Q Magazine, 07.2001

48 hours, 3 cities, 227 vodkas

A few minutes before midnight on Friday 15 June, Elevationair, U2's US tour jet, prepares to make its last flight. If, as Bono sings on Kite, hip hop drives the big cars, then let it be known that U2 still fly the bloody big plane.

The jet idling on the tarmac of Washington Dulles airport has been artfully decorated with the tour's heart-in-a-suitcase logo, right down to the custom-made headrest covers. It looks like it might belong to an airline run by an eccentric, jolly billionaire.

U2 have been in America for three months, winning back the hearts of the nation for whom the techno trimmings and elephantine citrus fruit of the PopMart tour were a conceptual step too far. They are on the home straight now, with just two dates apiece in New York and New Jersey to go, but if anything the pace has escalated.

Seconds after the closing notes of Walk On at Washington's MCI Center, the band and entourage are whisked off to the airport, accoompanied by the wailing sirens of a police escort.

Inside the plane, the cogs of the U2 machine are spinning busily. Manager Paul McGuinness, who will turn 50 in a few minutes, marches up and down, bristling with paperwok and purpose. Bobby Shriver, nephew of John F Kennedy, brother-in-law of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bono's ally in Washington, exudes bonhomie and flashes his Kennedy smile. Only Polly Harvey, the tour's support act, radiates calm, reclining serenely behind a newspaper.

Q is ushered through a curtain into the front half of the plane, swept past Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen Jr and The Edge and plopped down at a table next to Bono, in his post-gig outfit of black hooded top and camouflage beanie hat. "Welcome aboard," he croaks, as expansively as his ravaged vocal cords will allow. He worries that his singing wasn't up to scratch tonight because he's been doing more than his fair share of talking these last days.

As the cover of the morning's copy of USA Today testifies, while U2 have been making up lost ground, their loquacious frontman has been moonlighting as spokesman for Jubilee 2000, the organisation advocating debt relief for the Third World. Washington has become his home from home over the last few months, with flying visits between shows to woo the Bush administration and notoriously conservative Republican senator Jesse Helms. Larry Mullens calls it "dancing with the devil".

Among the Washington movers and shakers at tonight's show was Tipper Gore, wife of Al and, if not for the vagaries of Florida"s electoral process, the new First Lady. Jesse Helms came the night before, although Edge notes that, "I don't think he stayed 'til the end". It would've been interesting to see his reaction to Bono's speech over the opening bars of One tonight, which encompassed the Kennedys, AIDS in Africa, debt relief and the New Testament. "I can go on a bit, can't I ?" he conclued.

But that was Washington and within an hour we will be in New York, a brief hop down the East Coast neatly illustrating the dichotomy between Statesman Bono and Rock Star Bono.
"The right to be stupid and irresponsible is something I hold very dear", he chuckles between forkfuls of grilled chicken salad and swigs of beer. "And luckily it's something I do very well. It's always confused people - quoting scriptures and then swearing at them. But you have to be who you are."
When you spoke to Q last year you said that sometimes you were "too Bono" for comfort. What did you mean by that ?
"My children will tell me to turn down my Bono-ness occasionally", he hoots. "I think it's something to do with going into one. You forget your circumstances, the laws of gravity, everything. I'm not sure [thoughful and extremely long pause] what the thrill is of watching Bono. I think it must be something along the lines of the way you might watch one of those guys who jumps off tall buildings in New York with a few plastic bags as parachutes. It's a slightly will-he-or-won't-he thrill."

And, as Elevationair descends on the gliterring lights of Manhattan, he gives a rich, husky cackle because he is Bono and, as is his way, he's getting away with it.
New York has long been U2's spiritual second home, celebrated as the ultimate getaway in the eponymous song of their career-reviving 11th album, All That You Can't Leave Behind. Like the subject of the song ("so Not autobiographical", he insists), Bono has bought a place on the Upper West Side. Mullen and Clayton have bases here too, although their home is still Dublin.

nly Edge has so far resisted the lure.
"You've got to spend enough time in a place to make it worthwhile", he reasons. "Otherwise it's just turning money into problems. That's Eno's attitude to all possessions."
Upon touching down at JFK airport (or as Bobby Shriver might have it, Uncle Jack's), three quarters of U2 scatter to their respective apartments, leaving Edge to savour the delights of Manhattan nightlife single-handedly. The following morning, Bono will give Q a warning that would have come in handy a few hours earlier : "Edge only wakes up after midnight. He's an owl."
True to form, Edge's promise of "just the one" turns out to mean "just the one" bottle of vodka. Tonight's club is Centro-Fly, home to a peroxide blonde DJ who takes the opportunity between mixes to slip the top of her dress down and dance topless on a podium.

