RUMOURS OF HIS DEMISE HAVE BEEN GREATLY EXAGGERATED
Posted by SPun2U on Jan 5, 1998 in News & Rumors | Comments Off
(They got knocked down. They got up again. Last spring U2 were deemed over. Then, as three million gig-goers saw their pyrotechnic PopMart show, the
prediction looked very silly indeed. “We’re ready to run wild,” Bono tells Mark Blake, “and Q magazine’s the only thing that’s stopping us….”)
Four pm; breakfast time in U2′s parallel universe; the location, in the words of frontman Bono, “somewhere called Los Cabos”.
The mammoth globe trundling convoy that is the PopMart tour has pulled up in Mexico City two days ago for a brace of live shows at the Autodrome. The
band were ferried to a beachside retreat late last night, waking today oblivious to their exact surroundings. This afternoon Bono sounds like a man who has been conscious for all of 30 seconds, his voice husky from the rigours of last night’s show and whatever celebratory shenanigans took place.
“You should see this place,” he chuckles, throatily. “It’s called The Cape. We’re in these cabins overlooking the sea. I woke up and didn’t know where we were. I’ve just looked out the window and there’s this fucking great golf course outside and all the punters buzzing up and down in carts. Howie B is lying out there now on the green with a pillow over his head that he stole from my room – the bastard.”
Mexico City is the latest stop on U2′s 14-month tour. `MOFO’, the big dancey curveball number from last year’s `POP’ album, is, as Bono gleefully informs Q: “fucking Number One in Mexico”. It’s easy to see why the country has warmed to `MOFO’s’ dark carnival groove or the garish, Las Vegas-with-guitars spectacle that is PopMart, and for a man who has been living out of a suitcase since last April – albeit a grandiose and no doubt spacious one – Bono’s enthusiasm remains unsapped. “Listen we’re looking forward to putting on our sombreros and going down to the sea. We’re ready to run wild and Q magazine’s the only thing that’s stopping us…”
Q: Were you any good last night?
BONO: We were crap the first night. Nah really, it was a letdown. Everybody that was anybody in Mexico City came to see us and we just weren’t on it. But last night was great and we filmed it as well. You wouldn’t believe this place. It’s a mile-and-a-half above sea level. Paul McGuinness was walking around yesterday in a suit and a fucking oxygen mask. He looked like Frank out of `Blue Velvet’…
Q: What’s the solution?
BONO: Tequila. Honestly, the locals told me it’s an ancient cure for coping with the altitude. It thins or thickens the blood or whatever it’s supposed to do.
Q: What causes a bad night?
BONO: I’d love to know. There’s not been much written about the psychology of being a performer, so I’m still striving to work it all out. Sometimes you go out and think you’re crap and utterly worthless and other times, it’s the band’s fault (he chuckles). We were in Atlanta the other week and REM threw a party for us. I’ve talked to Michael Stipe about the whole being-a-singer thing a couple of times. Not for long, though. You talk about something like that with Michael and you’re opening the lid on something with a whole lot of weird shit inside.
Q: So, 1997 then. Was it a good year?
BONO: The whole year has been extraordinary. It’s been like the `POP’ record itself. That started with a party, `Discotheque’ and ended with a funeral, `Wake Up Dead Man’. 1997′s just been like that.
Q: Who hosted the party?
BONO: It was at my place last New Year’s Eve. Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins was there. The two of us started talking about God, the universe, the Chicago Bulls, how he doesn’t come from where I come from and I don’t come from where he comes from, and I swear it went on for a day and a night – like 24 hours. At the end of it I suddenly realised he’d only had one whiskey all the time. Meanwhile I’m asleep on the stairs. When I came round he was still awake, doing the washing up.
Q: What, with marigold gloves on and evrything?
BONO: Nah, well he might have been watching someone do it. Billy likes to watch (wicked laughter). I tell you, Billy doesn’t have blood, he has oil.
We call him The Terminator. It was a nice way to start the year, though.
Q: When did you hear the news about Michael Hutchence?
BONO: We were flying between shows and someone called and told me. (Long pause) I still haven’t figured out quite how I feel about it. I don’t know
whether I’m angry or guilty….
Q: Why guilty?
BONO: You always think if it’s a mate that there was something you could have done. I still find it hard to figure it all out, because I had a conversation with him not that long ago where we talked about something like this, and we both agreed how dumb and selfish it would be, and Hutch was not at all selfish/
Q: How close were you?
BONO: He and I were neighbours in France, and he was a nice guy to be around. He was very light, whereas I don’t think I’m the easiest person to be around, so we balanced each other out. But I hadn’t seen him for a while, because we were both off doing our thing. I’m finding the whole thing very hard to understand…
Q: The press was full of stories last year about poor ticket sales for the PopMart tour. You’ve been on the road for months now, have things improved?
BONO: To tell you the truth, it’s been the way it always has been. I think this time around the music press wanted us to be something, and we had something else in mind. When we play somewhere like Salt Lake City to 30,000 people, I still think it’s amazing. The you discover that it’s a 40,000-seater stadium, so there’s 10,000 tickets unsold, (hesitates) although, maybe that’s not a good example, because I think we sold out Salt Lake City (laughs). But there were nights like that and I think the papers put a spin on it from there. The hard facts are that in terms of playing to people, this has been our most successful tour ever. We’re playing to something like three million people in 50 countries….Remember, this isn’t a greatest hits tour, we’re still a working rock band.
Q: How bad was the opening night in Las Vegas?
BONO: I think that was the start of our problems. The press saw the show and decided we weren’t happening anymore. I would have liked it if we’d been a bit more on it that night, but we’d just taken pssession of all that cosmic junk about a week before and we didn’t know how it worked. It’s like getting your Airfix model on Christmas Day and trying to figure it all out in one hit…
Q: Do you think the dancier tracks on the `POP’ album and on the tour have alienated some of your fans?
BONO: Maybe the problem for some people stemmed from the running order of the record. It’s a funny thing (sounds confused) but maybe having the
emphasis on the beats at the start of the album with tracks like “MOFO’ and `Discotheque’ threw people off.
Q: Does it bother you, though, that `POP’ hasn’t sold as wella s previous U2 albums?
BONO: (Laughing) It’s sold, like, seven million – a mad amount of records.
Q: But it’s not in the UK Top 50 at the moment…
BONO: `The Joshua Tree’ sold more copies after its first year. When you get to this stage you ride all that. In terms of the press we’ve always been up and down We were loved, then hated, then loved, now hated. But we have no problem with that..As we say here in the golf clubs of Mexico, it’s par for the course.
Q: Who’s been coming to see U2 this year?
BONO: I think we’ve still got the smartest, hippest, loudest and most elastic audience of any band. We always say that we play to the first four people who came to see us and the last four.
Q: Do you think America still gets what you’re doing?
BONO: The big difference between the US and the UK is that there’s a kind of, I think, racism about dance music. Over here it’s not considered real, whereas white guys in shorts and sneakers playing rock is real. Rock’n'roll was dance music originally. Elvis was dance music and he walked around Memphis in blue eyeliner and a sharkskin suit. In the UK you musical freedom of choice is greater. In the US they have the rock station, the hip hop station, the soul station. With `POP’ we wanted to make an album that was a blender of all those different sounds, but still a rock record…That lemon might be the problem. (Laughing) Maybe having a 40-foot lemon could be considered a bit much.
Q: Do you think it’s too camp for America?
BONO: No way. America invented camp. Look at Las Vegas. That’s the way the whole world will look in the next century – like it’s been designed by children. We were staying at The Pyramis Hotel and I’ve got my two kids with me, and they loved it. Most architecture is so adult, so male, and this is playful, like a cartoon. That’s what we were trying to do on this tour: turn a casino or a supermarket into a cathedral.
Q: What goes on inside the lemon before you’re waiting for it to open up? Do you tell jokes? Do you write out your shopping list?
BONO: We have some cocktails in there. As Adam said, it’s the only time we get to talk. We just sit around waiting, while Leigh Bowery (late Australian performance artist) does his thing up on the TV screen. Leigh would have loved something like that, wouldn’t he, a 40-foot lemon?
Q: What music were you listening to this year?
BONO: My mate Billy Corgan. He’s got real musical drive. Trent Razor – he came to see us a couple of nights on the tour. Fun Lovin’ Criminals opened for us on a few shows, and blew in like a cool breeze. We walso went out with RZA from Wu Tang Clan. When he starts rapping, you have to listen.
Q: You’ve been touring the States since 1981. Does it still hold any surprised for you? Are you still thrilled by going on the road?
BONO: I don’t partake of the spanking of the Yank. That’s more of an English thing. I love being on tour here. I think the rest of the band are enjoying it more as well. Even Larry. Seriously, he gets out more. We nearly lost him in Barcelona. He was rocking the town (laughs). He didnt want to leave there. But it’s not about that old cliche of a rock n’roll band tearing up the place – it’s about having the chance to get out, go to museums, check out the architecture, see something of the world. My kids are gong through this with me now. We took them out of school so they could come out on this tour. Ali is teaching them, while they have their
adventure.
Q: Edge once told Q that being in a band was like being in a street gang, and that it was “weird being in a street gang when you’re 32″. Isn’t it even weirder when you’re 37?
BONO: Do you know why Edge said that? I think it’s because the reason people want to get out of a band is they don’t want the grief of constantly having to convince the others of their point of view. You look at most people in their thirties and forties – and not just the ones in bands – and they’ve got rid of the people in their life that are friction, that they clash with. That means you’re left with nobody to row with, and that to me is no good. That’s what keeps you sharp. That’s why I’m still happy with being in a band.
Q: Everyone seems shocked that REM are carrying on without Bill Berry but could you imagine continuing with U2 if one of the band left?
BONO: It wouldn’t be the same (emphatically). I couldn’t imagine a future without the four of us.
Q: You’ve never been afraid to come out in support of a cause. How important were the Sarajevo shows and the concert for Tibet this year?
BONO: The Tibet show was difficult because the organisers really wanted us to headline, which we didn’t want to do. We just wanted to go on in the middle of the day, play a few songs and fuck off – keep it very low key – which is what we did. Sarajevo was different. I have two specific memories from that day. Two little girls gaave me some bullets from their bedroom wall that had been intended for them. They’d wrapped them up and they gave them to me as a gift, which was their surreal way of dealing with it. The other was losing my voice that night and the audience not seeming to notice or care. That was quite humbling, but it made you ealise that to these people music literally means life – which is a pain in the arse at the end of the day (hollow laugh) because it means it isn’t just a job. It’s something more than that that I can’t really explain…
Q: Do you ever feel restricted by music and wish you could go off and do somethign else for a living?
BONO: I’m trying to stop all that. There’s nothing I don’t want to do. The trouble is I’m interested in everything. I’m interested in the meteorological forecast – seriously I could get lost in that four hours. Books fucking movies – I’ve thought of them all.
Q: You must have a novel in you…
BONO: I tell you, a couple of years ago I was out with this writer called Bob Hilburn from Los Angeles Times and I was talking to him about some movie or book or something that I was thinking of doing. Then he asked me if i wrote a book would it be one of the great books? If I painted something would it be one of the great paintings? I said, I didn’t know, but that I had so mch stuff to do. He told me that I was in a great band and that I had a great chance to leave behind a great body of music, and it got me thinking. U2 is an original species, we’re not part of the new karaoke, there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone, and we’re constantly trying to expand it. I think I’m finally realising how great it is to be in a group and to not fuck it up by trying to do everything else…
Q: Do you still enjoy being a rock star?
BONO: I think I’ve gotten better at it over the last few years, but I don’t think I’m very good at it.
Q: Who’s better?
BONO: Michael Hutchence was better than me. Michael Stipe is too – in that very enigmatic way. Liam Gallagher. too.
Q: Why?
BONO: They’re more comfortable with it. I’ve gotten mroe comfortable with it but I don’t really believe in the role. Some people make something of the role and have some fun with it. For me, after years of trying to dodge it, I’ve found a way of playing with it.
Q: When did it start getting easier?
BONO: When i discovered the power of the wide-angle lens.(Laughs) And those Flyu shades – they really worked a treat, they really did.
Q: Do you wear shades all the time, then?
BONO: I need them for when I’m being insincere, ha ha. No I don’t wear them indoors. Honest, I don’t.
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