Killing Bono (5 page)

I gathered with my small cast at the side of a makeshift stage of jammed-together tables as a succession of pupils larked about, singing, dancing, playing accordions, telling jokes. The large audience of schoolkids heckled the performers mercilessly but most took it in good humor, shouting back insults. Mr. Moxham cheerfully patrolled the gymnasium, patting pupils on the back, uttering words of encouragement.

“Ready for your moment of glory, lads?” he inquired of my little crew.

“We're ready, sir,” I reported.

“And you have made those changes we discussed?”

“Do we really have to lose the gag about Mrs. Prandy's dog, sir?” I asked.

“Only if you want to live through another term,” replied Mr. Moxham.

Four members of Feedback stood around their amps and drum kit, waiting to make their live debut. Dick was absent, since he was not a pupil at the school, but Paul, Dave, Adam and Larry were going to do a ten-minute set, scheduled as the penultimate act, just before our play.

“All right, Dave?” I asked, feeling every inch the seasoned professional comforting a nervous debutante. Dave looked as if he was going to be sick from stage fright, clinging to his guitar and staring anxiously at the crowd. The others appeared considerably more at ease. Larry had played plenty of shows before, albeit with such less-than-rocking outfits as the Artane Boys Band and the Post Office Workers Band. Adam lounged about, affecting his usual seen-it-all-before cool. Paul was practically jumping up and down with anticipation, firing encouraging smiles and nods at his colleagues.

When their slot came, the group started to hoist their equipment on to the stage. It took them about ten minutes to set up, an extended period of inactivity in which any last remnants of discipline in the room evaporated. Kids were running about the gym in all directions, yelling at the tops of their voices, climbing the climbing-frames. I was marshaling my cast, instructing them that as soon as the band was finished we were to get on to the stage and launch straight into our play. I really had no idea what was coming.

An electric hum began to sound in the room as the amps were turned on. Paul stood center stage at his microphone, guitar slung around his neck, looking defiantly over the boisterous crowd. Dave and Adam stood either side of him. Larry clicked his sticks together and the group launched into a coarse, speeded-up version of seventies pretty-boy rock star Peter Frampton's “Show Me the Way,” kicking off with a roaring D chord that sent a shockwave through the room.

With the wisdom of hindsight, I know this debut performance of the group who would one day rock the world must have been, in truth, a fairly dubious affair. There was nothing remotely cool about their selection of songs, for a start. They played, of all things, a tongue-in-cheek version of the Bay City Rollers' pop anthem “Bye Bye Baby” and a Beach Boys medley. They had no sound-check, no experience, nothing to go on but hope and desire. But I was completely stunned. Absolutely floored. This was the first live, electric band I had ever heard and a rush of adrenaline shot through my body, apparently disabling my central nervous system and rearranging my entire molecular structure. At least, that's what it felt like. Dave's guitar was splintering in my ears. The pounding of Larry's drums and Adam's bass shook the tables they were standing on and seemed to make the whole room vibrate. I had listened to records in my room, headbanging in headphones, but nothing prepared me for the sheer visceral thrill of live rock 'n' roll. When Paul stomped across the shaky stage, grabbed his microphone stand and yelled, “I want you…Show me the way!” the little girls from the junior classes started screaming.

And that was it for me. I turned to my fellow would-be thespians and announced that there was absolutely no way I was going on after that. It was quickly and unanimously agreed that our play should be canceled. Mr. Moxham, as I recall, seemed quite relieved.

Feedback belted through their bizarre set and then stood there, stupid grins plastered across their faces, as the crowd roared for more. Their repertoire being rather limited in those days, they had to resort to a repeat version of “Bye Bye Baby.” The gym was in complete uproar, with kids singing, yelling, screaming, clapping, dancing. I looked about me in a daze. A new vision of my future was forming in my feverish adolescent brain.

Forget about becoming a fabulously famous, multi-hyphenated actor-writer-director.

I was going to be a rock star.

I
van and I decided to form a band. There was something inevitable about our hitching together our ambitions. We shared a bedroom for much of our childhood and would lie awake at night conjuring up fantasies of fame and fortune. I don't know if I infected him with my own delusions of grandeur or whether it was something in the competitive dynamic of our family, but we seemed equally convinced that stardom was our birthright as we role-played the parts we believed we would make our own. It was a relatively small journey from Bill and Ben to John and Paul.

Our relationship was a complex mix of filial loyalty and sibling rivalry. We had many qualities in common, not all of them appreciated by those closest to us. It was often remarked that we had the same sense of humor, an observation rarely offered as a compliment. Our jokes could be rather cruel (and were rather too often directed at other members of our family), underpinned by a mutual streak of rebellious irreverence. We both exhibited powerful creative drives and were motivated by a sense of ambition out of all proportion to our circumstances, but our endeavors were often hampered by a ridiculously fierce rivalry. We made short eight-millimeter films together but still fought about who should be credited as director. My sister used to say we thought we were better than everyone else, and that included each other.

For our first songwriting session, we sat on my bed, him with his guitar, me with a pen and pad. “What should we write about?” he wanted to know after strumming aimlessly for a while.

