the crowded kitchen of a semi-detached house in Artane that a bunch of teenage school boys from Mount Temple Comprehensive, Dublin, gathered to discuss forming a band. There was barely enough room to fit around the drum kit, with five guitarists squeezed between the fridge and the bread bin. A chaotic jam session involved wobbly renditions of Rolling Stones hits Brown Sugar and Satisfaction, with no consensus as to the correct chord sequences.

One wannabe lead guitarist was forced into the role of singer because he had neglected to actually bring a guitar. Another young guitarist established his position as lead instrumentalist because he had mastered the solo from Rory Gallagher’s Blister on the Moon. The bassist couldn’t play but had the best hair and, crucially, owned an actual bass guitar and amplifier. The drummer was definitely in because it was his family’s kitchen. And thus, U2 were born. This weekend, fan conventions are taking place at venues in Dublin and at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Irish supergroup. The reason this momentous date is known is because my younger brother, Ivan, was present and noted it in his pocket diary. “Watched TV. Joined a pop group with friends. Had a rehearsal. Great.” Sadly, he did not record for posterity exactly what he watched on television.
Most bands have such inauspicious beginnings. The truly remarkable thing about the birth of U2 is that the multi-million selling stadium band today is exactly the same core who met in the kitchen four decades ago: vocalist Paul Hewson (aka Bono), guitarist Dave Evans (aka The Edge), bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jnr (who instigated proceedings with a notice on the school board looking for band members). There were a couple of quick losses. My brother, the youngest at 13, only lasted a few rehearsals. One other guitarist, Dick Evans (brother of the Edge and, at 18, some years senior to the rest), hung on as a part time member but was gradually eased out as the band established its identity. The line-up that made its debut at a talent contest in the school gymnasium in 1976 was the very same as you still see on the world’s biggest stages today.
I will never forget that concert, because it was the first time I had ever seen a live electric rock band. They played on four tables taped together, kicking off a short set with a version of Peter Frampton’s Show Me The Way. The drums and bass were pounding so hard it looked like the tables might come apart. Guitar chords rang out, echoing off the wooden floor. When Bono got to the chorus, he grabbed the microphone stand and held it in the air, stomping his feet as he yelled “I want you … show me the way!” Young girls in front of the stage started screaming. Realistically, I don’t suppose there was anything that would have made an experienced observer think they were witnessing a moment in rock history. The rest of the set was made up of a Beach Boys medley and The Bay City Rollers Bye Bye Baby, which they played twice, by popular demand. But that gig changed a lot of people’s lives, mine included.

I was U2’s friend at school, and I’m their friend now. It is hard for me to be objective on this particular subject, for which I make no apologies. Perhaps you can never love music as fiercely as the stuff that gets into your bloodstream as a teenager, when you are trying to find out who you are and who you might be. Even after all these  years, my most intense memories and feelings for U2 are inevitably bound up in that primal experience: the becoming. I was privileged to watch them become a white hot rock band in school discos, bars, clubs and church halls around Dublin. I have been continually delighted by the leaps and bounds they have made on their way to being feted as one of the greatest rock bands ever, decried by some for their vast ambition and big gesture music.

One of the questions an anniversary such as this throws up is whether their future was inherent in that first meeting, whether it was something anyone could have foreseen? The answer should be no … and yet maybe. It would have been absurd to seriously contemplate conquering the world from Dublin in the Seventies but teenagers are absurd. We were all a bunch of dreamers, fixated on rock and roll. I can remember schoolboy conversations with Bono about making an album to beat Sergeant Pepper, so there was never any shortage of ambition. They very quickly became an extraordinarily powerful and original band, shifting through the gears from sloppy covers to sleek new wave, changing their name from Feedback to The Hype, before blossoming into the epic sci-fi of U2, unveiled at a gig in my village church hall in March 1978.

Bono’s dynamism as a frontman was immediately apparent, and, honestly, he was a star in the school corridor before he ever took to the stage, every bit as gregarious, curious, charismatic and passionate as he is now. The Edge’s genius as a musician took a little longer to shine through but by 78 he was already on fire, using a primitive Memory Man echo unit to conjure up vast walls of sound. Those two might have been a productive partnership whoever else was in a band with them, but the two they arbitrarily locked together with turned out to have exactly the right skills and personalities to balance the dynamic. Larry Mullen Jr is an idiosyncratic, powerhouse drummer and one of the most stoic, loyal and quietly driven people you could meet, adhering to a very firm inner code. Bono likes to call him “the brakes in U2”, with the proviso that “when the rocket is veering wildly off course, you are very glad to have brakes.”

