U2 insults phil coffins and their parents/ the origins of adam/ spearing the penultimate potato/ the virgin prunes reunite without instruments/ legends of mannix/ an audience with edge's ancestors

U2 arrive back in Dublin for the winter in time to do a TV satellite hookup with Los Angeles, where Phil Collins is hosting the televised Billboard Music Awards show. When Collins announces that U2 has won the award for 1991 Billboard Num­ber One Rock Artist, he goes to a live satellite feed from a Dublin pub called the Docker, where Adam, Bono, and Edge are drinking Guinness and looking lubricated.

"Well done, lads!" Collins shouts across the waters.

"Hi, Phil," U2 mumbles. It's 1:30 in the morning in Dublin and the locals are still doing double takes at seeing a forty-foot trailer and a twenty-foot satellite dish parked outside the tiny pub.

"Your song 'One' has won the Number One Modern Rock Tracks Artist Award," Collins announces. "Bono, everybody always says you talk. I wonder where's Larry. Is Larry there? Let's give the drummer something."

"Larry isn't here, Phil," Edge tells the drummer-turned-singer. "He's acting a bit funny these days. You know how drummers get weird when they start singing."

"I understand," Collins says, plowing ahead. "The Zoo TV tour is also Billboard's Number One Concert Tour of the Year, meaning more people spent more money to see you guys than anybody else. So if you need an opening act, I'm here, guys. I believe the barman, Paddy, is going to give you the awards."

The white-haired bartender slams down a trophy in front of Adam,

[149]

who says to the camera, "Phil, Paddy's a very big fan of your music. And so are all our parents."

"I'm not that old," Paddy mumbles, causing much of the bar to break up laughing. Collins starts to make a crack about the band being drunk, but Bono interrupts him to smile and say, "It's really great to be home and we've had a great year and everybody spoiled us rotten. So thanks very much, we really appreciate all this."

"We anticipated that you may not be sober at this time of night," Collins says, "so we put together—"

Bono, feeling bad about Adam's insult, interrupts Collins again, this time to answer a ringing phone. "Sorry, Phil, I've George Bush on the phone here. I haven't had a wink's sleep, he's been calling me ever since I got home. We'll find a job for him somewhere."

"Let's roll the clip," Collins says, and a montage of highlights from the Zoo TV tour appears. Along with statistics ("The Zoo TV utilized 4 mega video screens, 4 Philips Vidiwalls, 36 video monitors, 18 pro­jectors, 12 laser disk players ... I satellite dish, I channel changer, I video confessional, 7 miles of cable. The Zoo TV stage was 248 feet wide and over 80 feet deep with the ramp to the B stage approximately 150 feet long. The set included 11 Trabant cars used as spotlights. The P.A. system included 176 speaker cabinets and the sound system used over a million watts of power and weighed over 30 tons. Zoo TV was seen live by over 3,000,000 people who between them bought over 600,000 T-shirts.") and concert footage, there are snatches of an MTV interview U2 did with Kurt Loder in a studio talking to the four band members on TV monitors.

"One thing about rock & roll stars is they're bigger than life, bigger than the audience, they're almost intimidating," Loder says to the video projections of the band. "Well, this whole set is like that. Isn't that off-putting? Doesn't it kill intimacy?"

It does, absolutely," Bono agrees. "But you look great."

That cuts to a shot of the Mirrorball Man shouting, "Put your hands on the screen!" There's more concert footage and then back to Loder asking, "Do you think the audience is getting something out of this?"

Yeah," Larry says. "They're coming to a rock & roll gig and watching television. What more can you ask for?"

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