When the novelty palls, we head downstairs to watch Artful Dodger and give Edge a crash course in the current state of UK garage. Shortly before 4.30 am, at which point our energy runs out before the vodka does, a girl walks up to Edge with a purposeful look in her eye.

"Are you a DJ ?" she enquires.
"No," Edge politely replies. "I'm in U2".
"Oh," she says, unimpressed. "I thought I recognised you from somewhere."
Fortunately, such confusion isn't par for course. It does, however, offer a glimpse of what might have been if U2 hadn't wrenched back their crown so successfully. Back in January, at their London Astoria show, Bono announced that they were reapplying for the post of Best Band In The World. If "Best" is a matter of taste, then they have certainly regained enough commercial clout and cultural impact to stake a decent claim to the title.

"A lot of that was bravado", Edge concedes in a soft lilt that could conceivably earn him a sideline providing voiceovers for Irish tourist board commercials. "I suppose the big issue for us was not so much, Is U2 still relevant ? Is rock'n' roll still relevant ? Or is this band this form in a downward spiral ? And, to be honest, we didn't know."
We are sitting in the dimly lit, slef-consciously hip bar of the Time hotel the following evening. Edge has been drinking wine all afternoon at Paul McGuinness's birthday, which means that he's uncommonly talkative and prone to pinching Q's cigarettes, but otherwise as calm and unruffled as ever. With his gentle manner and reassuring, avuncular smile, he is extraordinarily mellow company.

"Having deconstructed the band so ruthlessly over the previous couple of records", he says, "to bring it all back together again to celebrate the limitations of what a rock'n'roll band, and this rock'n'roll band, is about has given us a jolt of encouragement."
Just as Rattle & Hum took U2's earnest, rootsy's 80 incarnation as far as it could go, the PopMart tour marked the outer limits of their futurist, irony-loving, lemon-toting phase. They wanted to redefine the possibilities of of stadium rock, and they did that, but only by spending $250 000 a day and putting themselves through the physical and psychological wringer. With Pop stiffing in America, and the press revelling in Schadenfreude at every unfilled stadium seat, U2 had become, in Bono's words, "as cold as porridge. We'd been doing Kid As for about a decade, if you think about it, and eventually people get the message that you're not that interested in pop music and they leave you be."

When their singles collection, The Best Of 1980-1990, came out the following year, Edge had to force a reluctant Bono to sit down and listen to it. After running away from their past for most of the 90's, U2 realised it was time to appreciate it again, in small doses at least. The key moment came when Edge hit upon Beautiful Day's widescreen guitar chords and, after some initial cold feet, the group agreed that such a classic U2-ism was nothing to be ashamed of.
"It was saying, Fuck it, we are U2 and this is one of the things that we're well known for doing well", asserts Edge. "It was kind of a nice feeling to reclaim the past."

In many ways, the world was ready for them to do just that. If their unlikely spell as underdogs after Pop made them more sympathetic to their critics, so did a star-free musical climate typified by Travis and Kid A. In that context, All That You Can't Leave Behind's combination of vaulting ambition and anthemic, rock'n'roll swagger has proved just the ticket.
"I think it probably took the acceptance of hip hop culture and Oasis for critics in the UK to finally acknowledge that ambition isn't necessarily an indication of a lack of creative credibility," Edge muses. "When we first came ou we didn't share the ghetto mentality of a lot of UK bands. That was the cardinal sin."

Edge will turn 40 on 8 August (Bono and Clayton are 41, Mullen 39) and he's considering hijacking the jet after their gig in Barcelona for a jaunt to Ibiza. He does not consider this in any way extravagant, just as he has no sleepless nights over any of the trappings of success. His top tip of anxious rock stars is to relax and not take any of it too seriously. And find a good frontman to hide behind.

