Register enthusiasm, at least he could no longer claim when asked about U2 that he had never heard them.

Later Bono asked Dylan if he played chess. It turned out to be a • passion the two singers shared. They sent out for a board but never got a game up. Dylan asked Bono if he knew the music of the McPeaks, an Irish folk group, Bono admitted he'd never paid any attention to tradi­tional music, and Dylan told him that was a mistake: "You've gotta go back." Bono took the advice seriously enough to start checking out Irish folk music, which he later said was the first step on the road to Rattle and Hum.

Among musicians Dylan and Morrison continue to be the top birds on that branch of rock that shoots toward the same values the great poets and painters shot for. That branch is certainly literate, somewhat intellectual, but by no means without a foot in the raw and instinctive. Those who perch so high are well aware of who else is up there with them. I once asked Dylan if he felt a special connection with Morrison, and Dylan said, "Oh, yeah! Ever since Them, really. There's been nothing Van's done that hasn't knocked me out." I once asked Morri­son to rank Dylan. Morrison—who rhapsodizes in his lyrics about Blake, Donne, Pound, Eliot, and enough other versifiers to sink a sylla­bus—said, "Dylan is the greatest living poet."

Both Dylan and Morrison are students of old folk, gospel, and blues, both have been through sometimes unsettling spiritual quests, and both have expressed disdain for attempts by their audience to hold them to one style or image. They also both achieved great success while still in their early twenties and then settled young into marriage, family, and periods of semiretirement, only to eventually return to lives of bachelor­hood, road work, and travel. Both Dylan and Morrison have written classic rock songs and recorded classic rock records, but neither's career can remotely be contained by even the most generous definition of rock music. They are bigger than the genre, which is pretty big. When Bono met them, they probably represented what he hoped to become.

Around that time Bono told me, "There's got to be a spiritual link between U2 and Van Morrison. I'm sure it's not just that we're both Irish. I think it's something else. He probably wouldn't want to asso­ciate himself with our music, 'cause I know he's plugged into a tradition of soul music and gospel. As we're slightly more removed from that

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tradition, he may not connect with us." Bono went on to say that Van is a soul singer, "And I would aspire to being a soul singer."

I have to add that when I went on to talk to Edge about Van he listened for a while and then asked if I could recommend a good Morrison album for him to start with, his polite way of letting me know that this was not music U2 had grown up with and I should not assume that Morrison had influenced them.

In the decade since that Slane Castle summit U2 has scaled the heights of rock stardom, to the point where putting Bono in a room next to Bob and Van no longer begs someone asking what's wrong with this picture. Bono gets a big kick out of their company. He once watched them get into a friendly contest over who knew the most words to obscure old folk ballads. ("They were impressing the young man with their knowledge," Bono says.) Van would name a song and Bob would recite the lyric. Then Bob would name a song and Van recite it. Finally Van pulled out a ball-buster. He called for "The Banks of the Grand Canal" by Brendan Behan. Dylan stood up and reeled off a dozen verses. Van folded. Bono sat there gob-smacked.

Hanging around artists such as Dylan and Morrison gave U2 the misimpression that they should get as close to country, blues, and R & B roots as those older artists get. Since Rattle and Hum U2 have learned that their job is not to go back over ground someone else has already covered but to carry the music to the next place, where some other young band will eventually pick it up and carry it further.

Rattle and Hum contained one song written by Dylan and U2 ("Love Rescue Me"), a second song on which Dylan played organ ("Hawkmoon 269") and a U2 cover of an old Dylan song ("All Along the Watchtower"). I asked Dylan what drew him to U2 that he did not hear in other young bands and he said, "Just more of a thread back to the music that got me inspired and into it. Something which still exists which a group like U2 holds on to. They hold on to a certain tradition. They are actually rooted someplace and they respect that tradition. They work within a certain boundary which has a history to it, and then can do their own thing on top of that. Unless you start someplace you're just kind of inventing something which maybe need not be invented.

"But that's what would draw me to U2. You can tell what groups are seriously connected and"—he laughed—"seriously disconnected. There

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is a tradition to the whole thing. You're either part of that or not. If you're not, you're just not, but I don't know how anybody can do anything and not be connected someplace back there. You do have to have a commitment. Not just anybody can get up and do it. It takes a lot of time and work and belief."

One night Van and his sidekick Georgie Fame were visiting Bono's house when Van leaned over and with a wink accused Bono of ripping off one of his old hits for the biggest hit on Rattk and Hum. "That song of yours, 'Desire,' was just 'Gloria' backwards, wasn't it?"

"No." Bono smiled. "I think it was Bo Diddley, actually."

"Ah, yeah," Van said. "Georgie, remember when that Bo Diddley beat first came over here? Everybody was using it but nobody got it right!" Implying strongly that U2 hadn't either. Bono teased Van back, asking if Van's own much-imitated style might not owe just a bit to Ray Charles.

Lately I've seen Van holding forth in the bar of the Shelbourne Hotel like Marshall Dillon in Dodge City. Somebody should come up and hang a medal on him: Greatest Living Irishman. Morrison left his Belfast home when he was a teenager and has since lived in London, New York, Boston, San Francisco, and London again, slowly working his way back home. Van's been living in Dublin lately, carousing around the town with the Chieftans, Shane McGowan of the Pogues, and another new arrival, tax-exile Jerry Lee Lewis. A motlier crew of musical brigands is hard to imagine.

I think I made Bono feel bad one night while we were contemplating the great men by suggesting that both Dylan and Van might have been drawn to faith in God because after losing their families and after being worshipped like gods themselves, it was the last thing bigger than them that they could turn to. I was indulging in idle speculation, but it really seemed to bother Bono. He's a firm believer in grace and a man with few enough stars to steer by in his own life. After many drinks Bono suggested, "It is a funny thing that even though they're believers, they seem to see God in very much an Old Testament light. There seems to be a lot of judgment there, and maybe not a lot of mercy."

At the Point on Friday night Dylan plays a countryish set with a standup bassist, drummer, and second guitarist. It's a sort of Hank Williams persona for Dylan, after years of wailing electric shows. He performs songs he rarely sings in concert—"She Belongs to Me,"

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"Lenny Bruce," "Tangled Up in Blue," and "Everything Is Broken"—as well as the expected "All Along the Watchtower" and "Maggie's Farm." After the concert Bono, McGuinness, and some other local celebrities —Elvis Costello, his wife Cait O'Riordan, country singer Nanci Grif­fith, and honorary Dubliner Chrissie Hynde—go with Dylan and his entourage to Tosca, Bono's brother Norman's restaurant. Chrissie wants to know what Dylan thinks of heavyweight champ Mike Tyson going to prison for rape. "I think it's a dirty shame, but what do I know?" says Dylan. "There's lots of guys in the joint." This leads to comparisons to Muhammad Ali being stripped of his title because he refused to go into the army during the Vietnam War. Chrissie asks Dylan how he avoided being drafted back in his protest days. "I was in New York," Dylan says. "Nobody bothered about the draft in New York."

Word comes that Mornson's court is in session around the corner at Lillie's Bordello. Dylan sends word inviting Van to come join him here;

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