Bassist Adam Clayton represents a more maverick element, in both playing and personal style. He is one of nature’s gentlemen, with an easy going manner and instinct for conflict resolution that helps make the functioning of a small group of individuals possible. But he was also the most rock and roll kid any of us had ever met, turning up on his first day at school wearing an Afghan coat and a yellow workman’s helmet. For Adam, it was always rock stardom or nothing, and his single minded ambition was a huge part of pushing the band forwards from the very beginning.

U2’s unwavering line-up is possibly unique in the history of popular music. I cannot think of another successful band who have achieved so much and gone on so long with exactly the same unit of people. To put it into perspective, the four Beatles lasted less than a decade together and there are enough ex-members of The Rolling Stones to form another group altogether. Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry have been bonded by a loyalty and friendship that has sustained them whilst all of their contemporaries, without exception, have fallen out, brought in new members, broken up, sometimes reunited with different line ups. And it goes to the heart of what U2 is, and why they remain a force to be reckoned with.

A great group is a little miracle, where competing forces and personalities align in some kind of cosmic balance, often only for a short periods of time. From some perspectives, a band is just about the least efficient or logical way to make music. A classical composer writes notation down for musicians to follow but a band essentially stumbles upon its identity by getting together in a room and playing. Its sound and style is a summation of the personalities and how they express their character through their instruments (and through their clothes, politics and social ideas). They don’t have to be the best musicians. They just have to be the right musicians.

Most bands, at some time or another, alter their chemical make up by replacing an original member with another musician (often removing the weakest musical link for a putatively stronger one) and frequently losing everything in the process. Bands break up for all kinds of reasons but often spend the rest of their musical lives hankering after the indefinable chemistry of that special unit. As this forty year anniversary demonstrates, U2’s togetherness is their greatest strength. It is a four decade long manifestation of unity and loyalty inherent in their great anthem, One, which proclaims the strength of being “one but not the same”, of which the joy and privilege is “to carry each other.” It doesn’t surprise me that U2 themselves don’t appear to be planning anything to mark this anniversary. For them, it remains a continuing story, with rumours of a new album and tour next year. Maybe they are saving fire for the half century.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

U2, Songs of Innocence: first review

By Neil McCormick

U2 have announced the release of their 13th studio album, Songs Of Innocence, available now and free to all iTunes customers. And, after several years' gestation, five producers, ever-shifting release dates and Bono publicly fretting that the biggest band in the world was on the verge of irrelevance, fans will be relieved to hear that it sounds a lot like U2.

It is an album of big, colourful, attacking rock with fluid melodies, bright anthemic choruses and bold lyrical ideas. Perhaps the most surprising thing is that, despite apparently being created in a spirit of self-doubt, it sounds fresh and cohesive, bouncing out of the speakers with a youthful spring in its step.

On first impressions, Songs of Innocence is not an attempt to create a grand masterpiece that redefines the band, but rather, as the title suggests, to reconnect them with an elusive pop elixir of youthful energy and passion. Lyrically, it reflects on the past, on their origins as a band and as individuals, which is unusual territory for the usually forward-looking Bono and the Edge (who share lyrical duties). Lead single and opening track, The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) sets the confident tone, with its “oh-way-oh” choral chant, glam rock stomping rhythm and surges of grungy guitar.

Lyrically, it is a celebration of the transformative power of music, and in particular the effect on the young U2 of hearing The Ramones, and in that spirit it keeps things simple and direct. There are songs about growing up on the north side of Dublin (the fierce and strange Raised By Wolves and the dense, somewhat ungainly Cedarwood Road), memories of Bono’s late mother (the chiming disco driving Iris (Hold Me Close)) and appreciations of musical inspirations (the loose, groovy This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now is dedicated to Joe Strummer, and celebrates the Clash spirit of passion and purposefulness).

