It's sometimes been hard for Bono's teenage friends to stay pals with him as U2 have ascended—not because Bono and Ali don't work at it

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But because the buddies have to put up with the knocks of other nonrich people calling them freeloaders and asking why they're hanging around with that rock star. It takes effort from both sides not to let fame and wealth come between friendships.

Gavin is commanding, outgoing, and always fully awake. He is U2's closest advisor who is not on the Principle payroll. When the band is too buried in work to decide something for themselves they say, "Send it to Gavin."

In his own concerts Gavin uses a thirties cabaret style as a jumping-off point for music that is ironic, assuring, and confrontational, often in the same song. Gavin can puncture his onstage in-your-faceness by suddenly smiling broadly and sticking his mitt out to shake hands with the people down front, but even that sort of jolly gesture takes on an air of threat after he's been howling and pouncing for a while. On his albums (sometimes produced by the recurring Hal Willner) Gavin alter­nates the irony and playacting with tenderness.

Together now, Gavin, Guggi, and Bono fall into the easy patter of friends who communicate with nods, grunts, and gestures no outsider can fathom. Guggi (who speaks softly and now wears the sort of shoulder-length hippie hair the Prunes died to defeat) allows Bono to wax extensively about his recent meeting with artist Jeff Koons, a post-Warhol provocateur best known for ceramic sculptures of Michael Jack­son and his monkey, and heroic busts of himself looking toward heaven with swollen nipples. Once they called it camp, then they called it kitsch, then they stopped calling it. Bono says that Koons is up for getting involved with the second year of Zoo TV and told Bono that U2 was being far more generous in these shows than they were in the past. Bono was surprised by that and wanted to know how the surface-obsessed Zoo TV was more generous than the heart-on-our sleeves U2 shows of old. "He said that in the past we were dictating emotions to the audience, now we're leaving it open for them to decide for them­selves what they feel."

Koons's philosophy suggests that with so much of contemporary culture devoted to trying to con some emotional response from people, the most honest art is a glass sculpture of a puppy, or one of those paintings of little waifs with big eyes—because that obvious, corny, simpleminded art that wears its intentions on its sleeve is the only art attempting no subliminal manipulation. After describing Koons's rap

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Bono waits for a reaction from Guggi, but all that comes out of his mouth is a stream of smoke. Finally Bono says, "You don't buy that." Guggi says, "No." Bono and Guggi have been having this argument for years. Bono says art is about ideas and Guggi says no, art is about paint.

It strikes me that as much as Bono brings his "art is about ideas" philosophy to U2, particularly in the band's recent work, all those ideas would mean nothing if the band's art weren't also there in the paint, in the music. The emotional directness, the simplicity, that rock & roll got from blues and country is always at the heart of the music's appeal. It only took a few years for people to get used to the sound of basic rock & roll, before its directness began to seem cliched. So new angles had to be found that surprised the ear and kept the music fresh without corrupting rock's directness. That's how we got the Beatles, who used unusual harmonies to make old rock cliches vivid again. Dylan did it with his lyrics—"Subterranean Homesick Blues" revitalized Chuck Berry and "Like a Rolling Stone," as Phil Specter pointed out, gave a whole new paint job to "La Bamba." From Hendrix to country rock to reggae to the Sex Pistols to Achung Baby, rock & roll has come up with sonic innovations that allow us to hear a simple song as if we have never heard it before. But always, if the song itself is not worth singing, no one will listen. "One" and "Until the End of the World" and "Love Is Blindness" are great songs—the art is in the paint. The ideas that make them innovative records are finally important only because they allow us to hear the songs with fresh ears.

Down at the Factory one night Edge and Bono are fiddling with some new music. Ali did let Bono back into the house after Mexico, and gave him until January to normal up. It's no easy assignment. He compared notes with Edge, who had no home to go back to and was anxious for a distraction. They're kicking around ideas for new songs, making cassettes, and getting ambitious about mid-winter recording sessions.

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