Архитектура Аудит Военная наука Иностранные языки Медицина Металлургия Метрология
Образование Политология Производство Психология Стандартизация Технологии


Wise. The boiled ball of beef on my plate—and indeed the boiled balls of beef on the plates of my companions—does not look edible at all. It looks like a tennis ball left out all winter.



By this point the drinks on the plane and the drinks at the hotel have been supplemented by drink after drink after drink at this monkey house and nobody feels like eating anymore anyway. There are, however, some suggestions for new tortures to inflict on Edge tomorrow that seem to all assembled like the funniest ideas since the Inquisition. One of the Principles decides that the waiters are selling us watered-down vodka, and so grabs the bottle from the angry server's hand and swigs from it. Trouble is, it is way past the point where anyone can taste the difference between vodka and water anyway. It is time to adjourn the video meeting and move onto another venue. Someone has the name and address of a reggae/African music club. Suzanne Doyle, the ever-efficient transportation chief, starts summoning cars and assigning seats. When she's barking orders to a roomful of drunks like this some call Suzanne "Nurse Ratched." McGuinness calls her "Big Bird." I think they should call her "Elle Duce," 'cause she sure makes the trains run on time.

On the way across Berlin to the reggae club, Regine Moylett recalls visiting friends in East Berlin before the Wall came down. She says that obnoxious neighbors would immediately show up and insist on coming in and listening to the conversation. The neighbors would try to pro­voke some political comment from the visitor or point at Regine's rock T-shirt and demand to know how she could defend decadent pop music. She doubted these muttonheads were secret police, but guessed that many East Germans filed reports on their neighbors for the Stasi. It was a way of getting some extra favors or getting on someone's good side. The whole culture was riddled with mistrust and paranoia. It gives me a fix on the lines in "The Wanderer": "I went drifting through the capitals of tin, where men can't walk or freely talk and sons turn their fathers ,in."

We arrive at the African club, called Ton-Ton, commandeer a bunch of tables, and order more drinks. Bono asks who wants to dance, and one of the women of Principle volunteers. When they get out on the floor, though, the club's black patrons clear off. Bono is startled. Luck­ily the disc jockey steps in and announces that Ton-Ton has some

 [253]

Special guests tonight and does a little rap welcoming U2. The tension dissipates and the Africans start dancing again.

Paul McGuinness and I are slumped in a corner solving the world's problems when he comes out with what I consider a remarkable insight. He says that ten years ago, he and the group never expected U2 to become the biggest band in the world—they thought they would be one of the biggest bands along with the Clash, Talking Heads, the Police, and the Pretenders. "We expected those bands to be with us all the way," Paul says. To U2's amazement, all the groups ahead of them in line broke up, leaving them to gather the accumulated energy and run with it. Paul says Tina Weymouth, Talking Heads bassist, came to a U2 concert and said, "Bono is everything I hoped David [Byrne] would become."

I once talked to John Lydon, the former Johnny Rotten, about the influence his group P.I.L. had on the early U2. The guitar and bass on the track "Public Image," for example, could have been the prototype for half of U2's early records.

"They've hardly been appreciative of the fact," Lydon said. "They haven't been very honest about where their influences have come from, have they? A great deal of U2 has to do with early P.I.L. It's the Edge all over, isn't it? That's fine, that's not an insult. He liked it and he took it someplace else. Made it his own. Well, good luck to him. It just gets irritating when people tell me, 'Oh, you're not as good as U2.' Don't you know where they came from?"

There's no question that U2 did come from P.I.L. And from the Clash, Jam, Patti Smith, Skids, Lou Reed, Bowie, and fifty other places. What sets them apart from their early rivals and influences is where they ended up.

Numb


Поделиться:



Последнее изменение этой страницы: 2019-03-21; Просмотров: 315; Нарушение авторского права страницы


lektsia.com 2007 - 2024 год. Все материалы представленные на сайте исключительно с целью ознакомления читателями и не преследуют коммерческих целей или нарушение авторских прав! (0.011 с.)
Главная | Случайная страница | Обратная связь