“I don't know,” I confessed. “What do people write songs about?”

I wonder if Lennon and McCartney ever had this problem? Our chosen subject matter in the end was rather mundane, reflecting the priorities of two bored teenage boys. It was a twelve-bar blues entitled “Pass the Pepperoni Pizza,” the chorus of which went:

Neither of us was particularly impressed with our efforts, so the group project was sidelined for a while.

Music was playing an increasingly important part in my life. In 1975 I had discovered the Beatles, somewhat later than the rest of the world, admittedly, but with much the same devastating effect on my psyche. In an effort to catch up with my peers, I was working backward in my musical education and one day decided to invest my pocket money in their blue “best of” collection,
The Beatles 1967–1970
. What a revelatory purchase that turned out to be.

Having returned home with my new acquisition, I sat in the living room and listened to the whole double album on headphones. It was an ecstasy-inducing, quasi-religious experience. I was lost in the swirling psychedelic colors of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds,” cast adrift in the awe-inspiring depths and lonely floating vocal counterpoint of “A Day in the Life” and left battered and bewildered by the surreal epic drama of “I Am the Walrus.” When it came to the “nah nah nah's” at the sentimental conclusion of “Hey Jude,” tears filled my eyes. I sat there, blubbing uncontrollably, emotionally overwhelmed by pop music for the first time.

I studied the slightly mysterious black-and-white photo of the band on the inner sleeve. These four people had made this whole magical world that seemed to open up new chambers in my brain. They looked impossibly wise and cool. From that day on, I became a voracious consumer of all things Beatle. I investigated the albums gradually, over a long period of time, savoring each record for as long as possible before moving on to the next, fearing that the pure joy of listening would evaporate when I eventually reached the final album. What I learned instead was that great records have strength in depth, expanding rather than retracting with repeated listens.

By the time I saw Feedback I was ready to crumble, falling headfirst into what would turn out to be a lifelong love affair with rock 'n' roll. The Beatles led to other groups: the Animals, the Dave Clark Five, the Kinks, the Who, the Zombies. I became interested in beat groups, unexpectedly aided by my maternal grandmother, who turned out to have a stash of rather hip sixties vinyl that some lodger had left behind. I was fascinated by David Bowie (who had collaborated with John Lennon on “Fame,” a song I loved for pathetically obvious reasons) but progressive rock bands of the seventies such as Yes and Genesis held no interest for me. Their music seemed tricksy, overelaborate and devoid of wit or emotion. It belonged, in my perception, to the long-haired older kids my sister hung around with. As far as I was concerned they could keep it. Sixties music seemed far more fresh and urgent. With typical arrogance, I was already becoming a snob about something I barely knew anything about.

In 1976, just going on seventeen years old, Stella was too young to be a real hippie chick but this was certainly the pop-cultural status to which she aspired. Her friend Orla Dunne wore her hair in long neoclassical ringlets, dressed in swathes of gauzy material and walked about with two enormous, shaggy Afghan hounds. Stella and Orla listened to soft rock of the seventies (the Eagles and the Moody Blues were great favorites) and chased boys who had long hair and droopy mustaches and smoked dope. They liked to sing and were good enough to be included in the Temple Singers, an elite school ensemble which included past pupils and the pick of the regular common-or-garden choir (of which Paul, Dave and I were undistinguished members). After choir practice one day, the girls were approached by Paul with a proposition.

Adam had managed to blag Feedback a Saturday-night support slot in the hall of my old school, St. Fintan's. Encouraged as they were by the positive reception to their first performance, the group felt they had to take things to a more professional level. It was suggested that a couple of sexy female backing singers might add some class and Paul (who seemed to know most of the girls in Mount Temple) said he had just the right girls for the job. And so my sister became the second McCormick to join the group who would become U2.

Although they were in the same year at school, Stella did not know Paul particularly well. He was in Orla's class but, since he didn't conform to the girls' rigidly defined concept of “dishiness,” he had never been of great interest. They both remarked, however, on how amusing he could be, a facet of his character which actually rather puzzled Stella. At the behest of another classmate, Stella attended a couple of the Christian Movement meetings. She watched with growing incredulity as, during prayers, several participants started babbling animatedly in gibberish—or rather, as they would have it, “talking in tongues.” They were heartily congratulated for these performances by their fellow believers, who claimed to recognize the dialect as ancient Hebrew, albeit delivered, according to Stella, with a distinctly Dublin flavor. Stella found the participants to be a rather ridiculous bunch who managed to be weird and dull at the same time and were all a bit too pleased about their personal relationship with their maker. Paul, however, was different. For a start, he did not check his sense of humor at the altar. “You finding it a bit hard on the head?” he had asked her, sympathetically, as she watched her schoolfriends roll their eyes and commune with the Holy Spirit. “It's all very uncool. God doesn't seem too interested in helping you look your best to your mates, that's for sure.” Stella was amazed that somebody could actually be funny, irreverent and devoutly Christian at the same time.

