I excuse myself to go the bathroom and discover the U2 poster—over the urinal.

At 4:30 the driver drops us at our hotel, we all say good night to Bono and head up the steps. As we get to the door we hear the car stop and Bono's voice calling, "Are you all going to have one drink?"

We turn and look back. Bono looks like a kid anxious to stay outside playing a little longer. "Sure," I say, and he bounds out of the car and up the hotel steps. Bono, Carter, and I head to my room where I open the minibar and Bono flops onto the bed and turns on CNN. Most of the news is about Michael Jackson, who is racing around the world fleeing from child molestation charges at home. This story has been brewing for months. I remember talking about it with Paul McGuinness at dive Davis's 1992 Grammy party, more than a year and a half ago. The big scandal that night was that some father in California was rumored to have a Polaroid of Michael in a compromising position with the man's young son. Sony Music, the Grammy gossips whispered, was going nuts for fear it would come out. The rumor stayed a rumor for a

[326]

Whole year, and then exploded in the headlines with nothing as concrete as a photograph, just allegations. Whether Jackson is guilty or the innocent victim of a shakedown scheme is something no one knows— but everyone has an opinion about.

Bono feels really bad for Jackson and hopes none of the accusations are true. (I feel really bad for my kids who, like millions of other children, think Michael is the greatest man since Peter Pan and don't understand why bad people are trying to hurt him.) Bono figures that if you shut out his lyrics and pretend he's singing in another language, listening to Michael Jackson is one of pop music's most sublime plea­sures.

Bono empties one of the little bottles from the minibar and says, well, no sense going home now, it's almost morning. He calls downstairs and has his driver sent away.

The next item on the news is Sarajevo. Bill Carter is horrified that the reporters are saying the situation there is now under control—the U.N. has things in hand. Carter says that every time the world's atten­tion focuses on what the Serbs are doing, they back off for a little while. The media says the storm has passed, the media goes away, and then the Serbs go right back to the slaughter.

Carter lobbies Bono to go with him to Sarajevo next week. After another round Bono begins agreeing with the idea. When Bill goes to the bathroom I suggest to Bono that he ought to slow down: in the goosed-up state Bill Carter's in right now he would—if someone of­fered him a stick of dynamite—jump onto a bucket and try to blow himself to the moon.

Bono calls the front desk to ask for a room. There are none. U2's employees and guests have the hotel booked solid. So Bono starts calling the crew rooms, looking for an empty bed. He finally finds one —a roadie who won't be back till mid-morning. He'll take it!

By 5:30 the minibar has nothing left but the little ice tray. Bono, Carter, and I are bonding like derelicts under a lamppost and cooking up plans to continue through the Far East after the Zoo tour ends in Japan the week before Christmas. I say we go to Hong Kong. Bono says no, Thailand. He's never taken LSD, I've never taken LSD—we should go to the jungles of Thailand and take LSD for the first time. In our current mental condition, this seems like a top-notch holiday plan.

Then Carter says, "No . . . SUMATRA."

[327]

Bono and I look at him as impressed as if he just discovered fire. Carter says he went to Sumatra once and it was great, it was fantastic: "Every night before we went to sleep we'd have to burn the leeches off our legs with torches!"

Bono and I look at each other: Hong Kong it is!

Finally the party breaks up. I'm collecting bottles and emptying ashtrays when the morning paper slides under the door. It is full of pictures of the Cork concert and articles about U2 and reaction to the scandal of the rubbers Bono rained on the crowd. Geez, I think, my head says we're still in the aftershow and here comes the news of the concert. I should get some sleep. So I lie down on the bed and close my eyes and sink straight into Rapid Eye Movement when I hear a knock­ing. I pry my eyes open. The clock says I've been out for a few hours. I open the door and there's Bono, still dressed in last night's clothes and pushing a vacuum cleaner. "Want to go to breakfast?" He says.

We go down to the hotel restaurant. Bono looks at the morning papers. "I look fat in these pictures," he says. "Am I?"

"No, you're not," I say. Suzanne, Morleigh, and Edge drift in and join us. There's trouble with the "Numb" video in Japan, Edge says. Apparently the bare feet on the face bit is obscene there.

"You can take out your willie and piss in the street in Japan," Bono says while scrutinizing his sausages. "But bare feet—woooo!"

It seems the feet may cause a problem in some Arab countries too. But not as much of a problem as bringing Salman Rushdie onstage in London has. Photos of that have gone out all over the world and radio stations in several Islamic nations have canceled plans to broadcast the Dublin concert. In related news, Edge is pleased to note an item in the paper reporting that the Joshua Trio, a Dublin group who make their living parodying U2, have announced a suspension of their fatwa against U2 biographer Eamon Dunphy for the duration of the band's Irish shows.

"Rushdie said something great about being branded a heretic," Edge says. "He said look at the three greatest heresy trials in history: Socrates, Jesus, and Galileo. The first gave the Western world its philosophy, the second its religion, and the third its science. The West should value heretics!"

⇐ Предыдущая87888990919293949596Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: