May 10 is Bono's 33rd birthday. He is now as old as Christ was at his death, as old—according to Church tradition—as all our resurrected

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bodies will be after the end of the world. Bono goes into his room on his birthday to find Gavin Friday has left a large gift in his bed: under the inscription, "Hail Bono, King of the Zoos" is a ten-foot cross painted blue and big enough for Bono to hang on.

Business Week

The end of the record industry and other good news/ how U2 ended up owning everything by being nice guys/ ossie kilkenny's virtual reality/ U2's new deal/ mcguinness to prs: take your hand out of my pocket

finishing the Zooropa album has a secondary benefit for U2. It completes their contractual obligations to Island Records (and to Polygram, the multinational that now owns Island). Paul McGuinness and Island have been working away at a new contract, but having an unexpected deal-finishing album to drop on the desk puts McGuinness in an even more powerful position than he was in already. Here's the carrot—a new record by your biggest act two years before you expected it. Here's the stick—U2 is now free to go anywhere we want.

Not that anyone thinks that's going to happen. Polygram chief Alain Levy talked to McGuinness about U2's intentions before Polygram bought Island, and McGuinness told him U2 and Island were great friends and Polygram had no reason to fear that U2 would leave any­time soon.

Chris Blackwell, who owned Island, always treated U2 very well. As naive kids U2 assumed that this was how all record companies behaved toward well-intentioned acts, but as they got older the band came to understand how rare Blackwell's decency was. Island never tried to force U2 to make artistic compromises. They even gave them complete con­trol over album artwork. The only two times Island ever argued with a band decision was (I) when U2 said they wanted Brian Eno to produce them and (2) when the label sent an unfortunate emissary to Dublin to suggest to the group that the photo they had chosen for the cover of their second album, October, was not very good. U2 and McGuinness

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chewed the poor guy's tail off. How dare he, a mere businessman, try to interfere with a decision made by artists! The Island rep was sent packing and Blackwell let U2 have their cover. Which, the band agrees today, was a terrible cover. Island was absolutely right.

In August of 1986 U2 was finishing The Joshua Tree, the album that they knew had a good shot at making them superstars, when McGuin­ness and Ossie Kilkenny, U2's accountant, were told that Island Records was in big trouble. The label was close to bankruptcy. They could not even pay U2 the money they already owed them—which was five million dollars.

McGuinness and Kilkenny were stunned. They sat in a room and cursed themselves for losing all U2's money by being dumb enough to think that the record company was like a bank—you could leave the dough sitting there and pick it up anytime. And all that loss aside, if Island went under now, what would happen to The Joshua Tree! Would the album that U2 was counting on to carry them over the top be a victim of poor distribution and lack of promotion? Would the stores even be able to order it?

Here was the worst part of all: if Island went under, some big company could come along and buy it up, along with U2's contract. What if the band ended up working for someone they hated?

Thank goodness U2 had gotten back from Island, in a renegotiation the year before, title to their song publishing, which Island had gotten in U2's first contract, when the band was in no position to argue (and— frankly—did not understand what they were giving away). Before that any new people who bought Island could have sold "I Will Follow" for a Toyota commercial or "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as a Band Aid jingle and U2 would have had no way to stop it. They knew Chris Blackwell would never do something like that, but by now U2 had come to understand that Chris Blackwell might not always be the man across the table.

They wanted to keep him there for as long as they could, though, so after one day of panic and recriminations, U2 agreed to bail out Island by delivering The Joshua Tree anyway, declining to demand the money owed them, and even loaning Island some more money to get over the hump. It was generous, and typical of U2's approach to business— which valued personal relationships and obligations above dollars and cents. As soon as he was back on his feet Chris Blackwell responded in

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