Each track seems very defined in itself, opening with a trio of songs aimed directly at American radio (The Miracle, Every Breaking Wave and California (There Is No End To Love)), packed with chiming guitars, synth hooks and epic choruses. It sounds like U2 taking on such young stadium rock pretenders as Snow Patrol and The Killers, intent on beating them at the game U2 themselves invented.

An immediate standout track is Volcano, a thrilling, thumping yet delightfully quirky celebration of the power of rock and roll that sounds a bit like Franz Ferdinand on steroids. The Ryan Tedder-produced ballad Song For Someone is probably the track that will have fans holding their phones aloft in stadiums, a mid-tempo ballad that builds from plucked acoustic intimacy to heart-bursting emotion. It is one of the songs that hints at ideas and feelings in the deeper currents of an album made up of dazzling surfaces.

It clearly hasn’t been an easy album to make. It is six years since No Line On The Horizon (itself widely deemed a flawed album) and three years since they completed their record breaking 360 Degree tour. There were long sessions with cool American producer Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, who started working with the band in 2010. The album was first mooted for release at the beginning of 2014 (hence the release of a one off single, Invisible, in February), but since then there have been sessions with Paul Epworth (British producer for Adele, Coldplay and Florence And The Machine) and Ryan Tedder (top songwriting collaborator with the likes of Adele, Taylor Swift and Beyonce), both highly commercial producers who bring some contemporary sheen. Long-time collaborator Mark Ellis, aka Flood, is also involved, although, in the end, it appears to have been U2’s engineer Declan Gaffney who has put in the long hours to tie it all together (leading to promotion to a full production credit).

With the album’s October release only confirmed at the very last moment (with the pressure of the Apple iPhone launch looming), I have the sense that it was plucked from the band’s grasp in the mastering suite, probably with the Edge protesting that he’s not finished yet and there’s one more echoing guitar note to be added.

For me, on first contact, it is the Danger Mouse tracks that hold the most interest, and perhaps hint at directions U2 might have rewardingly explored if they had stayed their original course and weren’t quite so intent on maintaining massive stadium-level success. Touching synth ballad Sleep Like A Baby Tonight and dreamy, sinister album closer The Troubles (with a perfectly pitched vocal chant from Swedish singer Lykke Li) are the kind of strange pop songs that can really get under your skin.

Lyrically, here and elsewhere, hints emerge that these reminiscences of the past are not quite as innocent as they first appear, and that this is an album laced with guilt, working towards self-forgiveness and redemption. “I’m a long way from where I was and where I need to be,” Bono croons on Song For Someone, suggesting that there is perhaps more experience at work in this album than there is innocence.

It is, at heart, a highly personal set of songs. There are no flag waving anthems, no big social causes. If there is a moral, it appears in the coda of Cedarwood Road: “a heart that is broken is a heart that is open.”

As a long time U2 fan and supporter (in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I am thanked in the album credits, albeit with my name misspelled), I wouldn’t put it on a par with their greatest work - Boy, Joshua Tree, Achtung Baby or even the seamless songs of All That You Can’t Leave Behind. At times it does sound like it is trying a bit too hard to please. But it's more pop than Pop ever was, and it certainly does the job it apparently sets out to do, delivering addictive pop rock with hooks, energy, substance and ideas that linger in the mind after you’ve heard them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

U2: what will $30m management deal mean?

U2 are being taken over by Live Nation and Madonna's manager in a $30 million deal. Will this lead to a disco mix of Bono Don’t Preach, wonders Neil McCormick

By Neil McCormick

U2 are under new management. The flag-waving rock megabrand are being taken over by the biggest concert promotion company in the world, Live Nation, in a $30 million deal.

Paul McGuinness, the charismatic manager who has steered their career from the beginning, is being kicked upstairs, to an ill-defined “chairman” role, which even he has likened to retirement.

Perhaps adding to the sense that this is a some kind of sinister corporate manoeuvre exposing the venal heart of the world’s most famous rock idealists is the news that Madonna’s manager, Guy Oseary, is in line to take over the day-to-day running of the U2 operation (whilst continuing to oversee the career of his solo superstar).

So what does this mean for the outspoken Irish rock legends? Will Bono be next seen posing naked but for strategically placed sunglasses in a high-fashion photo book? Will Madonna and U2 be marketed as a megastar double bill with the highest ticket prices in the known universe and a disco mix of Bono Don’t Preach? Or will it just be (music) business as usual?

