Airport. He will miss the presidential inauguration; Ellen's farewell dinner will have to be rescheduled. He will go home to the funeral, and to grieve privately.

Adam and Larry are left on their own, but their celebrity is their pass to various parties. Wherever they go people come up and introduce them­selves and invite them someplace else. At one club they run into Michael Stipe and Mike Mills of R.E.M., another half of a band that was involved in voter registration and is here for the inauguration. Stipe tells Adam and Larry that he is going to sing with 10,000 Maniacs at MTV's televised inaugural ball, and he and Mills are thinking of doing an acoustic version of "One"—would Larry and Adam like to play it with them?

Larry and Adam look at each other, hem and haw a little, and explain that they didn't really come to perform. But after about two hours of socializing and celebrating their resistance is worn away and they agree to do it. After all, it's a U2 song. They have Michael to sing, Larry to drum—and two bassists. Mills offers to play guitar. It also seems logistically easier if Larry plays congas rather than a full drum kit. "Make it simple, don't complicate it," Larry says. "There's a large chance we could come across badly, whereas if I have the congas there it won't be too loud, we could get a good mix on the TV." They will get together the next afternoon and rehearse. Now all they need is a name. They combine the title of R.E.M.'s latest album, Automatic/or the People, with U2's latest to come up with Automatic Baby.

The next morning is beautiful in Washington—sunny and clear. The security is so tight it looks like a war zone, but the mood is so festive— and there are so many souvenir hawkers in the streets—that it feels like a carnival. I make the mistake of waiting a little too long to cross the road to the Capitol for the start of the ceremony and have to elude a cop who tells everyone to hold it, step back behind the ropes, here comes the presidential motorcade. Well, no way am I going to risk being locked out, so I go under the rope and run around the cop and across the street. When I get to the tents that hold the metal detectors you have to pass through on the way into the lawn where the inauguration takes place, I turn around to see if I'm being chased, and instead see rolling past me the side of the presidential limos that the crowd doesn't see. The people gathered behind the rope see Bill Clinton waving out

[166]

The left rear window of the limo. I see George Bush in the right. The people behind the rope see Al Gore smiling and giving them the thumbs up. I see a dejected Dan Quayle leaning his head against the window, staring sadly into space.

The ceremony is genuinely moving. A podium crowded with the top officials of the U.S. government and visiting dignitaries sits beneath the Capitol dome, which is itself illuminated by a bright winter sun. Maybe it's just the pageantry, maybe it's associations with childhood, but I am more choked up than when they shot Old Yeller.

Bono, watching on TV, is taken with the Reverend Billy Graham's invocation and with the poem read by Maya Angelou in which the ground of America cries out for the people standing on it to study war no more and learn the song the Creator taught the land "before cyni­cism was a bloody sear across your brow."

Bono had actually summoned the nerve to send Clinton a letter elucidating his theory about the need for the new president to make a speech of expiation. Clinton's aides called and said that Bill had loved the letter and might want to quote from it, but that doesn't happen. Bono supposed it was not possible for the president to make the sort of public act of contrition Bono suggested; it would just lead to people saying, "You want to make it up to the Indian? Okay, give back the land." But watching the speeches on TV in Europe, Bono feels that Graham and Angelou make the important points.

Graham says in his invocation, "We cannot say we are a righteous people, for we are not. We have sinned against You. We have sown to the wind and are now reaping the whirlwind of crime, drug abuse, racism, immorality, and social injustice. We need to repent of our sins and to turn by faith to You."

After taking his oath of office Clinton gives an address that deals with the end of the old world ("I thank the millions of men and women whose steadfastness and sacrifice triumphed over depression, fascism, and communism. Today a generation raised in the shadows of the Cold War assumes new responsibilities in a world warmed by the sunshine or freedom but threatened still by ancient hatreds and new plagues") and the birth of the new ("Communications and commerce are global, investment is mobile, technology is almost magical, and ambition for a better life is now universal. . . . Profound and powerful forces are

 [167]

shaking and remaking our world. And the urgent question of our time is whether we can make change our friend and not our enemy.")

When the inauguration ends there is a lot of milling about on the lawn, as if people aren't quite prepared to leave the field. "What struck me about it," the usually cynical Larry says, "and I think it happens at all inaugurations, was that there was a great deal of emotion. I think particularly this time around because there was a very large black pres­ence. There was a real sense of change. I noticed a lot of older people were incredibly emotional, there were tears. I'm not used to it. I know nothing about how the systems work. But from an observer's point of view it was something I won't forget. There are people here who really believe that this is going to change things. When he was sworn in there were tears running down people's faces. It was quite touching." He pauses and says, "There was something there. I really felt that."

Larry still has ambiguous feelings, though, about U2's strange em­brace of Clinton during the campaign, and mocking of George Bush during the American concerts.

"I wasn't sure if it was something we should be involved with," he says. "There were differing opinions in the band about being involved at all, about using George Bush. I was a little concerned about that. I'm naturally cautious. I'm still unsure whether it was the right thing to do. I enjoyed the ride, it was very interesting to see it from a different perspective. Meeting Bill Clinton was good. He came across like he still comes across. He seems to be an all right guy. But I'm not living in America. I don't have to live under his administration's policies. That's why I was worried about it. We don't live here. Are we endorsing him? What exactly are we doing? And the truth is, it was an ambiguous gesture. We weren't officially endorsing him and yet on the other hand we were saying, Yeah, he's all right."

"And making fun of Bush," I remind him.

"Yeah," Larry says. "It was all a bit odd."

"I'm very suspicious of a U.S. president who hangs out with rock stars," Adam says. "But at the time Clinton didn't know he was going to be president. It's great he could do that and be elected. The old men of Russia and England and China never could. The colorful leaders of Europe always did and always will."

⇐ Предыдущая45464748495051525354Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: