Actually, I say, I was having some drinks with one of the guys in U2 and—understand this is just talk in a bar after a few pops—he was comparing U2's position today to the Stones twenty years ago.

"That's really odd." Jagger laughs. "I know that's said after a lot of tequilas or whatever, but it's rather peculiar. Things were so different then, with those little bitty amps and stuff. When we did it in 1972 there'd been nothing like it before. Though I never actually saw the Zoo TV tour, that was nothing like anything that came before, which is good. It isn't 1972, it's 1992, and I wish people would realize that. I don't remember ever saying, 'I feel like I'm Buddy Holly!' "

Ouch! There's the putdown. I think I'm onto something, though. I'll just take U2 comments and quotes from late-night drinking sessions and run them by other musicians. I call Peter Buck and ask him if he feels R.E.M. are the new CSN&Y: "Anything but that!" he cries.

One night in Mexico City Edge, Bono, and I got into a strange and winding discussion born of one of the black jokes in the Million Dollar Hotel script: "Jews don't commit suicide; they never had to." Bono went on to say that the Jews in Hollywood invented the myth of an America where everyone was equal and religion didn't matter, and then sold that myth back to the country. Bono sees this as a great accomplishment.

Edge picked up on that and said, "In rock, Jews are the best lyricists because of their merciless intellectual rigor."

Bono amplified the point: he said that the Jewish intellectual tradi­tion is to dig for the truth no matter where it takes you. It is not concerned, as so many other traditions are, with proving that the virtu­ous win or the collective triumphs or might makes right or God is on

[145]

Our side or our country did the right thing: the Jews follow the truth wherever it takes them, and that is why Jews are the best lyricists.

Okay, I said, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon. Who else?

Bono and Edge started reeling off an impressive list: "Dylan, Simon, Leonard Cohen, Lou Reed," then Bono blew it by saying, "Even Neil Diamond here and there . . ."

"Hold it right there," I said. " 'Longfellow Serenade'? 'Song Sung Blue'? Did you ever hear about when Dylan met Diamond on the beach at Malibu and said, 'Didn't I hear you singin' something about "Forever in Blue Jeans"?' and Diamond denied it."

Bono looked down his nose at my sarcasm and asked, "Do you know what 'I Am, I Said' is all about?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact I do. Diamond was in Hollywood making his acting debut as Lenny Bruce in the first attempt to film Bruce's story. Wonder why that one went wrong. He was having a terrible time, the picture was falling apart, and he sat down in the dressing room and wrote that song about feeling out of place in L.A. but no longer part of the Brooklyn he came from."

Bono clearly meant his question to be rhetorical; he was not expect­ing me to actually know the gestation of "I Am, I Said." But now we were into the sort of mutual nut-busting in which neither opponent can concede an inch, so he tried a different approach: "How does Yahweh identify himself in Genesis?"

I saw where this was leading. " 'I am who am,' " I quoted. "That's actually an interesting grammatical construction, you know, because—"

Bono cut me off: "I am. God is described as the great I am. So in that song Diamond is calling out to Jehovah. 'I am, I said' means, 'God, I said.' To who? To no one there! And no one heard at all, not even the chair! Do you see? It is a song of despair and lost faith by a man calling out to a God who isn't interested!"

Boy, Bono will go a long way to weasel out of admitting that Neil Diamond is not one of rock's greatest lyricists. Perhaps right now some of you readers are wondering if this book has petered out altogether, but bear with me. If I wanted to I could fill up hundreds of pages with this sort of three-sheets-to-the-wind, navel-gazing dialogue between U2 and me. For the most part I have left such guff in the bars, figuring it's an Irish thing, you wouldn't understand. I include this example, though,

[146]

because I've gotten really interested in this politically volatile notion that Jews make the best lyricists. I try it out on Aimee Mann, a songwriter I admire very much, and she bangs the table and says, "Yes, yes! Abso­lutely! I'm so glad to hear somebody else say that! Randy Newman! Jules Shear! Steely Dan!" and then she goes into a diatribe about the same virtues of intellectual scrupulosity, not going for the soft cliche, and chasing the fleet hare of truth down into the rabbit hole of disappoint­ment and anguish cited by Bono and Edge.

Boy, I figure, I'm onto something here. The hell with U2, I'm going to be writing think pieces for Tikkun and going on the Dick Cavett Show. Then I stop and consider that the only people I have supporting this proposition are goyim like me. I need to get a rigorous Jew in here and bounce this provocative theoretical handball against the rigid wall of his scrupulous intellect. So I try to think which Jewish lyricist to call and I figure the best one must be Randy Newman, that cynical Californian who was widely quoted at the height of Rattle and Hum fever declaring that he never knew apartheid was wrong until he heard it from U2, "Then the scales just fell from my eyes!"

"You know, Randy," I say while he tries to remember who I am, "U2 say that all the best rock lyricists are Jews, and Aimee Mann does too."

"Jeez," Newman says. "Did they really? I'm looking for a defense. Neil Young and, um, there's plenty of others. I don't know about that. Two different people said that? That's odd. Dylan at his best was probably as good as it got, and Simon's been as consistent as anyone has been. There's no doubt about that. You know what it is about us? Jews want to be Americans so badly! Think of Irving Berlin writing," New­man starts singing like Al Jolson, " 'I'm Alabammy bound!' He'd never been to Alabama and if he was, they chased him right out! Maybe he was there during a bond drive. And my stuff is so American that it worries me. It's like I want to be. I grasp these five years I spent in New Orleans as a baby and hang onto them for dear life as some sort of proof that I'm American."

That's interesting, I say. If it's the unfulfilled aspiration to sound like a real American that makes for a good rock lyricist, that would explain the Canadians—Cohen, Young, Robbie Robertson, Joni Mitchell. It would explain everyone who came out of England and Ireland. . . •

"Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are top ten of all time for sure," Newman says. "They're real interested and looking in from the outside.

 [147]

Look at Prince, one of the best of all time. There's one that they forgot. Prince's lyrics are very good."

Well, we bravely followed that thread to its bitter denouement. Ap­parently it's not that Jews make the best rock lyricists. It's that white Christian Americans make the worst.

Home Fires

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