This is a bad night to be in U2. This is a bad night to be anywhere near U2. This is a bad night to know how to spell U2.

"Three more weeks of seeing your ugly face!" Larry announces as he plops his plate of sushi down next to me in the backstage cafeteria. I tell him I've just run into a pal of mine who recently eloped with a friend of U2's after a very quick courtship. Larry ain't the most sentimental Irishman in the best of times, and today he's feeling especially unromantic.

"What the hell is that marriage all about?" he asks.

"I think they're madly in love," I say.

"I'm sorry," Larry says, getting increasingly peeved at his inability to work his chopsticks and finally grabbing a fork to spear his dinner. I'm a cynic about all that lovey-dovey stuff. A marriage is a partnership and you better look at it that way or you're in trouble! All that lovey-dovey business gets in the way." Larry says lovey-dovey as if he's describing a particularly unpleasant rectal disorder. "How's she gonna feel about him

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in a couple of years when he's pickin' his nose? Or when he's pickin' her nose?"

"Yeah, well," I say, "you better have a whole lot of that lovey-dovey stuff at the beginning to help carry you through the forty years of nose-picking."

"Fair enough," Larry says, and I ask him if he's still thinking about moving to New York for a while after the tour. He glances around to emphasize that what he's about to tell me is top secret and then confides, "I bought an apartment. I'm really excited." I ask where it is and he tells me, describes the building and I say, "Larry! My wife's sister lives in that building! I'll see you all the time!"

"Oh, fuck!" Larry cries. "I'm never going to get away from you! It's never going to end!"

Edge arrives, exasperated and mumbling curses. "I've been under the stage since sound check!" he tells Larry. That's over two hours. "Don't ever try to reprogram a string section while the support band is playing above your head!" He notices that we are sitting in front of a particu­larly gruesome mural of Bono and Edge, painted by the locals in tribute. It pretty much kills what's left of his appetite.

Edge is grumbling about impending disaster when Morleigh slips up behind him, puts her hands on his shoulders and, when he turns his head, plants a kiss on his lips. Edge's mood lightens at once. Pretty soon he's joking about the string of mechanical disasters that have befallen U2's high-tech operation here in the land of aboriginal sorcery.

Relaxing into his usual focused work-mode. Edge asks who Bono should telephone from the stage for the TV broadcast tomorrow. This is the last the world will see of Zoo TV—indeed it's the last the world will see of U2 for a while. They need a summing up. Maybe Macphisto should try to call President Clinton—then when he doesn't get through he can cry, "But I got him elected!" Edge considers the idea and then rejects it as too American. This has to be something that makes sense to viewers all over the world. Edge says that perhaps Bono, as Macphisto, should address the world audience, make a summing-up speech for Zoo TV. We start tossing out ideas for a speech that would combine the spirits of John F. Kennedy, Christ ascending from the apostles, and the Wizard of Oz preparing to board his balloon. Then Edge excuses himself to go get ready for the show.

I go out to watch B.A.D. and discover that the place is swarming with

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Millions of tiny black flies. They're all over the hair and chairs and clothes of the audience. Everybody's scratching. I'm standing at the soundboard slapping bugs with the only other early guest, Tiny Tim. But he couldn't have brought all of them.

Just before showtime Dallas Schoo, Edge's guitar tech, gets a sum­mons from the U2 dressing room. He enters to find himself face-to-face with Edge, Bono, Larry, and McGuinness, all looking as grim as a firing squad. They want Dallas's opinion. Adam will not be able to play the show tonight. What does Dallas think the options are? Dallas tells his bosses what they already know: they can't consider canceling because tonight is the only chance for the TV director and cameramen to block out the concert for tomorrow night's broadcast. With or without Adam Clayton on bass, U2 has to go on. Edge raises the theoretical possibility of Dallas playing guitar and Edge playing bass. But that's absurd and everybody knows it. Aside from the fact that the audience damn well expects to hear Edge on guitar when they shell out for a U2 ticket, the TV crew would only be confused by a run-through in which people were playing the wrong instruments. Somebody has to substitute for Adam, and the only candidate who could possibly be deputized in the next fifteen minutes is Adam's bass roadie, a quiet, skinny guy named Stuart Morgan.

"Dallas," Edge says, "you know Stuart. You play with him every day at sound check. You know he knows the songs. Can Stuart do the gig?" McGuinness puts down his drink and gives the guitar tech his full attention.

All eyes are on Dallas, who would rather be anywhere than here right now. He speaks carefully in his slow cowboy drawl: "Stuart can do it. He knows those songs. But you gotta keep eye contact with him, let him know when a bridge is coming up." The four bosses nod and thank Dallas. Then they send for Stuart to tell him he's been drafted.

"We have some bad news'" Bono tells the Sydney throng after the cheers for "Zoo Station" have subsided. "This is the first show we've ever played without Adam! Adam is very sick!" Bono's laying on the announcement with enough melodrama that I half expect him to drop to his knees and lead a prayer. Bono introduces Stuart (who is trying to become invisible in black shirts, pants, and a black cap pulled low over his eyes) as "Adam's mentor." The singer goes on to rouse the crowd by declaring, "We didn't want to cancel Sydney—'cause you'd get pissed

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off! And who knows when we're gonna get another blue sky day in Sydneyyyyyl"

As U2 plays. Edge cues Stuart in to every impending section change. Otherwise the understudy keeps his eyes locked with Larry's, who keeps the tempo together while Bono holds the attention of the audience. Even that is not easy tonight. During "New Year's Day" Bono's hand microphone dies, leaving Edge howling the background aiii-yas over and over while Bono signals the roadies frantically with an outstretched arm. The roadies, misunderstanding the signal, run out and put a cup of water in Bono's hand. Finally his manic gesturing communicates and he is given a second mike—which he sings into and which turns out to also be dead. At this point any of our less brilliant rock stars might start weeping, stalk into the wings to fire people, or jump into the audience to beat someone up. Not Bono. He walks to the front lip of the stage, throws down the broken microphone, and starts howling out the words unamplified. Not that anyone in the stadium can hear him—he almost surely cannot hear himself over the gigantic amplification of the band— but the dramatic gesture creates a surge of excitement in the audience, who sing the missing words themselves while Bono stands there, out­stretched and glorious.

Watching with me at the soundboard are two delegates from MTV America, the young woman veejay who goes by the single name Kennedy and her young man producer. They were supposed to be here to take part in the triplecast, but when that plug was pulled by U2, Tom Freston let the kids go to Australia anyway. Kennedy, whose public persona is that of a wisecracking gal who might say anything, has never been out of America before. She just turned twenty-one and right now she is agog at the figure standing a few feet away from us. Tiny Tim is here!" she whispers. Who would give Tiny Tim bus fare," her boy producer sneers, "let alone airfare to Australia?"

This condescension really rubs me the wrong way, so I tell them a big lie: "Are you kidding? Tiny Tim is like God in Australia! He's the biggest American star down here!"

"Really?" Kennedy says.

Like Jerry Lewis in France," the producer explains, as if he knew it all along.

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