"I think that's why in some ways the band works," he says cheerily. "He loves nothing better than being in the spotlight and I don't think anyone else is taht interested in it. I'm the perfect sideman."
Who doesn't call you Edge ?
"Immigration officials. That's about it these days. I don't like people calling me by my birth name. It seems like an attempt at familiarity which doesn't work."
A lot of this album is about coming to terms with age and responsability. When did you feel that you'd grown up ?
"I'm not sure if I know what it means. When you're a kid you're aware of the icons of manhood, like James Bond or whatever, but it's quite startling to realise that William Hague is younger than you. I think rock'n'roll is a naïve form, it defies analysis. If you ever really become grown up I don't think you can possibly do it, so I suppose I never really want to grow up."
Back at Centro-Fly, there is another comical moment. When the DJ first unveils her chest, Edge's eyebrows raise in a cartoonish, is-this-really-happening manner. When she mixes Billy Idol into FlashdanceWhat A Feeling, they threaten to disappear beneath his hat. "I think that's taking things a bit too far" he protests. Clearly, there's only so much of the 80's he's prepared to reclaim.

Madison Square Garden, Sunday night. The "woo-hoo"'s of Elevation strike up and the new U2 live experience prepares to take Manhattan. After the media-literate, high-tech hi-jinx of the last 10 years it is strikingly sparse - a blast of acid flashback rave visuals during The fly, mocking footage of NRA cheerleader Charlton Heston before Bullet The Blue Sky, but no giant elevators or kite-shaped walls of TV screens. It is, however, the first time that different chapters in U2 history have been so deftly reconciled : they move from a delicate, acoustic Staly ("We recorded this in Berlin at the start of '90s, when you Americans thought we'd gone all arty") to a hysteria-inducing Where The Streets Have No Name, without a missing beat.

Bono describes it as "a love fest". The stage has been constructed in the shape of a heart, with a small enclosure for early bird ticket-holders circumscribed by platforms that extend halfway into the arena. During Until The End Of The World Bono crouches down so close that hyperventilating crowd members can tug at the sleeves of his leather jacket. You half expect the lame to throw their crutches in the air and lepers to jig about shouting, "Hallelujah !"

"Yeah, it's the gospel tent," agrees Bono afterwards, adopting the tones of a Deep South minister. "A revival happening !"
Tonight's hot ticket status is confirmed by the crowd in the raised VIP enclosure : Winona Ryder, Christy Turlington, Ronan Keating, Beastie Boy Adam Horowitz and designer Bruce Weber, with Courtney Love, Moby and Tiger Woods down for the following night. There is also a distinguished looking couple who, it transpires, are Adam Clayton's mum and dad. With touching maternal pride, Mrs Clayton gives her son a wave.

Afterwards the Fun Lovin' Criminals, who supported U2 on PopMart, throw a party at the club Shine. One member of U2, however, goes for "half a drink" and beats a hasty retreat

"Sometimes you can tolerate stuff like that, other times you can't," frowns Larry Mullen, perched on a sofa in the Time bar the following lunchtime. "I'm not built for the schmooze. I'm not good at small talk. I'vegot about one hand of friends [holding up five fingers] and a few acquaintances. I'm cautious by nature and I don't like bullshit, so that doesn't bode well for being in a band."
Are you immune to all the dazzle ?
"Immune is not the word I would use. Immune conjures up an image of somebody who is above it. I think I'm below it."
Bono once quipped that Mullen was Dorian Gray and he was the decaying picture in the drummer's attic. The perpetually hadsome Mullen appears to have stopped ageing around the time of the Joshua Tree. "Some people would say I'm lucky", he smiles. "I'd say[pondering, then brightening] I'm lucky !" He also retains a youthful purity of purpose and disdain for anything not directly related to either his family, U2 or drumming. Even the few seconds between songs are hard going, especially returning to an intimate stage set-up after years of stadiums.

"It's an odd sensation when you have people in the front who can actually see you smiling or see you grimacing," says Mullen, grimacing. "Between songs people look at you, so I'm thinking when I'm holding the sticks, Do I look bored ? What sort of expression should I have on my face ? Should I have an expression on my face ? I find myselft cringing sometimes." And he cringes on cue.

When Bono introduces the band on-stage, a habit he's only developed on this tour, he gestures to the drummer saying, "For a whole lunch break we were called the Larry Mullen Band." Mullen denies that this historical quirk has anything to do with his proprietorial attitude to U2, but is well aware that outsiders see him as the resident spoil-sport, tutting disapprovingly at any departure from old-fashioned rock'n'roll values. This is, after all, the man who called his son Elvis and, with, his crewcut and bowling shirt, looks like he would be most at home propping up the jukebox in a '50s diner.
He begs to differ.

"The perception is that if you say, Hold on a minute, it means, No" he protests. "It's not about that. I suppose I think differently from the other three guys in the band. I don't like to make decisions quickly. In the excitment of a moment people agree to do things that are not good for the band and not good for them and I try to protect the band as much as I can."
Is your own ego less important than the band, then ?

"No, it's a band ego," he says, tucking into an over-sized tuna salada sandwich. "It's a bit like joining the priesthood or the Mob [grinning]. The only way you get out is when you die or when somebody whacks you. And there's a selfish side to it. This has been my life since I was a kid. I don't want it to go pear-shaped."
During the making of the album, were you concerned that Bono's political activities were getting in the way ?

"I think it's still an issue," he says firmly. "I admire him for doing it, but it creates serious, serious difficulties. He's running around trying to do everything and keep everybody happy. The reality is it's probably the most important thing he's going to do in his life, so my attitude would be, Take a year out and do it properly."
Mullen doesn't have much time for extra-curricular activities ("We could be into fish farming but, you know, therell be time for that"), but he likes to read. He has a friend in New York who mails him books he might like, and they help him keep his head together while he's on tour. "It's a world within a world and when you stop and try to get off it's weird," he says, screwing up his face. "Sometimes I find myself at home and someone says, Would you mind moving that ? And I say, Surely somebody else should be doing this ? No, it's your house. It's a mad thing we do. There's nothing natural about it. I mean, I hit for a living. [Father Dougal-ishly] I hit things and people clap !"

And it doesn't get less weird as the years go by ?
"No, it gets more weird. You have to work harder because the goalposts have changed. It's about your integrity, you want your family to be proud of you. I have nightmares of my kids saying, Did you really look like that ? Did you really make that shit ? I want to make good enough records for them to be able to say I'm OK."

Adam Clayton first came to live in New York in the aftermath of the ZOO TV tour, and spent six months "decompressing". He is, therefore, no stranger to the white heat of a Manhattan summer and bustles down the scorching uptown sidewalks in full Englishman abroad, hot weather attire : sandals, shorts, T-shirt and sunhat. In one had he precariously balances two varieties of Starbucks coffee and a smouldering Silk Cut Extra Mild. In the other he clutches a mobile phone and on his back he wears a natty deckchair-cum-rucksack with which he is extremely chuffed. As Larry Mullen notes, "it's the little things that get you through when you're on tour."

We stroll into Central Park, sidestepping the joggers, rollerbladers and cyclists, until Clayton decides we've found the perfect spot. "Today we're going to do something healthy," he announces in his curiously posh drawl, unfolding his deckchair and removing his T-shirt. "We're going to watch other people exercice."
Clayton has the languor and bone-dry humour of a disgraced aristocrat exiled to the colonies for some colourful indiscretion. Bono has taken to teasingly introducing him on-stage as "the poshest member of U2", but the Oxfordshire-born bassist isn't convinced his non-working class, non-Irish status is particularly significant.
"You know, if you're just another arsehole from the suburbs, I think it's pretty understandable if one was offered a chance to take on the world and win, you'd go for it", he contends. "I wasn't destined for greatness in any other area. I'd have ended up being some kind of bad landscape gardener or something. So I much prefer this."

It was Clayton, of course, who flew the flag highest for rock'n'roll antics during the ZOO TOV tour : getting engaged to Naomi Campbell, displaying his penis on the sleeve of Achtung Baby and turning partying into a full-time occupation. Even during the 1980s, when stony faces peered out from beneath wide-brimmed hats, he was the only member with neither a long-term relationship nor strong religious beliefs : "I did have a lot of energy for hanging with people, checking things out, just absorbing."
For his birthday one year, the rest of the band bought him a travelling cocktail cabinet. Bono reveals that "we lived through him vicariously for a few years. I was hoping that he'd do something like buy a yacht and we could all hang out on it. Because all of us were too embarrassed."

So why no yacht, Adam ? Where's the warehouse full of cars ?
"I did have a warehouse full of cars !," he hoots. "But they weren't particularly good cars. The good thing about U2 is it's always been a bit of a struggle. I don't think there was any point where the success was so enormously great that you could completely lose your mind and think you were the Aga Khan or something. We didn't have the time or the economic position to experience any grand madness."

Bono describes Clayton now as "a Buddha". Apart from Silk Cuts, which he chain smokes with heroic stamina, the bassist abandoned all his vices when he gave up drinking in 1996. He also got rid of many of his possessions, including the cars and his extravagant wine cellar. Q suggests that Clayton was already well-acquainted will All That You Can't Leave Behind's topic of confronting your own irresponsability. He sighs.
"I think one of the great things about a band is that they allow you to be irresponsible for longer. Whether or not in the end that's a really healthy position to takeI guess I've been lucky in that I fucked about until my mid 30s and now I can have more of a balanced outlook. I think not having a family and kids, I know what I need. It's not very much actually, which is a nice place to be. Part of it's just opening your eyes and realising that there are practical ways to people live and that's OK. There's nothing wrong with catching the subway in New York - you don't have to get a stretch limo."

Clayton could hold seminars in How To Be In An Enormously Successful Rock Group And Not Go Mad. He appears to be perfectly content with his place in the scheme of things. On the subject of fame he chortles, "Oh, I'm famous cos I know Bono. That's pretty much it."
So do you ever visualise what life beyond U2 might be like ?
"Not so much now. Occasionally I have fantasised about it, but it's kind of pointless to think a life beyond U2 could in any way measure up to a life with U2. You can't get out of this club. It's like the guys in The Beatles. They're still in The Beatles."
And Adam Clayton reclines into his deckchair to soak up the sun and watch the joggers go past.

pending a few days around U2 confirms that ponctuality is not one of Bono's strong points. It's as if in order to pack so much into his life he has to believe that time is elastic and it's the job of everybody around him to remind him that it's not.

An hour later than scheduled, he is all charm and apologises as he sweeps into Pastis, a vogueish Greenwich Village bistro where the brunching hipsters are too cool to ask for an autograph, but not too cool to stare. He cuts an impressive dash in a playboyish cream suit and a black shirt, unbuttoned almost to the navel to reveal a rosary nestling in a healthy chest rug. "Wine bar chic," he winks. "It's coming back".

Bono's hair is jet black but the bristles on his chin are flecked silver and, with the sunglasses off, there are deep lines under his eyes. It's a face that looks lived in, doubtless because it has been, and lived in well. Apart from his compact heigh (5'6") he radiates largeness. He punctuates his speech with acrobatic hand gestures and a generous laugh, marking relevations or particularly quotable aphorisms with a conspiratorial glance. His charm is nuclear.
Over coffe, talk turns to the recent birth of his fourth child, John Abraham Hewson. "JA", he elaborates in a cod Jamaican accent. "Jah. Jubilashun !" The bably was due just before the start of the tour, so he and Mrs Hewson decided to ensure there was no delay.

"My wife Ali has an aversion to violent films, so she thought if she puts on Chopper, which is made by a friend of ours, it might do the trick," he beams with husbandly pride. "And indeed it did ! We got to the hospital 20 minutes before the baby was born. Twenty minutes ! She's an extraordinary girl !"
Is it tought having to be on tour immediately afterwards ?
"Yeah, it is. Cyberdad doesn't sit well with me. You know, I'm watching his progress on e-mail. There's something very sad about that."
Would you recommend this lifestyle to him when he grows up ?
"Yeah, but I was born a travel rat. My education has been out of the windows of planes, trains and automobiles. I love to wake up in different parts of the world."

What's the hardest part of U2's past to come to terms with ?
"There were a lot of unfinished lyrics that were written in five minutes instead of five hours. I remember the '80s for that. The first two lines of Where The Streets Have No Name were just written on the mic - [dismissively] I want to run, I want to hide, I want to tear down the walls that hold me inside. It's like teenage poetry ! The idea behind the song, the idea that you can transcend where you are, the idea of music as a sacrament, is so powerful, but it's this fucking inane couplet. [Chuckes] Those sort of things."
You've talked a lot about your temper lately. Did you sympathise with John Prescott clouting the egg-thrower ?
"Totally. It usually takes violence to get me violent, but I am sympathetic of people who suddenly forget who they are and where they are. [Grinning devilishly] I work very hard at that very night."

Has that line about "midlife crisis" in the song New York dogged you ?
"It followed me around, but everyone who knows me knows that I had a midlife crisis when I was about 27. And at the moment I'm on retreat, I mean in the meditative sense rather than surrender. I'm in a very blissed out state."
Most people's idea of a great midlife crisis would be wearing leather jackets, hanging out with supermodels and buying lots of toys. So that's what you did with ZOO TV

"That's what we did !" he grins. "All those television sets and Trabants were boy toys. And very fast clothesI'm really excited about getting older because all my heroes are in their 50s and 60s. I do think that when I'm 60 I will finally be cool. Not that that is high up on my list, but I will be and so will a lot of my mates. We're going to be badass."
Fame, Bono contends, is "obscene". His advice to anyone dealing with it is to surround yourself with the right people.

He has many friends, some famous (the rest of U2, Wim Wenders), most of them not, and describes himself as "a very loyal, if unreliable friend".
"In that sense, I'm quite Italian. They're family. If you're smart you create a world where you shrink in size and then you find oxygen and room to manuvre. If you're not, then you shrink your world and tower above it, which is my experience of a lot of folk." He laughs self-consciously. "I think I just said I was smart there - I'm sorry about that".
Who intimidates you ?
"When I meet my maker. The rest is easy."

Bono has had good reason to ponder his maker of late. There's death lurking in the corners of All That You Can't Leave Behind, and the more you discover about these songs, the further out of the shadows it creeps. First came the revelation that Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of was inspired by the suicide of Bono and Edge's friend, Michael Hutchence. Then in April, Joey Ramone, an early influence on U2, died of cancer while listening to In A Little While, turning a song originally written about, and during, a hangover into a lullaby for a man's last night on Earth.

Then there is Bono's own unspecified "fright". He recently discovered that he was allergic to certain enzymes in wine, which explained his tendency to fall asleep suddenly. Once, he conked out on the mixing desk in the middle of a Sonic Youth concert ; another time he walked out of a meal with Ali in Paris and woke up half an hour later on a car bonnet. It turns out, however, that these enzymes disappear over time, so now he can only drink vintage wine. "It's one of those awful rock stories, and unfortunately it's true", he confirms ruefully. "It's just one of those things where, y'know, God has you on a short leash".
He also discovered that other food allergies explained why his vox hadn't been so Bono in recent years. He has changed his diet and given up cigarettes, but it's transparently clear that for a while back there he thought it could have been something more serious. It's a dark record, isn't it, Bono ?
"Yeah, there was some dark stuff going around. I'd be lying to you if I said that there was no appeal to me in the, y'know, the abyss.

Everyone wants to slip out of daylight and into the shadows. It's a more comfortable place to be sometimes. You know, half of that argument I'm having with Michael on that song, I'm having with myself too. I just can't fully surrender tothe party. I just can't quite do it. Nearly, though."
Did you think at some point that you might ?
"Oh yeah ! I'm just as irresponsible as I am responsible. People around me tell me I have to look after myself a lot of the time because I care so much about the people around me."

How significant were your own health worries ?
"Yeah, I had some health worries. I had a bit of a fright. I had a lot of stuff I had to" he veers away. "It can happen to you even if you don't have a scare. Suddenly your mortality walks into the room. You fell immortal when you're 16. You want to drive the car as fast as you can, and then there comes a moment in your life when you don't want to crash because youyou..you love it. I just realised that I really like being alive. [Thinking hard] So did Michael Hutchence, you know. And in a lot of ways, he was better at getting through his day than I was. I was the one, you would have thought, with baggage."
What was the worst case scenario ? Did you genuinely think you were going to die ?
"Ah," he exclaims dismissively, "I don't even want to talk about it. I think it's just fair to say that a lot of people around me were sick, dying or dead and I didn't want to be one of them. The love and the lust of life that you feel off that record is very real."

What's the most important belief you've left behind over the years ?
"That innocence is more powerful than experience. Anton Corbijn did a museum retrospective in Holland, with a room full of Bonos, which was a little disturbing. There was one photo where I saw a face that I don't see any more when I look in the mirror. It's nothing to do with youth - it was a look in the eye and I think it probably got beaten out of me by the journey. It's the power of innocence."

Back in Madison Square Garden, there are ghosts circling the arena. Bono procedes Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of with an a cappella version of the Beatles' In My Life : "Lovers and friends I still can recall, some are dead and some are liviing;" before In A Little While he announces, "This is a good song but Joey Ramone made it a great one. He's changed it for me forever. I want to say to New York City that The Ramones were ground zero for us. It's where we started."

That was almost 25 years ago. Since then ?
Punk rock; bad hair; Live Aid; stadium rock; winning America; going too far; buying boy toys; going arty; losing America; playing Sarajevo; riding the lemon; meeting the Pope. And now ? Maybe being the biggest band in the world again, if they fancy it.
"Ah, forget the biggest," coffs Bono, high above New York. "Disneyland is big. On one level I feel that if you're shy and want to make private work for your friends, be a fucking potter ! But what I mean by the band is The One. It's something to do with the moment that music breaks out of its box and suddenly is relevant to a wider world." His hands soar and sweep. "It's the embrace of it. That's what turns us on."