During the last six months U2 has succeeded in erecting that screen between their public image and their personal lives and convictions.

[74]

They have agreed that this will be their only public do-gooding this year. They intend to camp it up as much as possible, too, avoiding the sort of piety for which they were so berated in the eighties. Sellafield is a test of how versatile U2's new image can be.

Musically, the band has switched gears before—from the mystical moodiness of Boy and October to the straight rock of War, and from that rock to the Eno watercolors of The Unforgettable Fire. Adam sometimes embraced such turns reluctantly. Not this time.

"This is definitely a turn that couldn't have come sooner, as far as I'm concerned," the bassist declares. "I think this is something everyone in the band wanted early on but didn't know how to get to. We always wanted to be able to be just a rock & roll band, but in a way we developed the other possibilities of the band precociously, before being a rock & roll band. It happened that way because of the way music was in the eighties; there was a lot of surface and not much substance and we didn't feel comfortable with that surface without learning something about the substance. So we started to mine into gospel, blues, early rock & roll. We wanted to go back and find out what it was all about before we felt confident presenting a version that represented the spirit of what we had."

Adam is interrupted by a summons to head below deck for a briefing. I'm left thinking of a line from Achtung Baby, a line Bono told me applied to Adam long before the other three U2's got loose enough to join him:

"Give me one more chance to slide down the surface of things."

By 7 a.m. the gruesome towers of Sellafield are looming on the horizon like Mordor. The Solo drops anchor about a mile out. The Greenpeace organizer announces it's time for all those who are going ashore to get into their rubber boots, face masks, and hooded radiation suits. We all look like big stuffed animals, except for the rougishly handsome Larry Mullen, who puts his radiation suit over his black motorcycle jacket and then pulls his leather lapels out through the zipper. With his sunglasses and army camouflage cap, Larry is the epitome of combat rock. "I invented cool," he drawls, "and you're on a boat with me."

Bono and Edge, on the other hand, look like burritos with sunglasses. They stare at each other, trying not to laugh. Bono reaches out and takes his partner's hand. "Edge," he says romantically, and they embrace as the gawking Greenpeacers giggle. "Talk about safe sex!" Bono shouts

 [75]

from his space suit. "You can't get much safer than this!" Adventure, radiation, and sleep deprivation have conspired to cast a goofy mood over U2. The hooded suits don't help.

The Greenpeace team are loading barrels of radioactive sand from Irish beaches into the rubber rafts. The idea is that U2 will hit the beach and deposit these barrels at Sellafield's door, a graphic example of what Sellafield is pumping out to Ireland. On the shore Greenpeace activists from England, Wales, and Scotland are lugging barrels from their own countries' beaches to the factory. Paul McGuinness watches them through binoculars. Then the manager turns his attention to a special project for his boys. Paul has with him the cover of the Beatles' album Help with its photograph of the Fab Four waving navy signal flags. Paul has eight red flags and a booklet of instructions on how to spell out letters. He summons U2 to the top deck and lines them up and they begin learning to spell out first "H-E-L-P" and then "F-O-A-D"—a favorite expression of Larry's that abbreviates "fuck off and die."

Great rock band though they are, choreography has never been U2's strong suit. They spend a lot of time getting their signals backward (they are following McGuinness, who is facing them, which gets confus­ing) and hitting each other with flags. During the difficult "Switch!" from "H-E-L-P" to "F-O-A-D," Adam pokes Bono in the eye. Eventu­ally the entire exercise degenerates into a sword fight with semaphores. Then a great commotion comes up the stairs from the lower decks. It's time to invade England.

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