Some fans come up looking for photos and autographs. Bono, Edge, and Adam oblige, but it's a signal to start heading back to Christchurch. It's getting dark out.

As we ride through the twilight with Willie and Eric, Bono continues to brood about the nature of celebrity. The writer Charles M. Young has a theory, I tell him, that the reason rock stars get so obsessed with critics is because unlike most people, rock stars control 99 percent of what happens in their lives. So they become obsessed with the I percent they can't control. It infuriates them that some little gnat in the newspa­per is allowed to mock them or say they stink. They want to respond to the gnat with a cannon.

"I think that's a very smart insight," Bono says. "I've felt that in myself. Ali recently went through it for the first time with her Chernobyl film. She got some good reviews and some bad reviews, she felt she wasn't quoted quite accurately once or twice, and now she won't have anything to do with it. She's been nominated for Irish Woman of the Year but she refuses to take part, refuses even to have her photo taken for it."

We ride along in silence and then Bono says, "It's too bad that comedian is making fun of Eddie Vedder now." Bono's referring to Howard Stern, an American disk jockey and TV personality who's been doing a routine about how when Pearl Jam first appeared Eddie Vedder was a happy, smiley guy and now that he's a big star he's morose and doesn't want to be famous. "I know what Eddie's going through," Bono says.

"Sure," I say. "He's shocked to realize that everything he says is being written down, recorded, and held up for dissection."

"When that happens," Bono says, "it makes you very self-conscious and serious. That's what happened to us in the mid-eighties. You

433

Become the Serious Men. Now we've spent three years confusing the issue so much that hopefully people won't be sure who we are.

"Just in the last week the red light has gone on in my head. I know U2's been in people's faces too much. We have to stop right now. We've done two albums, two years of touring. I didn't know the Sinatra duet would turn into such a big thing. Roger Daltrey just asked me to sing with him at Carnegie Hall on a show called 'Daltrey Sings Townshend.' I'd like to pay my respects to Townshend, but I said no. We considered recording a version of 'Jean Genie' in Tokyo for a tribute to Bowie. Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane were big influences on U2 and should be acknowledged. But I said no. The red light went on with Rattle and Hum and I ignored it. This time I won't."

A huge full moon has risen over the hills, and we look out to see that we are passing Mt. Cavendish and the ski lift we promised ourselves a ride on this morning. We pull into a parking lot at the base and climb out of the car. The ski lift ferries diners up to a restaurant at the pinnacle. Empty gondolas clank down the slope, make a turn at the bottom, and then ascend again. The sign says they stopped serving ten minutes ago. The sign also says no more than three to a car. But the four of us—Bono, Willie, Eric, and me—decide to take a chance and jump in.

It seems like a bad idea almost immediately. As we climb higher and higher over jagged rocks the gondola lurches and rattles in the wind. Eric talks about his days as a fireman, having to go through the debris of a terrible plane crash picking up eyeballs and human brains. The moon has gone behind a black cloud. The cables overhead groan. I'm saying a Hail Mary and thinking of the old joke about the musician who dies and goes to heaven. He meets Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, John Lennon —and then he sees Bono flying by. "Hey," the musician says, "I didn't know Bono was dead!" "He's not," Elvis replies. "That's God—He likes to pretend He's Bono."

We arrive at the Ridge Restaurant all feeling a little nearer to heaven. I he innkeeper takes pity and agrees to serve us dinner. Willie's mood seems to have lightened a little, but whatever bad news he received still has command of his attention. We fall into a discussion about immor­tality.

I didn't have Sunday school on my back," Bono says of his own upbringing. Then, of U2's spiritual conversion he explains, "We had

434

something far stronger—a bright white light. It was too hot. But it will never leave us. And it made the Sunday school notion of God seem squeaky. Squeaky clean."

Among themselves U2 refer to no smoking/no drinking/no dancing Christians as "Squeakies." In the early days of their conversion, though, they were pretty upright themselves. They realized that they could replace "Him" in songs about God with "You" and they would work as love songs. Later on sex became a metaphor, and they then realized that that metaphor was all through the Bible—it all came down to faithfulness. And in U2's current work, from "Love Is Blindness" to "The Wanderer," it still does.

Cardiff, Wales, is a hotbed of evangelical enthusiasm. When U2 arrived there last summer on their way to London they knew they'd be facing stiff judgment. Every night at the end of the concert, during the instrumental coda to "Love Is Blindness," Bono brings a woman up onto the B stage to waltz with him while the band plays out the song. Although it look elegaic in the dim blue light, he is often whispering orders ("Shut up, calm down, listen to the music, listen to the music") in the ears of hysterical partners and holding them steady to keep them from leaping up and down, tearing off a souvenir, or waving to their buddies. Well, in Cardiff he reached out to a woman who, while they slow danced, was giving him the twice-born third degree about this Macphisto nonsense. "What are you doing?" she demanded while wip­ing the Macphisto makeup off his face. "What are you doing?"

Bono understood he had solicited a squeaky. "It's Ecclesiastes," he whispered while waltzing her around romantically for the crowd. She didn't buy it, she was angry. "Did you ever read The Screwtape Letters! Bono asked her. She said she had. The Screwtape Letters by the Christian writer C. S. Lewis pretends to be a series of instructions about how to corrupt mortals sent by a senior devil to a young demon-in-training. Lewis described his devil this way: "Screwtape's outlook is like a photo­graphic negative; his whites are our blacks and whatever he welcomes we ought to dread." While waltzing with the angry evangelical Bono in­voked Screwtape and told her, "That's what this is."

"Oh." She thought about it and then nodded, put her arm on his shoulder, and gave in to the dance.

"It took U2 fifteen years to get from Psalms to Ecclesiastes." Bono sighs. "And it's only one book!"

435

When we get back to the bottom of the mountain a few kids are waiting with cameras and autograph pads. Eric, Willie, and I step aside to let Bono pose and the kids say, No, no, no! Please! The whole group! We try to explain that we are not the other members of U2, but they will not believe it. So we give up and pose. "You know, Larry," I say to Eric, "I don't usually let myself be photographed without my hat."

The kids thank us profusely, one boy saying, "My best friend loves U2—without a photo he would never believe I met you!"

"You just show him that picture, kid," I say. "He'll know if you really met U2."

Back in Christchurch at midnight we head to a bar called Americano. Larry Mullen's there, as are a number of people from the tour. Eileen Long from Principle comes in—she's been searching everywhere for Bono. He's supposed to get on the phone to Dublin radio to take part in World AIDS Awareness Day. She drags Bono off by the ear. Willie and I go up to the bar and order drinks.

"This has been the longest day of my life," Willie says. "I got a call this morning from my friend in California. He went in for a routine checkup and found out he's HIV-positive."

I don't know what to say. Willie smiles, letting me off the hook. "That's why I've been sort of preoccupied all day. I told Bono, but I don't want everyone to know. I don't want people treating me differ­ently."

Willie leans on the bar and stares into midair. "It means nothing, I know. Scientists are working round the clock to find a cure." He takes a drink and says quietly, "He hasn't told his mother yet." Are your parents alive, Willie?" I ask. No, neither of them."

"Mine either. You know, in life you have this little window—maybe ten years—between when the older people you love finish dying and your own generation starts. It feels like that window is closing."

We drink to long life and better days. I show Willie pictures of my kids and he says they're beautiful; he shows me a photo of his friend and realizes that I'm not sure what I'm supposed to say, so he laughs and says, "If you go for that type!"

It's the middle of the night here in New Zealand, but Bono is on the phone to Ireland, where it's afternoon. He is reading on the radio from Oscar Wilde's "Requiescat":

436

⇐ Предыдущая115116117118119120121122123124Следующая ⇒

Поделиться: