The later it gets the more drunk people in pubs are, and the drunker

[337]

they are the pushier they get when Bono walks in. After being pestered out of one bar, Bono notices a small bed and breakfast on a second floor and says to Gavin, "Let's try this."

We climb the stairs and head toward the little lounge, where a middle-aged American couple is watching TV. A woman behind the desk says, "Stop, please, this room is for guests only." Gavin and Bono turn on the charm like Hope and Crosby wooing Dorothy Lamour and she relents. They sit down at a little bar next to the television and even talk her into serving some drinks. The tourists never raise their eyes from the television.

Sitting on the bar is today's paper, with banner headlines about the escalating Michael Jackson scandal. Jackson is staying out of the USA, racing from country to country ahead of these child molestation allega­tions. Yesterday Los Angeles cops went into his house with a court order seizing videotapes and photos from a "secret room." Other kids are coming forward claiming they were fondled or abused by Michael. The singer himself has canceled a concert in Thailand, claiming dehy­dration.

U2 once had a close encounter with Michael, and they've never forgotten it. In 1988 The Joshua Tree had sold fourteen million copies and won the Grammy for album of the year—beating Jackson's Bad. It may have startled Jackson, who did an elaborate production number at the show before the award was announced. (Adam had nipped out to go to the men's room and had to convince the guard on the door to let him back in—they had just called his band's name and he was supposed to be up at the podium.) After that Jackson got curious about U2. He invited them to one of his Madison Square Garden shows and to come backstage to meet him. They went—but when they were introduced to Michael they were startled to find he had a cameraman on hand to film the conversation. That was too weird for U2, who turned around and left.

When they got back to Dublin they got a message: Michael wanted to send a crew over to follow them around and film them working, playing, presumably eating and sleeping—so he could study them. That spooked our heroes even more.

Staring at the tabloid headlines now, Bono remembers the first indi­cation that Jackson was interested in U2: over a decade ago there was a big blowup of U2's War album cover on display at the Hollywood

Tower Records. Word got back to the band that Michael Jackson had asked the store if he could have it when Tower was done with it. (The cover of War is a photo of a little boy, actually Guggi's younger brother.) Bono really hopes that the accusations against Jackson are not true. "If this is an innocent man being destroyed by the media, it's like The Crucible" he says. Bono is scared that Jackson will kill himself. I say that's a huge thing to speculate about. We can't begin to guess what's in his mind—no one knows what would make which person commit suicide.

"He's someone who has devoted his whole life to trying to win the love of the public," Bono says. "He has changed his face to win the love of the public. I think something like this could make him kill himself." Bono takes a drink and says quietly, "If you're one who gets down on your knees, I'd suggest you say a prayer for Michael tonight."

When I finally get back to my hotel—at breakfast time—I pick up the new day's paper. It says that rumors are spreading that Jackson is suicidal. I still believe no one can imagine what goes on in Michael Jackson's head, but I'll concede that Bono is in a position to have more insight than the rest of us.

40. Men of Wealth & Taste

the three levels of ligging/ salman rushdie, rock critic/ mick jagger sizes up the competition/ adam & naomi's public statement/ bill carter learns to schmooze

Backstage at the RDS stadium U2 has set up a white tent worthy of the greatest pasha of Persia. There is a spacious, airy dressing room for the band, a wardrobe and makeup room where they can be made beautiful, and large sitting room for their most esteemed guests. This is not to be confused with the suite under the grandstands where several dozen merely honored guests are knocking back McGuinness's Guinness and sucking little meatballs off the ends of toothpicks. Nor is that stateroom to be in any way mixed up with the big mess hall across the grounds where at least two hundred more common guests are eating grub off paper plates and drinking out of cans. That third level is for all the people in Dublin who have no real reason to be backstage, but who'd get their feelings hurt if they weren't asked. The room is full of the bands' old teachers, second cousins, former employees, friends of friends, relatives of relatives—basically, everybody in Dublin. The second level are movers and shakers, and their official host is Paul McGuinness. These include luminaries such as Bob Geldof, Jim Kerr, and Patsy Kensit, as well as Tom Freston, the MTV CEO who has just arrived from New York for the gig with a small squad of American media heavyweights, including MTV president Judy McGrath, EMI bigwig John Sykes, Esquire magazine editor Terry McDonell, and Jane and Jann Wenner, the editor/publisher of Rolling Stone and the man upon whose private jet they all just crossed the ocean.

Now you must be wondering, if these VIP's are in the second level— who rates the first? Well, Adam Clayton's parents just came in, sniffed around for a minute, and left. Wim Wenders sat in the corner for a bit,

[340]

Looking so desolate you'd think Ted Turner had just colorized Wings of Desire. But at the moment there's really only two guests whose wigs are so big that they need the special privacy afforded by this sheik's tepee. One is Mick Jagger. The other is Salman Rushdie.

And I, looking for a way to get the conversation started again after a Sahara-like pause, think I've found just the suggestion: "Mick, Salman —what do you fellas say the three of us slip out of here and go bowling?"

"Yeah!" Jagger says. "Fuck it! Be like those people who miss the gig, stay in the back, eat all the food, and then say 'GREAT gig, man, you were FANTASTIC.' "

Behind the walls of drapery, wardrobe coordinator Helen Campbell walks down the hanging hall and comes upon a young man she has never seen before, sitting in a folding chair drinking a beer, just outside the band's room. Helen is startled. She asks who he is. "I'm Larry's brother," he says nonchalantly.

"Oh," Helen says. She turns back down the corridor confused. Out­side she asks publicist Sharon Blankson if she knew Larry's brother was here. "Larry doesn't have a brother," Sharon says. Uh-oh. Sharon tells Helen to call security and runs back into the tent where the intruder is still drinking his beer, nonchalant as a stoned donkey.

"You have to leave!" Sharon says, preparing for a fight. The False Mullen shrugs and stands. One of the security men appears and says, "Leave the bottle and go out the way you came in!" The intruder puts down the beer, lifts the bottom of the tent, and slides out on his belly. Sharon, shaken, goes into the next room and tells U2 what happened. Larry thinks it's hilarious. His attitude is, that my earned a drink!

Back in the secure room, Salman Rushdie explains to me that every music lover must decide if he is a Beatles or Stones man, just as every literature lover must decide if he is a Tolstoy or Dostoyevski man. U2, he reckons, are the rarest of rock bands, because they embody both of those conflicted poles. "I myself," Salman says, cocking his famous pointed eyebrow, "was always a Dostoyevski-Stones man."

Outside someone in the starstruck Zoo crew has put "Sympathy for the Devil" on the public address system as if to remind us that Mick was writing satanic verses when Rushdie was still reading Dante.

Salman says that he thinks the only place in which U2 have not yet gone as far as they could is in Bono's lyrics: "They have not yet matched

[341]

the Beatles. Bono is so bright, so full of ideas that he certainly has the potential to do so, but lyrically he has not written an 'Eleanor Rigby" or 'I Am the Walrus.' "

I don't know about that. I would take "You say love is a temple, love the higher law / you ask me to enter and then you make me crawl" over "Yellow matter custard dripping from a dead dog's eye." But then, Rushdie is older than I am. He was digging "Walrus" in his dorm when I was singing it on the schoolbus.

When it's time to head out to watch the show, Rushdie shrugs toward the big security men looming just outside the tent and says, "I can't go out there, they're afraid of taking me through the crowd." I guess he'll watch from somewhere in the wings. One thing with Salman:

You don't ask details.

Out at the soundboard Adam's parents and Edge's parents are chat­ting like any moms and dads going to see the kids perform at the school variety show. Bobby Hewson's there, too, looking like he's keeping score. One of the moms whispers to the other, "I'm surprised to see Mick Jagger here with Jerry Hall—I thought they'd split up." Then she puts her hand over a nervous smile and says, "I should know not to believe the papers."

Those in the Irish throng who do believe the papers have lately been reading a lot of rumors that Adam and Naomi are on the skids. U2 has a public way of refuting that. Every night during "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World" Bono brings a young woman up from the audience. Tonight the woman he plucks from the crowd is Naomi, which drives the audience bonkers. Naomi glides up onto the ramp between the stages, takes the handi-cam from Bono, and struts right past him as if she were strolling a fashion show catwalk. While the singer cries, "Naomi, baby!" she continues down the ramp, up onto the main stage, past Edge, and over to Adam, with whose noble face she fills the TV screens. Bono is left playing the rejected suiter, crying, "What about me?"

When the song ends the crowd gives Adam and Naomi a big hand while Bono, the ringmaster, calls, "Naomi Campbell! Adam Clayton! What can I say?" He then hums the wedding march.