Rehearsals were held at Adam's house in Malahide during a week's break in the winter term. Stella and Orla would turn up at midday, with Adam usually answering the door in his dressing gown, sleepily rubbing his eyes, having just emerged from bed. In the sizeable living room, the rest of the band would assemble and start tuning up, while Adam slowly got himself together with the aid of coffee and cigarettes. The first afternoon, he wandered about with his dressing gown flapping open, his prodigious member occasionally poking through. Having had limited exposure to the male sexual organ, Stella and Orla sat debating the strange purple color and lumpy texture of Adam's underpants until it finally dawned on them that he wasn't wearing any. They burst into giggles while Paul instructed Adam to “put it away before you frighten somebody.”

The sessions were good fun, with Paul acting as ice-breaker, cracking jokes and filling the room with his energy. While Dave was initially very quiet and Dick seemed to the girls intimidatingly older and somewhat detached, the atmosphere lightened as Paul hustled proceedings along, making sure everyone was involved. To add to their Peter Frampton and Beach Boys numbers, Feedback were rehearsing an eclectic bunch of popular rock songs, including some Rolling Stones, Neil Young's “Heart of Gold,” the Eagles' “Witchy Woman” and the Moody Blues' “Nights in White Satin.” As well as angelic harmonies it was decided that the latter would feature a flute solo by Orla. The group were having some problems, however, getting the instrumental interlude to work. Or rather, to be more specific, getting Adam to come in on time.

After the second chorus, the song broke down for a few bars of strummed guitars and flute (played by Orla) before a little bass lick presaged the rest of the band kicking back in. Except, to the initial amusement and eventual exasperation of everyone present, Adam missed his cue every time. His absence of rhythm became a running joke, amusing to all but the bassist himself. At the appropriate moment, everyone in the band would shout “Now!” and Adam, startled, would come in half a second behind. Nothing could solve the problem. It became Larry's responsibility to cue Adam. “Just watch me,” he'd instruct him before they played the song. It made not a whit of difference. Adam would come in late and the song would bump awkwardly along till everyone fell in with the laggardly bassist.

Years later, Stella watched U2's documentary
Rattle and Hum
. The band, now considered the most popular and important rock group in the world, were waiting in the wings of an enormous American stadium, preparing themselves to play before a crowd of 80,000. As they walked toward the stage, Stella was astonished to see Larry turn to Adam and repeat the phrase he had employed all those years before: “Just watch me.”

“I thought, ‘
My God
,' ” Stella told me afterward, “ ‘he still can't do it!' ”

The hall at St. Fintan's was a cavernous affair, a concrete shed that acted as school gymnasium-cum-theater, ill suited to the acoustics of rock 'n' roll. It was the venue for a regular Saturday-night disco, which, in Ireland in 1976, meant a pasty-faced DJ playing a well-worn selection of prog- and heavy-rock records (Zeppelin, Rory Gallagher, Yes) while boys in denim jackets headbanged energetically. The limited numbers of girls who had been persuaded to attend would hug the wall and wait for a slow song (usually Zep's “Stairway to Heaven” or something equally unromantic by Eric Clapton). The headline band, Ratt Salad, were a typical Dublin covers mob, pumping out twelve-bar boogies with lots of lead solos and lyrics name-checking American cities the participants had, in all likelihood, never visited.

This was all new to me, however. I had never been to a disco before, let alone one with live bands, and I wasn't sure how I was supposed to behave. I walked down to St. Fintan's with a neighborhood pal, Ronan, and we huddled against a back wall, shoulders hunched, the collars of our bomber jackets pulled up around our faces, waiting for something to happen. Experience had taught us to be wary of the older local boys, who would seek out eye contact only to challenge you to a fight. “What you lookin' at?” was a question from which you were unlikely to escape unscathed, so mostly we just looked at our feet.

A very small crowd from Mount Temple had turned out to support the band and we acknowledged each other with the wariness that comes with being on hostile territory. Alison was there, along with Bono's out-of-school gang, a close-knit group of misfits from Ballymun who called themselves (for reasons lost in the mists of childhood self-mythologizing) Lypton Village. I found the Village, with their stance of self-conscious weirdness and plethora of dryly delivered in-jokes, a somewhat intimidating presence. They were friendly toward me (particularly after I received a welcoming pat on the back from Paul) but I was so out of my element I sensed danger everywhere. If a fight was going to break out, it was likely to be between the Village and the locals—and thus I judged it better just to pretend not to know anybody. I waited for the gig to start in a state of quiet agitation, an undercurrent of fear heightening my sense of anticipation.

Feedback's second show was an almost unmitigated disaster. The sound was poor, with the drums echoing off the back wall and the instrumental mixture criminally out of balance. The cover versions were hackneyed and lumpen, lacking both the finesse of faithful reproduction and the energy of inspired reinvention. While members of the Village threw themselves about in front of the stage in a physical display of support, the rest of the denizens of the hall stood frozen in skeptical silence, gauche teenage boys determined to project seen-it-all-before machismo. Eager to bridge the gap opening up between band and audience, Paul responded by talking too much, babbling away between songs, determined to elicit a response. The response he got, however, was not especially encouraging. “Play the fuckin' song, ya eejit!” someone yelled after a particularly verbose introduction.