When news of the proposed sale of U2’s Principle Management broke, McGuinness released a droll statement admitting that “it could be seen as slightly poor etiquette for a manager to consider retiring before his artist has split, quit or died, but U2 have never subscribed to the rock ’n’ roll code of conduct.” At 63 years old, he says he wants to take “a less hands-on role”.

Like most managers, McGuinness is a little older than his charges (Bono is 53). McGuinness has grown wealthy steering U2’s ship, but he has also suffered periods of ill-health. With the band rumoured to be gearing up for yet another album and tour, he has perhaps wisely decided it is time for a younger man to take the reins (Oseary is 41).

Judging by U2 messageboards and Twitter chatter, their fan base is quite perturbed by these events. For what it’s worth, from the vantage point of someone who has seen this grow from a one-man operation run from McGuinness’s home phone, I don’t think there will be much change. Everyone knows Bono really runs the band.

Or rather, Bono leads the band, in terms of spirit, big ideas, charisma and energy. Guitarist Edge takes the lead musically. Bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr tend to be the sage counsellors steadying the ship. Every major decision is made by democratic vote, although, as Mullen has pointed out, “only in the classic Greek sense that a democracy is in the hands of those in power. If you are in a band with someone as loud, talkative, argumentative and persuasive as Bono, things can be kind of difficult for the rest of us.”

McGuinness is the fifth member of the U2 cabal, with an equal share of the profits, and an equal vote at the table. I don’t expect that to change a great deal. McGuinness will still be available for big-picture strategising, which has always been his great strength, to balance the band’s artistic impulses with the fundamental principle that they are a business, and what they do has to make money. It might seem obvious but any experience of the giddy flamboyance of rock and roll management will tell you this is not always the case.

Interview with Neil McCormick

U2 Brasil  (www.u2br.com)has posted their own interview with Neil Mc Cormick, a nice chat with one of the witness of the U2 phenomenon from the start.

German version of "Killing Bono"

1- Your book, "Killing Bono" is going to be released in Portuguese earlier 2013. Did you expect that? It must be really awesome seeing that your work is growing, and reaching different people, with a book, and later a movie...what do you think about that? It was weird seeing you in the movies? 

R: It is a thrill seeing my book translated into other languages. It is already available in Finnish and German, and will soon be in Italian, Polish and now Brazilian Portugese. It feels as if a stone I tossed into the world’s pond is still sending ripples out. I don’t envy the translators though. I’ve had some strange questions thrown at me. How do you explain teenage Bono’s jokey (and very Irish) remark “Up your bum, chum, with a big bass drum” in another language? It just means “Fuck that!” but a literal translation makes it sound both painful and physically impossible. The film is like another translation, another version. Yes it was very strange to see myself … but I know that it’s not me, and the film doesn’t replace my own memories.

 

2 - We've seen the book, we saw the movie, but how about the real life experience? How was growing up with not only the U2 boys, but with the other guys, like Gavin Friday and Guggi? Even today you guys are still in touch with each other?

R: Well, I hope the book tells you what that was like. It has been an adventure but it has also just been normality, these are guys I have known since my teens so it never seems quite as special as it would to someone who only got to discover them through their music. I am still in touch U2, of course, our lives intersect both professionally and personally. My friendship is mainly with Bono and we communicate mainly by text these days, and catch up when we happen to be in the same part of the world. And I see all the others through that friendship. I still run into Gavin and Guggi, both still impressively crazy.

 

3 - Let's talk about Frankie Corpse & the Undertakers. When did you realize that being a rockstar was not going to happen (ok, let me tell, I cheered for you guys, while seeing the movie)? When did the reality "punched" you in the face?

R: It wasn’t so much a sudden punch in the face as a slow knockout from an endless series of blows. The worst moment was when my girlfriend, Gloria, called me a loser. I was turning 30, still trying to get that elusive record deal but I didn’t want to be a loser in her eyes and that made me feel I needed to get my act together, even if it meant giving up music. But actually, even when I stopped chasing stardom, I still believed for years in my secret heart that it would happen one day. I still make music anyway. I’ve got a band who occasionally pop up in London called Groovy Dad … cos we are groovy … and we are dads. Music is for life. And I’m still with Gloria, anyway, so obviously she decided I wasn’t a complete loser.

 

4 - Reading you book, we could see clearly how hard was to deal with U2's success. I guess one of the greatest things about the book, is the fact that we can see ourselves in that story. Of course, we didn't go to school with U2, but we all had the experience of seeing a friend being successful in our own dream, while we stay there, and we have to deal with that. And how was that to you? Correct me if I'm wrong, but you spent almost 5 years without being in contact with Bono (yes, I'm pretty much your stalker too!). What changed in that time? You can say that seeing Bono in such a down to earth experience (the funeral of Bill Graham) made you feel  that "Bono" wasn't the rockstar, but the boy you went to school with?

R: A lot of people do have the experience of being overshadowed by friends or relatives, that is one of the universal emotions that drives the book, although having your friend turn out to be the biggest rock star on the planet makes it a little more unusual. It did become hard for me to take, even though I understood that it was my problem, not his. Although I didn’t see Bono for quite a few years, that was partly because I was busy getting my own life together as a journalist, and a stepfather. Life was different then too, it was pre-text and email, U2 were out travelling the world and I was hustling to make it in London. But actually we were still sort of in touch through occasional phone calls or messages that might be passed on through friends and I did hear from Bono from time to time, often quite unexpectedly.  What I stopped doing was actively keeping contact. There were no more expectations of going backstage if they were playing a concert. I let U2 drop, really, to get them out of my psyche. Meeting them all again at Bill’s funeral was an interesting moment because we all just fell in together, very old friends, gathered to mourn a very old friend. It was, I suppose, a kind of healing experience for me, to see them in  that light again.

 

5- In some recent interviews, Bono said that he is afraid of U2 being "irrelevant",  even with the numbers (The 360º tour became the biggest of all time), and all the success, do you think that U2 is still like "The Hype" and "Feedback"? A band who's always dealing with the pressure of doing the best they can? Maybe their reinvention is the key for the success? Knowing that you can always improve, and you can always be better, by taking chances and "risking themselves"?

R: They are very driven and a lot of that comes from Bono, who has a restlessness and relentlessness about him, which I think (as I make clear in my book, and then we talked about some more when I wrote U2 By U2 for them) comes from the death of his mother at a young age, and the absence he feels in his heart. It’s not really something to be envied. But it does keep him pushing forward. We have had several conversations about U2’s relevance. It’s been a big topic for Bono even during the 360 tour. The last time I saw him was in August in Berlin, and he was still full of enthusiasm and excitement and pride about the music U2 were making but unusually he seemed in no hurry. He knows the world doesn’t really need another U2 record. So he wants to make sure that when they deliver one, it’s the greatest album they can possibly make.

 

6- And can you provide us some sneak peek about U2's new album? We're guessing that maybe the album is going out somewhere in late 2013. Have you heard it? Is that something you could tell us about? We're not going to tell anyone. 

R: I am sworn to secrecy. Which is helped by the fact that I don’t really know anything.

 

7- How do you think is going to be music's future? And not only about U2, but do you think that the physical media like cd's are going to disappear? The future is: downloaded songs, digital albums, amazing mobile apps and this kinda of thing? Personally, I still buy cd's and even vinyls, but do you think that in some years these are going to be nothing but memorablia?

 

R: The future is here. The CD is dying and with it will go the album as a long form experience. Single downloads are the medium of the moment. But, for those special artists who need that long form to really express themselves (and I would count U2 in there), I think they will still find an audience willing to listen.

 

8- Well, I'll not prolong that, so we arrived at the last question, and I can only thank you for the opportunity! I knew you because of the band, but I became a fan of your work, and not only 'Killing Bono' and 'U2 by U2', but I enjoy reading your critics and reviews. But I really can't help: That footages in the end of the movie were just pure blast, and I just have to ask: what was that naked human being playing inside a trash can? It was just...art!

 

R: That was from a video we made one hot summer day about 1982 with our band Yeah!Yeah! – We borrowed a video camera and mimed to a demo we had recorded called Is That You. It was so hot, we took our shirts off. Ah to be young and thin again. I am sure you can find it on the internet somewhere. Everything else is there.

http://www.u2br.com

David Gray, Bono’s Sunglasses and Me

In his particularly funny and entertaining way of writing, Neil Mc Cormick tells us how tiresome and difficult it is to run a charity event.

From The Telegraph:

Neil McCormick's son Finn wearing Bono's sunglasses

On Wednesday March 6, I am presenting a charity concert at the Islington Assembly Hall in London, featuring David Gray, The Magic Numbers, Gabriella Cilmi, David Ford, Bo Bruce and a few other musical friends and associates. Please buy a ticket and prevent an out-of-depth rock critic’s nervous breakdown.

I was not cut out for the life of a promoter. Indeed, I’m not sure anyone is. I was in bands for long enough in my younger years to know how fretful staging a gig can be, involving a huge advance effort in getting musicians, equipment and venue ready, with no guarantee that anyone will turn up and make it worthwhile. “Why do you think all promoters look permanently stressed?” a band manager sympathetically said to me, before adding, “You’re looking a bit peeky yourself, mate.”

I’m doing it for love. Well, specifically for my wife. She is an acupuncturist involved in a small charity, Moxafrica, who run a research project in universities in Uganda and South Africa, investigating the treatment of TB with Chinese medicine. It is not an obviously appealing cause, like food for the starving. Yet Moxafrica is having results with potentially wide ranging implications for the developing world, where drug resistant TB is epidemic (it kills someone every 20 seconds in Africa). Although the sums required to support Moxafrica seem small in the grand scheme of things (£16,000 would keep them going another year), it is a tough time for all charities right now and Moxafrica is in danger of coming to a premature end. I listened to lots of conversations about little schemes to raise small amounts as the clock kept ticking, until, almost against my own better judgment, I uttered the fateful line, “You know you could raise that in one go with a gig.”

And so I have entered into another world, of promoters, managers and agents. I have been spending time in empty venues, looking out from empty stages on to empty floors and empty seats, the most beautiful concert halls and lavishly appointed clubs all taking on a strangely bereft atmosphere without the throb of humanity that brings them to life. “An empty venue is of no use to anyone,” is an oft-repeated line, and I have been offered top night spots on attractive terms.

“The money’s on the popcorn,” is another much repeated phrase, meaning, if I could guarantee a certain number of people through the doors, the venue would make its real profit behind the bar.

Moxafrica is a charitable organisation set up to investigate the use of moxibustion therapy for the treatment of tuberculosis, particularly in resource-poor environments in the twenty first century.

On Wednesday, 6 March 2013 at 19.00 -20.30 at Islington Assembly Hall, Upper Street, London, UK there will be a fundraiser event , hosted by Neil Mc Cormick 

An amazing night in prospect!

David Gray

The Magic Numbers

Gabriella Cilmi

David Ford

Bo Bruce

Buckshot Soup

(with special guests to be announced....)

..and a rock'n'roll raffle of - amongst other things - a pair of Bono's shades!

if you want help this potentially immensely important project to progress, click on DONATE!

http://moxafrica.org/

Killing Bono in DVD

"Killing Bono", the movie based on Neil Mc Cormick´s memoirs I was Bono Doppelganger has been launched in  the UK in DVD format. (Amazon ,UK). You can also buy the movie`s soundtrack  Killing Bono OST [Soundtrack] with an interesting version of "Street Mission" sung by the actor who played Bono in the movie, Martin McCann and  'The Killing Bono Hype'.

www.u2fanlife

Killing Bono in US

Killing Bono, the film  based on Neil McCormick's book about growing up in the shadows of U2, will formally arrive in the U.S. this autumn. The film will be available on VOD (video on demand) in October and in cinemas in November. 
The film is on cinemas in many parts of Europe now.


I had the pleasure of seeing it last Thursday in Paris...

www.atu2.com

Are U2 the greatest rock band ever?

U2 perform in Sao Paulo, Brazil (Photo: AFP)

Neil Mc Cormick  figures it out.

U2 are now, officially, the most popular live band of all time. Their 360 tour has broken previous ticket sales records set by the Rolling Stones, and there is still another three and a half months on the road to go. By the time the three year world tour winds down in North America at the end of July, they will have sold more than 7 million tickets and grossed more than $700 million dollars.

I don’t expect them to be banking too much of that money. Talk to U2’s accountants off the record and they express horror at the high costs and low profits of this whole enterprise. Manager Paul McGuinness commented that “the dollar figure for the gross looks enormous. Of course I can’t tell you what the net is, but I can tell you that the band spend enormous sums on production for their audience.” Keeping the U2 show on the road costs close to a million dollars a day, whether they are playing or not. And, of course, this one was disrupted for several months when Bono put his back out.

It has always been a slight bone of contention between band and management. Bono comes in to meetings raving about ideas to build an alien space station and convert stadiums so that they can play gigs in the round, promoters and designers and accountants queue up to tell the band it can’t be done, and then they do it anyway. U2 are mounting not only the greatest show on earth, but the most expensive. It has been this way since they set new standards for stadium rock in the early 90s with the astonishing Zoo TV show, which ran for two years and nearly bankrupted the band. “I remember that whole tour as a triumph, although it didn’t actually make any money,” McGuinness once admitted to me. He and the promoters had implored the band to raise the ticket price, which they refused to do.  “If we had put on another couple of dollars it would have been not only a creative but also a huge financial success. I suppose it was an investment in the future, which is what we always used to say to make ourselves feel better about the money.”

But the underlying reason for U2’s continuing popularity live is that they more than match the jaw dropping spectacle and ground breaking hi-tech wonderment with the heart and emotion of their music. The Rolling Stones, who have long billed themselves as the world’s greatest rock band, (and have four tours in the top ten, to U2’s two) have rarely got the balance quite right. The Stones’ music, which is so much better suited to the clubs that they came of age in, can veer towards a showband parade in a stadium, all trademark riffs and no heart, while the spectacle verges on circus silliness. A bold pop act like Madonna can certainly put on a show, but the music is barely live, a pre-recorded and sequenced soundtrack to the dance extravaganza. The Police and AC/DC both feature in the top ten grossing tours of all time, and, interestingly, they go the other way, relying on their musical muscle, with the visual side almost an afterthought.

U2 have an advantage in these settings because they make big gesture music, that suits a stadium scale, performed live by a rock band that depend on the primary musical colours of guitar, bass and drums, while in Bono they have a frontman with the charisma, warmth, personality and almost mad drive to fill a vast space and reach everyone out there. He is aided in this by his almost evangelical (his detractors would say Messianic) desire to affect political change in the world, by moving the greatest number of people to respond to his charitable causes. Bono’s activism adds a sense of worth to the whole endeavour, by giving U2 fans the feeling that they are participating in something selfless, so the audience surrenders not just to the lure of a communal sing song, but is suffused with the heartwarming feeling that by doing so they are actually aiding their fellow man. It is heady if contradictory stuff, like a protest march in Las Vegas, but the inbuilt ironies of the dazzling barrage of video imagery on display embrace that complexity, cleverly illustrating the band’s own awareness of the contradictions, and facilitating all kinds of individual responses to the performance. The U2 message is not as simplistic as “love will save us all”, because while Bono is singing his redemption songs, the screens are just as likely to be flashing up motifs declaring Everything You Know Is Wrong.

A U2 show is a bustling, complex affair, because creatively, U2 have never stopped moving, never got stuck in a nostalgic trap, so that the whole endeavour feels live in more than just the obvious respect, it is alive to the moment. Even after an amazing (and unparalleled) 35 years together with the same line up, there is still the strong sense that U2 really want to be there, they are in it for something more than the money, or even the glory.

There are, of course, plenty who will disagree, and for whom U2 represent a rock nadir, the triumph of the blockbuster tendency over rock’s primal roots. Some people prefer small and intimate, and distrust special effects. Which is fair enough, but U2 have an answer to that too, and we will see it at Glastonbury this summer, when they take to the stage without their sci-fi 50 metre high alien claw and all their hi-tech gizmos, and try to win over the festival crowd with the very essence of what they do: playing passionate, brilliant, white hot rock music and singing songs that stir the soul. At Glastonbury, U2 won’t be playing to converts, and it is there that we will see what they are really made of, and whether they have really earned the right to claim the Rolling Stones title as their own: not just the highest grossing rock band ever, but the greatest.

www.telegraph.co.uk/