I'm standing next to Jagger for a lot of the concert. He seems remotely interested most of the time. He does not bat an eye when Bono slips various Stones quotes into the show, even at one point singing a

[342]

few lines of "Fool to Cry." But when U2 conies out to the B stage and kicks into "Angel of Harlem" Mick suddenly starts really cutting loose, dancing as if this were Madison Square Garden and Charlie had just hit the cowbell for "Honky Tonk Woman." You can stand around with Jagger all evening and almost think he's a regular guy, but when he suddenly starts dancing right next to you and turns into MICK JAG­GER, the eleventh grader inside has got to go, "Holy Cow!"

After the show I make it back to the tent early. Bono's still onstage singing "I Can't Help Falling in Love with You" but Adam's already got his bathrobe on, a drink in his mitt, and he's chatting with Jagger. Adam excuses himself to get dressed and I ask Mick if it's possible for him to watch the concert without analyzing it.

"No," he says. "No, I can't. I'm watching it and saying to myself, 'That bit I saw in 1984,' and 'Oh, that's good,' and 'Oh, yeah, I remember when so-and-so did that one,' 'Ah, that bit's quite nice.' " He says there were moments when he'd stop analyzing and get into the music, like when the band came down to the B stage. His brain switches back and forth. He says a lot of people involved in this tour worked on the last Stones tour, Steel Wheels, and he spotted some ideas that the Stones considered and rejected—because they were too expensive!

McGuinness comes out and says hi to Jagger. They discuss how they both investigated using a single enormous video screen that would cover the entire stage end of a football stadium. Jagger says the Stones went as far as having diagrams drawn up. "It looked great, but it was so expensive!"

"Yes," McGuinness says, "we came to the same conclusion." Then, as if sharing a state secret, McGuinness whispers, "Seventeen million dol­lars!" Jagger nods.

McGuinness tells Jagger that he insisted U2 fly with him to Turin to see the last Rolling Stones tour. "We realized you had raised the stakes of stadium shows forever. If U2 were going to play football stadiums we had to try and match it."

Jagger laughs and says, "Yeah, it's like Star Wars, isn't it? It keeps escalating!"

McGuinness looks up and sees Rushdie. "Did you know," Paul asks, "that tonight's show was broadcast around the world on radio to 300 million people? It was going to be 310 million, but several Islamic countries canceled after we brought you onstage."

[343]

"Oh." Salman shrugs. "Sorry."

By now a host of beautiful people and their plus-ones have poured into U2's tent to sip, munch, and confabulate. Bill Carter wanders in, hanging on the outside as if he's not sure he should be here. I've spent some time over at Windmill Lane this week, watching Bill edit his Sarajevo footage. It's pretty sad stuff.

At one point in Bill's documentary two Sarajevo girls talk about a crazy woman who wanders through the city, ignoring the gunfire. They say she's been that way since Serbian Chetniks burst into her kitchen, took her infant from her arms, and held her down while they roasted her baby in the oven. It cried louder and louder, the girls said, and then it didn't cry at all. That was about as much inhumanity as I could handle. Of course, we have emotional defenses; we tell ourselves that maybe it's just a story made up by the girls to try to enlist help from the West against the Serbs. I don't believe that, but sometimes I will have to tell myself that to get to sleep. The Chetniks are the real monsters of the Bosnian war. They are centered around World War II veterans who have been waiting fifty years to get back their royal Serbia. It almost makes you wish that Communism had lasted another decade, until these old villains and their ethnic hatreds were dead.

I finally asked Bill Carter what the hell he was doing in Sarajevo. I can't buy his story that an easygoing California kid who'd worked around the movie business goes bumming through Europe, hooks up with a hippie relief caravan going into Bosnia and stays there for six months. It's great to be a humanitarian, but I told Bill he had to have some other motivation. For the first time since I met him in Verona, Bill Carter got quiet. Then he said that back in California he and his girlfriend had packed all their belongings into a van and were getting ready to move to Mexico. Just as they were about to take off, he got a call about a possible job in L.A. So he flew down, and while he was gone his girlfriend Corrina took the van out and got into a wreck. She was killed.

So when Bill set out from California to wander across America and Europe, he felt his life was over too. Everything had vanished in an instant. He wouldn't have minded dying. Then he found himself in Sarajevo, and he found a place where he fit in. He found a place as full or pain as he was and a grief bigger than his own.

Bill wants to be a filmmaker. This party is a good chance to start making connections. "There are a lot of important people here," he

[344]

says, looking around the tent. "I ought to try meeting some of them. Try schmoozing, make conversation."

"Yeah, Bill," I say. "There's Neil Jordan. He wrote and directed The Crying Came. He's as hot as can be. Go."

⇐ Предыдущая90919293949596979899Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: