After making chitchat for a few minutes Bono asks Adam if he'd

[176]

mind swapping seats so that Bono and Larry can finish a private discus­sion. Before Larry can say, "What private ...?" Bono is finishing Adam's dinner and Adam is next to Naomi.

As the new couple chat Bono leans over, wet with glee and perspira­tion, and says in a low voice, "I almost couldn't get on a plane to come here! I got scared about the flight, I don't know what it was. So unlike me, I must say. I've been so relaxed lately, so happy with my family. It was very, very hard to get on that plane today and step back into it all. I think maybe that's why I got the anxiety about the flight. Maybe that's what was really going on.

"But I got it together and went to London to get a later flight. And on this flight I met Naomi Campbell! Now Adam's got a thing for her. So I said to myself, 'I must get her here for Adam!' "

I'm getting nostalgic for the night ten years ago when Bono and Adam did the same sort of musical chairs routine in order to make sure that the woman I had a crush on (also a Ford model just in from London on the Concorde, come to think of it; also with Keryn Kaplan sitting across from us winking like she's winking now) had to sit next to me all evening. The next night as I was walking home from my first date with her, U2 pulled up in their tour bus to ask me how it went! It went great. We got married and she's here with me tonight as Adam takes a turn with the glass slipper. If this singing thing ever runs out of steam Bono could certainly host The Dating Came.

Paul gets up to begin the speeches. A presidential seal, probably swiped from the inauguration, is hung on the podium, altered to read in E.D. we trust. McGuinness makes a generous toast in which he says he learned all about the music business from Ellen Darst and he envies Elektra Records the talent they've gained. Then he asks Bono to come up and say a few words.

"Bow your heads," Bono begins. "The reason I don't have a speech," he explains, "is 'cause I spent the whole plane ride trying to set up a date for the bass player." Everyone laughs and Bono points to the two empty seats where Adam and Naomi have disappeared. "And it must have worked—he's split the party!"

Bono goes on to give a beautiful speech in which he refers to the death of Paul's brother and how last month what was to have been an occasion for celebration instead became a time of mourning. He says that whenever you go to a wedding you relive your own wedding, and

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whenever you go to a funeral you bury your own people again. Bono says his own dad didn't encourage him much, maybe to save him from being disappointed. And his way of rebelling has been to prove he can go out and win the love of the whole world. But it's a funny need for compen­sation, Bono says, that makes you need fifty thousand screaming people telling you they love you in order for you to feel normal. Through the years the approval he's sought most has been the approval of the band, and the approval of Paul and Ellen. He felt from his first days traveling in America with Ellen that if he had that he really had something.

Adam, meanwhile, is out in the moonlight pitching woo (and if you've ever gotten hit with a faceful of woo out there by the FDR Drive you know how romantic that can be). It turns out that he and Naomi are both flying to L.A. for the Grammy Awards the next day. Bad news is, they're on different flights. Worse news is, they both have dates; Adam's going with Larry, Naomi's going with a prominent guitar player.

They spend the whole night talking. In the early hours Adam drops her off at her door with a peck on the cheek and, he notes, no "Come in for coffee." The next afternoon Adam picks up his hotel phone mes­sages and there's one from Naomi Campbell: "Ring me; I've missed my flight. I'm on the same flight as you." Adam leaps to the phone like a hyena on a gazelle and calls his dream girl.

"I'm going to be on your flight," Naomi tells him. "If you get to the airport before me, will you save a seat for me? And I'll do the same for you."

Hubba, as the poet said, hubba. Adam says okay and then spends more energy than a nervous dervish trying to get the deliberate Larry Mullen moving so they can get to the airport on time. (I'll bet I don't have to tell you that they end up arriving late, wondering if they're even going to make the plane.)

When they walk into the flight lounge Adam is surprised to find a bunch of airline personnel making the sort of fuss over him that usually ends with his hands cuffed behind his back. "Are you Mr. Clayton?"

"Yeah."

"Miss Campbell's on the plane.' She has a seat for you! She wants us to bring you straight down!"

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"This is pretty strange." Adam smiles as he's escorted off while Larry stares after him with a look that asks. What's he got that I haven't got?

Adam is whisked down the shute and into the first-class cabin where the couple are reunited like Rhett and Scarlett. On the flight to Califor­nia Adam and Naomi chat and hold hands and fall asleep on each other's shoulders. And when they wake up, they kiss.

Dropping into L.A. they say their sad good-byes—they won't meet again this trip; she has to stick with her date. The U2's get to their hotel and get about their business, representing the band at the Grammy Awards where Achtung Baby is nominated in several categories, including Album of the Year.

As soon as they get to the Grammys Adam and Larry regret coming. They'd forgotten how uncomfortable they were with the frenzied showbiz schmoozing at the Grammys when Joshua Tree won. Adam had actually slipped out of that ceremony early, after being blindsided by the haste with which the winners were shuffled from their acceptance speech to a series of backstage promotional duties and photo opportunities. Adam bolted and went back to his hotel. Tonight he remembers why.

"I don't have a problem with awards of merit going to whomever they are deeming whatever it is worthy of recognition," Adam says. "But there is so much puffing up of the chest that the Grammys are in some way a significant artistic achievement, which I find offensive. It's stupid to deny the effect of a good performance at the Grammys, but you're not really going along as an artist—you're going along as a performer, as a press item, as a piece of television. And that's really the worst way in which to receive something that is about the merit of your work. For us the balance is the wrong way."

You know that if an occasion like this is annoying the easygoing Adam, it's wreaking havoc with the bullshit-hating Larry. His verdict is, he will not only never go to the Grammys again, he will never vote in the Grammys again.

Arrested Development go up to collect an award that, Adam notes, was great when it happened last year, but why must they win again for the same album? Producer of the year goes to Daniel Lanois for Achtung Baby. There's an ironic postscript to that prolonged tooth-pull of a recording project. Those are about the only awards tonight that are not going to Eric Clapton, who wins a pile of trophies for "Tears in Heaven," his moving tribute to his five-year-old son who died. Clapton

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Is visibly embarrassed that the Hollywood community seems to be trying to assuage his grief by giving him the Grammy in every category for which he's eligible. By the time the biggest award. Album of the Year comes up, Clapton has already won six others.

The envelope please—the Album of the Year Grammy goes not to Achtung Baby but to Eric Clapton's Unplugged. Clapton himself, staggering under the weight of his seven trophies, is generous enough to say in his acceptance that Unplugged was not the best album of the year. That's not news to Larry Mullen, who can't wait to wash the stain of this outhouse off the seat of his pants.

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