Burt Bacharach is the name Bono is looking for.

Edge leaves and Bono keeps putting down tracks, changing the lyrics slightly each time. He tells Flood to change the listed title of the song to "Stay," from "Sinatra." Although, he considers, he ought to try to get some reference to Wim's film in there. He decides to call it "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)." Speaking of Sinatra, Bono says, he's heard that Frank is going to cut his first new album in almost ten years. Sinatra told Quincy Jones, "It's time to shake up the citizens." Bono is still dreaming of getting the Chairman a copy of "Two Shots of Happy."

He does not want to repeat the mistake he made in getting "Slow Dancing" to Willie Nelson. He was so excited about the song that the day after he wrote it he told a TV interviewer that he had just written a song for Willie Nelson. Before he had made any contact with Nelson. MTV picked up the item and broadcast it.

Can you imagine?" Bono says. "Willie Nelson, one of the greatest songwriters alive, hearing me on TV saying I've written a song for him. Without his asking for it! He probably thought, 'Well, fuck you.' " Bono shudders at the thought. Then he says, "Johnny Cash said Willie

[220]

probably never got the tape. He said, 'Well, Bono, Willie's had a lot of trouble.' "

Yeah, I say, some IRS agent is probably grooving to your song right now. Bono strums his acoustic guitar and I ask him to sing "Slow Dancing." I haven't heard it since my birthday at Kitty O'Shea's more than a year ago. He sings the song beautifully. Despite its country simplicity "Slow Dancing" addresses all the same conflicts as U2's Achtung Baby songs:

And I don't know why a man search for himself in his lover's eye And I don't know why a man sees the truth hut needs the lie

When Bono finishes I say, "Wouldn't that sound great coming out of all these Eno-esque vibes and distorted structures."

"That's a great idea," Bono says, then he addresses Flood: "You want to record it?"

Flood says, "You think I didn't?" He points to the vocal microphone lying in front of Bono and then to the recording console. Bono does it once more, his guitar in his lap and his lips brushing the microphone. Then he says he has to go catch up with his wife.

Outside the Factory he sees that he left All's car unlocked. He reaches for her car phone to call ahead and it's gone. He's in trouble again. A couple of English girls who flew to Dublin hoping to meet him come up with autograph pads while Bono struggles to remember if he left her phone somewhere—or has it been stolen?

He insists on driving me home, as he does every night. It is very gracious of him, but because Bono always gets distracted and forgets where he's going, a lift from him makes the trip twice as long as walking. As we cruise around Dublin running red lights and going the wrong way on one-way streets, Bono says, "Adam's walking around with two supermodels on his arm! Naomi and Christy Turlington, the girl I was with on the cover of Vogue. Adam's having a good weekend."

"Yeah," I say. "You really did him a favor when you hijacked Naomi to Ellen's party."

"They're going out now!" Bono says, wide-eyed. "They're in love!"

"He owes you big time."

"I'd say so.

 [221]

"Bono! That was my street!"

The next day, Saturday, everyone is supposed to be off duty except Flood, who has taken on the weekend job of putting the finished songs together in a running order to prove that there is an album amid all these experiments. He talks about the evolution of "Sinatra" into "Stay."

"I think Bono would be the first to admit that lyric writing doesn't come easily," Flood says, "because it's so much to do with the baring of his soul. It doesn't matter whether it's to one or fifty thousand. When he's writing a lyric he might have three or four ideas on the boil. That song was particularly difficult because he had tried three or four times. The first and foremost thing is, he has to understand where this song is coming from. Until it has something concrete he'll continue to search. That is the first thing that has to be dealt with. You came in last night and you heard it and your point of view was quite different from the way we'd been hearing it. That gave him a spur. Then he goes one stage further and chips away here, chips away there, until he's ninety percent done. Then, okay, there's a couple of couplets that aren't quite right, he can go away and I'll let him off the hook. He can leave that till tomorrow. And obviously a lot of times Bono will worry about his actual performance as well as his lyric."

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