Bono I thought of
Zooropa at the time as a work of genius. I really thought our pop discipline was matching our experimentation and this was our
Sgt Pepper. I was a little wrong about that. The truth is our pop disciplines were letting us down. We didn’t create hits. We didn’t quite deliver the songs. And what would
Sgt Pepper be without the pop songs?
Edge I never thought of Zooropa as anything more than an interlude . . . but a great one, as interludes go.
Sarajevo
Bono The very same week Zooropa was released, a young American writer/film-maker called Bill Carter came to see us at our concert in Verona in Italy and asked would we do an interview for Sarajevo Television. Right on the edge of Europe there was a symbol of tolerance, where three ethnic groups — Croats, Serbs and Bosnians — lived together in peace. And this tolerance was being challenged in an appalling siege by Serbian forces.
Edge Bill’s idea was that U2 should go to Sarajevo and that would create a lot of publicity and help maintain the press profile of the siege.
Bono So I agreed in an emotional moment to do a gig there. And after I’ve agreed on Sarajevo Television, I then have to explain to the band why putting our lives at risk is going to help the people of Sarajevo.
Edge We looked at our schedule and tried to work out how to fit in Sarajevo. Logistically, it would have been impossible and Paul McGuinness pointed out that not only would we be risking our own lives, we’d be endangering our crew and our audience.
Paul [McGuinness, manager] Bill Carter went back to Sarajevo, where he managed to get together a little video unit. The European Broadcasting Union had a satellite link out of Sarajevo which we bought time on. And we started to do live satellite connections between U2’s concert and Sarajevo every night. Most of the Zoo show was scripted and highly rehearsed. The Sarajevo links were not.
Edge Some nights it felt like it was part of the concert but a lot of nights it felt like an abrupt interruption. It was hard to get back to something as frivolous as a show having watched five or ten minutes of real human suffering.
Paul Larry was pretty much against it. He thought we were exploiting other people’s misery for entertainment. Bono definitely felt that we were shining a light on something important.
Larry We were playing a rock’n’roll show and it was lots of fun, and though the political stuff was serious it was done with a smile. Then we’d suddenly see video footage of people being bombed and a satellite link-up with people in Sarajevo saying: “We’re being killed, please come and help us.” That was really hard to watch.
Paul The worst night was Wembley Stadium, when three women came up on the screen and said, “We don’t know what we’re doing here. This guy dragged us in. You’re all having a good time. We’re not having a good time. What are you going to do for us?” Bono started to reply but they just cut him off. They said, “We know you’re not going to do anything for us. You’re going to go back to a rock show. You’re going to forget that we even exist. And we’re all going to die.” Right in the middle of the show at Wembley. And the show never really recovered.
Bono Salman Rushdie came on stage at the same concert. Again, tolerance was the subject we were playing with. Freedom of expression was a real issue in music. We tried to leaven the situation with some humour. I was dressed as the Devil and I whispered in Salman’s ear, “It’s inevitable that one always falls out with one’s biographer.”
Bono and Sinatra
Bono During a little break in the tour, I recorded a duet with Frank Sinatra. I may not have been the most obvious choice to sing the classic I Got You Under my Skin with the 77-year-old Chairman of the Board but I was more than flattered to be asked. Scheduling was difficult and we recorded our vocals in different countries. Then someone suggested we should make a video. We asked our friend Kevin Godley to direct. It was set up for one of Frank’s favourite bars in Palm Springs.
Edge We drove up to Palm Springs, met at the bar where the video clip was supposed to be shot. Simple idea. Bono walks in and sees his “old mate” Frank at the bar. Frank was incredibly charming and smart and witty and everything you would expect him to be but it was obvious that he was starting to suffer from some kind of lapses. You would suddenly see this look of confusion cross his face as he lost his bearings for a second. Everything went fine until Kevin, our director, asked Frank to do it again.
Bono So Kevin made me wait outside, cleared the room and left Frank standing at the bar, waiting for me. This was not a good idea, because Frank started to get agitated. He wasn’t sure what exactly was going on. He may have had a bit of a panic attack. They tried to calm him down by telling him he was shooting a video with Bono. He’d had some kind of short-term memory loss. His people were all very embarrassed. My people were all very embarrassed that I wasn’t Sonny Bono.
Edge I like to think he was just affronted by the very idea of being asked to do something a second time.
Bono He called later on to apologise. He said, “Listen, I don’t like to do a lot of takes. And when I’m hanging around sometimes I just get uncomfortable.” So we got together and shot some footage in the back of his limousine. Afterwards we all went out for something to eat in a Mexican restaurant. His wife Barbara was there. She walked in wearing a beautiful red trouser suit, upon which Frank remarked, “Jeez, Barbara, you look like a blood clot!” He was on great form, telling stories, drinking a giant tequila in a fishbowl-sized glass.
Edge I was sitting beside him and I watched as he picked up the blue napkin that was in front of him, stared at it, folded it up neatly and under his breath said, “I remember when my eyes were that blue.” It was not for anyone else to hear, he was really kind of muttering to himself. And he put the blue napkin in his inside jacket pocket to keep.
Bono He asked us back to his house, where a few more drinks were taken. There was a classic shtick going on between him and his barman, lines like, “Am I a boy or a man?” when the barman gave him half-measure. Trying to keep up with Sinatra’s intake had gone straight to my head and so I fell asleep. When I woke up, I had this sense of dampness between my legs and thought the impossible. “Oh, my God, could this really have happened? On the snow-white couch?! What a monumental defeat.” But I had just spilled my drink. Phew!
Australia
Larry By the time we got out to Australia, the tour had been going on for two years and people were really starting to go a little off the rails. I started to notice that Adam was drinking more and that he was drunk in the early afternoons. It never seemed to affect his gig, so no alarm bells were ringing. Adam was such a great drunk, he was great fun and not morose at all, at least not in public.
Edge Being on the road is very hard. Being on the road for a long time is even harder. It is a lifestyle that leaves you with little time to call your own but simultaneously it’s quite lonely.
Adam Life was pretty chaotic. I don’t really like that kind of intensity. Every night was a party, but I don’t think I felt much contentment or peace.
I’d be fine during the day, I’d be fine for the gig but afterwards it was too easy to go out all night or just keep drinking in your room. I was beginning to realise that every time I drank, I couldn’t really be sure of the result. And it always made the next day worse. So I decided to lay off and stop drinking during the final leg of the tour. We were filming the concerts in Sydney Football Stadium for the big tour video. All I can say is that I remember the night before thinking, “Mmm, it might be nice to have a glass of wine.” The next thing I remember it was about 7 o’clock in the evening of the next day and people were trying to wake me up and see if I could go down and do the gig. I don’t really know what happened in the intervening time, other than that I’d been out for a bit and I’d gone through the mini bar in the room.
Larry The shows in Sydney were a big deal. David Mallet was the director and he had 25 cameras set up. Adam didn’t turn up for the sound check. He was in his room and he wasn’t coming out. I called him on the telephone and eventually got through. I said: “What’s up?” He said: “I can’t do the gig.” In a million years that was the last thing I would have expected.
Adam I was in complete meltdown, there was no way I could stand on stage for two hours.
Edge Obviously the timing was drastic because it was the big video that we were going to release of the Zoo TV tour. I think it was probably the pressure that tipped him over. He was in a terrible state but if you were to look at the weight of responsibilities that Adam was carrying versus, say, Bono, or even me, it would have been pretty low. But everyone deals with pressure in a different way.
Larry It was the first time that somebody hadn’t turned up for a show. We were in shock but we had no time to stop and take it in, we just had to scramble and we rehearsed with Adam’s bass technician Stuart Morgan during sound-check. Stuart had been working with Adam for two years and knew the parts. He ended up doing the gig.
Edge We took the decision not to cancel the TV event but to use a stand-in. It was a tough decision but I think it was the right one. I think it helped Adam put everything in context. For the first time he heard the band play without him. I think that brought everything into focus for him.
Adam It was an extraordinarily hard thing to face up to. In the big picture, missing a gig is not necessarily the worst offence in your life but, for me, it was the first time as a member of U2 that I had really let my bandmates down. And this wasn’t sickness or personal tragedy, this was self-inflicted. It appeared to be out of my control, which was very scary. Even the fact that 12 hours later I was still kind of shaky and f***ed up, that wasn’t good. Plus the fact that the band had a lot riding on it. It was a spectacular calamity. That gig was filmed but I have never watched it.
Larry There was a meeting with Adam. We said, “Let’s just finish out the tour and deal with this when it’s over.” Adam was as freaked as we were. I think he got himself into a state and just couldn’t find his way through it.
Adam They were pretty concerned and a bit pissed off as well. But they supported me in the decision that I made at the time, which was to say to them that I had a problem with alcohol. It was then that I officially stopped drinking.
Tokyo
Larry The tour ended in Tokyo. People needed to let off steam and Tokyo was just the place. We slipped off into the underbelly of this incredible science-fiction city. Things went a little crazy.
Bono I had always loved being in Japan but I was now head over heels, I wanted to go out all the time. Of course, we often had a lot of Japanese carers to accompany us. But one night I slipped out the back entrance of a bar to avoid our security and took off in the company of Fighting Fintan Fitzgerald, our head of wardrobe. We were joined by another good friend of ours from the music world, who I didn’t know at the time was battling with heroin addiction. The three of us went exploring. We ended up in some girl’s apartment, a small, traditional Japanese place, drinking some beers and chit-chatting. Some people started smoking a spliff and, though I don’t smoke spliffs, I did know that in Japan it was a ten-year prison sentence for doing so. It was explained to me that the police did not come here. This was a house run by the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. “Well, that’s great,” I thought to myself. “I really feel safe now!”
I was tired and fell asleep on a bunch of coats. When I woke up I thought my drink had been spiked. I thought I was hallucinating. There was a six-foot boa constrictor crawling up my leg. I completely froze. I heard Fighting Fintan Fitzgerald saying: “Don't panic. My mother used to work in a zoo!” He picked up the snake and put it round his neck. Fintan knew no fear but the same could not be said of the snake. There was the sound of water being poured onto the ground and the cry went up from our brave wardrobe man, “It’s pissed all over me!” Snakes take a pee if they’re disturbed. One of the girls performed some kind of burlesque revue and the snake was part of her act.
Paul Everyone gets a little nutty after the end of a tour. You have physiological reactions that continue for months afterwards. Around about 9 o’clock you suddenly start going, “Where’s the show? Where’s the show?”
Larry I remember Edge saying: “Hey, Larry, how about you and me buy a bus and travel around America and just do it for another year?” I looked at him and for a split second thought, “Oh yeah.” Because the alternative seemed too hard. Thankfully good sense prevailed. We went home.
© U2 2006
Extracted from U2 by U2 to be published by HarperCollins, Sept 22 at £30. It is available at BooksFirst priced £27 (RRP £30), free P&P, on 0870 1608080
No comments:
Post a Comment