Four ways of approaching the eternal city/ a surprise cameo by robert plant/ the cowboys of U2 security/ a Vietnam flashback/ naomi campbell vs. the kitchen staff/ a view from the roman balcony

there are a few days off between Verona and Rome and all the members of U2 travel by routes as different as their temperaments. Edge flies in on the Zoo plane for a big family reunion with his wife, Aislinn, their daughters, and his parents, Garvin and Gwenda. Although their marriage is over, Edge and Aislinn are still united by their devotion to their kids. They play mom and dad together like the Waltons. When they pull up to the hotel in Rome there are only about ten U2 fans waiting outside, but as soon as the cops see the Evans family they fly into full alert, blowing whistles, forming cordons and running around the car until they have succeeded in making sure the whole downtown area knows that a celebrity has arrived. Pretty soon tourists are rushing up to ask for photos and autographs and Aislinn is hugging the frightened kids. The overalert Roman police have turned a completely anonymous entrance into a media event. U2 security man Eric Hausch shakes his head and mutters, "These guys aren't cops— they're mailmen with guns."

The Evans family is ushered into the hotel. Edge's parents are in great spirits—always chuckling, always warm. You get the idea that if Genghis Khan invaded with his Mongol horde Gwenda would make them all tea and Garvin would suggest a better way to shoe the horses.

Italy may derive less warmth from Larry's journey. He and David Guyer, his bike-buddy bodyguard, are hitting every pothole and scream­ing at every bad driver down the whole length of the Italian peninsula. Ann, Larry's girlfriend, is hanging on to his waist and trying to tilt in

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The right direction to keep them from crashing. They have seen three small cars squeeze together in a single lane, they have been nearly waylayed by autos slamming on their brakes in front of them and zigzagging around them. They have even had morons try to drive into the little space between the two bikes. More than a few reckless cars have had new dents kicked in them today by these uneasy riders. When a driver really pisses them off David has a dangerous trick: he sticks his leg straight out, roars alongside the jerk's car, and kicks off the rearview mirror. If you don't do it just right, you crash and die. A mirror or two has gone to Valhalla on this trip, and David's still kicking.

Bono has kidnapped three beautiful women, Morleigh, Suzanne, and Principle's Eileen Long, and let them drive him through the Italian countryside, stopping along the way to savor the wine, the food, and— oddly enough—Robert Plant, who they bump into in Florence. The former Led Zeppelin singer has known U2 for a long time, through Dennis Sheehan, who has prepared the road for both of them. Years ago Dennis drove a car in which U2 was sleeping up to Plant's house in the early morning. The confused band woke to find the hammer of the gods staring down at them. Bono refers to Plant as "the Tall, Cool One," Plant in turn refers to Bono as "the Short, Fat One." There are no grapes as sour as those sucked on by fading rock legends.

Adam is, of course, cruising down the highway having grapes fed to him by the most beautiful models in the world. The mob gathered outside U2's hotel goes nuts when Adam, Naomi, and Christy pull up and begin wading through them. They scream, they cheer, they tear at Adam's jacket as both U2 security and local cops try to part the tide. This crowd has been standing out there singing and chanting in the hot summer sun ever since word spread that Edge was in the hotel, burning up brain cells until all that is left is a primordial remnant of conscious­ness fixed on one goal: "U2! U2.' U2!" The security men are having a tough time yanking Adam out of their clutches. The bassist is finally shoved into the revolving door and spun into the small, ornate lobby with the you-mortals-will-never-understand smile of the young Hugh Hefner. "Fucking hell!" He laughs.

Larry, Ann and David, dusty, exhausted and annoyed, arrive at the back of the hotel and sneak in through the garage. Pretty soon they are sitting with Adam, Naomi and Christy on the lobby stairs, studying the baying mob outside. Eric Hausch storms inside furious with the Roman

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police. "These guys are incredible!" Eric declares. "They wait until the moment of highest tension and then turn to you and say, 'Can you get me a U2 T-shirt?' "

The U2 security team could have been cast by Hollywood. Eric, blond and blue-eyed, is the good guy. A former fireman, county sheriff, and rescue worker, he can describe the horror of sorting through a plane crash in a way that will make you take trains forever, but he looks like the boy next door all the cheerleaders have crushes on. He is usually assigned to Bono. If Eric's the white hat, then David Guyer, Larry's man, is the black hat. Tall, dark, bearded, and moody, David came up on the wrong side of the law and still carries himself with the quiet menace of a bad-ass who knows he is always the toughest guy in the saloon. Scott Nichols, who covers Edge, is a young law-enforcement student getting some experience in security before going on to a career in police work. Scott is as handsome as a movie star, with slicked-back Elvis hair and a pumped-up body. Women on the tour try to angle to sit next to Scott in the van. All the bodyguards are American. In cowboy short­hand, Eric is Kevin Costner, David is the young Clint Eastwood, and Scott is Little Joe Cartwright. (Adam usually ducks having security.)

They were hand-picked by Jerry Mele, the security chief and a char­acter worthy of his own book. Mele grew up in New York and served in an elite unit in Vietnam doing the most dangerous work—going behind enemy lines to bring terror to the Vietcong, sleeping tied upright to a tree, waging war close-up. After his first tour he volunteered for a second, but halfway through that round he had some sort of spiritual awakening and decided what he was doing was wrong. He came home with a drug and drink habit that he kicked by tying himself to a bed and telling his mother that no matter how much he screamed or begged, she was not to untie him. This is a tough guy.

"I've seen both Jerry and David have to take somebody out when they were forced to," Larry says. "It's not a pretty sight. Their power and authority comes from knowing they can kill someone, and not wanting to ever have to prove it."

Yet Jerry is evangelical about transforming the currency of rock concert security from what it's always been—bullying, beating, and intimidation—into something gentle and instructive. He hires men who share that philosophy to work with him and puts them through three months of training and classroom work before letting them begin.

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Before U2 plays a venue Jerry has meetings with the local police and security that go on for hours, explaining his philosophy. "I've been to security meetings where they tell me, 'We've got these people trained,' " Jerry says with contempt. "Bullshit! One person can start a riot! You don't train people! You ask people for help. For the oddball, we ask him to go home. All these little marks on my face are stitches. I'll take the punch and say, 'You didn't knock me down yet. Now either you can walk away or I'm gonna take you down, and I can promise you, you will go to jail on assault charges. Can you afford fifty grand in lawyers' fees?' Always give 'em the option to walk away. Always give a drunk an out. I let him walk away saying, 'I didn't lose my manhood, I told him off!' "

Jerry comes out before the show and talks to the kids in the line outside the venue, brings them coffee and water, explains how things are going to be so that everybody has a good time, all but deputizes them. "I make 'em realize, 'I'm not telling you, I'm asking you.' We've done things on this tour that nobody's ever seen. Picture nine thousand people walking onto a field, not one person running."

Bono does a very funny impression of Jerry pulling a violent kid backstage and lecturing him like Ward Cleaver until the kid begs for a beating instead. But Jerry also gave Bono the idea for one of the strongest parts of U2's concert: Bono performs "Bullet the Blue Sky" in the voice, attitude, and clothes of a U.S. soldier leading a combat mission in the Third World, and then stays in that persona for "Run­ning to Stand Still," a song written about Dubliners who use heroin to escape their poverty. Bono is playing Jerry Mele when he performs those songs; it was knowing Jerry that made him understand that those two characters could be the same person. At the end of that sequence every night red and yellow smoke flares go off and billow up around Bono. He took that from Jerry's stories about the chaos on the ground during a jungle firefight; one color meant it was safe for the rescue copters to come in and pick up the wounded, the other color meant stay away. The Vietcong figured out the code and started shooting up flares of their own, luring pilots to their death or keeping rescue helicopters from landing.

When I mention to Jerry that Bono is playing him onstage during those songs, his eyes fill with tears. "I didn't know that," he says softly. "God bless him for it. I didn't have a clue." He looks away. "Phew. That's heavy. Nobody's ever done . . ." He swallows and says, "I'm

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