For the first ten years of the band's success, Dublin was cool about it.

"Definitely." Adam nods. "Up to the release of Achtung Baby and maybe even up until the summer stadium tour of America it felt as if we were a hardworking rock & roll band. Then the criticism of the band turned to carte blanche acceptance of what we were doing and we were hailed for taking risks, reinventing ourselves, changing the world, being on the cutting edge. Plus the costumes that we had and the ease with which our celebrity friendships suddenly started to become noticed. Obviously the models were a new addition, but we'd met big models before. We got into that situation where the tabloid press has a stupid gossipy fantastical story to print regularly."

I ask Adam if he's ready to talk about his own summer tabloid scandal.

"I don't really want to be quoted on it because I don't really know enough about what happened or where Naomi and I are at in a way that I can share with the public. Suffice to say that after a number of years of

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having difficulties, this year has been a very, very difficult year. I do love Naomi and certain things have got in the way of that, which are my problems that I have to deal with. Anymore than that I can't really go into at the moment 'cause I'm not sure myself. But it has been a watershed year and there are certain things that I do have to face. I hope very much that I can deal with being in U2 and going out with Naomi and the lifestyle that it seems to thrust on me. Or that I allow. I have to sort that out."

Let's talk about your missing the gig the other night. That was something new.

A look of pain crosses Adam's face and he says, "It was a moment where I had to face a lot of things I hadn't really been facing and realize if I was going to be able to go on and be a useful member of this band —and indeed a husband—I had to beat alcohol. I had to realize that every fuckup of mine, every problem over the last ten years that hasn't been quite so serious as that night, has been related to alcohol abuse. So I'm kind of glad I finally had to confront it."

I tell Adam that I don't want to in any way diminish a tough decision, but he's not crawling up the wallpaper or sucking fluid from the radiator. He seems likely to be able to make that adjustment.

"I hadn't had a drink this whole tour until Friday," he says. "When you actually shift in the brain and say, 'You've got a problem with alcohol,' and accept it, you look back over a lot of things and realize that drink was the problem. And I don't want that future. I don't feel like it's 'Poor me, oh, what a terrible problem.' I feel it's a life-changing decision. And maybe I'll slip up. But I think for me and the bottle—it's over."

Flipping through my list of happy topics, I ask if it bugs him that U2 has worked for so hard for so long and done so well—and is still coming home from the tour with very little profit.

It does, yeah, 'cause it has been a lot of work. It was a lot of work before the tour even started. It was a lot of work making Achtung Baby and Zooropa and while I know we had to do things much as we did in order for people to take notice, I think to do a second stadium tour over a two-year period that at the end of the day just paid the bills is quite a significant decision to have taken. And we did take it. It seems to me that financially we'll be in much the same position we were in before we started recording Achtung Baby. I don't know if it was a mistake. Ask me

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in five years. While I'm not obsessed by the financial element it would have been nice if there were at the end a financial freedom there. And I don't think there is."

The whole time we're talking, Adam's TV is on. It's showing Let it Be the documentary about the disintegrating Beatles. When it gets to the scene where an angry George Harrison tells a bossy Paul McCartney, "Just tell me what you want me to play and I'll play it, or if you want I won't play at all," the parallel is a little too close for comfort.

The show in Auckland is the last outdoor concert of the tour; the two nights in Japan will be inside the Tokyo Dome. The venue is beautiful, in a field that rises up into steep hillsides where people can perch. When U2 arrive they are honored with a traditional Maori greeting dance by tribesmen in full costume. During sound check Edge remembers that the last time U2 was here, in 1989, they came up with the music that became "Acrobat" during sound check at this venue.

During the concert I decide to climb up one of the hills overlooking the stage and watch from there. It is a tough climb! I grab on to clumps of grass to haul myself up around hundreds of tight clusters of people watching the concert with the rapt attention of Brando's jungle army in Apocalypse Now.

When I get to the top I look down at what seems like a massive tribal gathering. I feel like some ancient Native American peeking over the ridge at a forbidden Aztec ritual. U2 is playing "Bullet the Blue Sky," the most powerful song in the set, and forty thousand pulsing people are laid out in front of Bono, bathed in waves of red light, while he stands, feet far apart at the edge of the stage, singing, "See the face of fear running scared in the valley below!"

Looking down into the valley below, this gives me the willies. When the red and yellow smoke billows up around him at the end of "Run­ning to Stand Still" it looks like he's about to either sacrifice a virgin or elect a pontiff, and at the end of the night the star maps that fill the TV screens during "Love Is Blindness" become indistinguishable from the stars filling the night sky overhead.

Back at the hotel, at 2:30 in the morning, Bono announces to every straggler that it's time to go out and look for some fun. Kerne Anne Quinn, one of the Principle reps on the road with U2, says she could get in dutch with Dennis Sheehan if she takes off with Bono. Bono says

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he'll write her a note of excuse for Dennis. Edge pipes in, "The only valid excuses are those signed by Larry." A van coming back from the venue is unloading outside. It seems like it would be a really good time to test the mettle of the U2 security staff. So several of us sneak outside and when the driver steps out of the van, jump in. I slide behind the steering wheel—which is on the right, not where I'm used to it being, and floor it out of the hotel, weaving down the wrong side of the road while Edge stands in the hotel doorway laughing and Jerry rips at his hair and yells at Eric for letting Bono escape.

I like driving on the other side of the road; it reminds me of how driving felt when I had just gotten my learner's permit and was intensely in touch with the potential of every automobile on the street to kill you, especially the one you're driving. Once the laughter over ditching secu­rity and the local driver dies down, though, it occurs to all of us that without them we have no idea how to get anywhere. We drive around for a long time, following promises of obscure dockside after-hours joints out of the downtown and down to the waterfront, but we can't find anything swinging in Auckland until we head back downtown, ditch the van, and take to the streets.

Down one alley of cafes and nightclubs Bono bumps into someone he's met before, a mysterious young woman under a cape and cloak with a face like a Botticelli angel. Bono says she lives among the street people here but no one ever touches her, she passes through them like a saint. She has no home because she doesn't need one; she works all week in an office, stays up Monday through Thursday nights in the cabarets and cafes, and then spends all weekend sleeping on the beach. The remark­able thing about Bono is not that he knows people like this wherever he goes, it's that he always manages to wander into them again when he's in town. At about 5 a.m. we're in a smoke-filled pool hall and I say I'm going to bed, we've got to be up in just a few hours for our flight to Tokyo. Bono says, "Bill! No! We're going out soon!"

The magic mick is as good as his word. He leads an entourage out of the pool hall and across town to One Tree Hill, where everyone jumps the fences, climbs to the top of the hill, and watches the sun come up. On the way back down morning has broken and church bells are ringing in the town, so Bono leads his procession to mass. "The stained glass windows," he whispers, "are more articulate than the sermon."

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