GQ Magazine, 10.2001

Gold in the house

Although U2 strolled onto the stage of the Stockholm Globe just three minutes ago, it is already plain that we are about to witness a celestial stonker of a show.

Exploding out of the traps with a pedal-to-metal rendition of "Elevation", they perform with a hyper-kinetic intensity that would hospitalise most gentlemen of their advanced years.
Bono stomps the boards, decked out like an army surplus dictator, singing his non-ironic rock star nuts off. Edge - no "The", you're among friends - reed-thin and black-capped, vibrates over his guitar with a ferocious delight that borders on demonic possession.

Bassist Adam Clayton wears the expression of a man who has just enjoyed an especially splendid bowel movement and is anticipating another shortly; Larry Mullen Jr just sits there, as ever, looking handsome and hitting things. All this, and the house lights haven'ts gone down yet.

Without so much as checking their rear-view, the band burst into "Beautiful Day", the clarion call from All That You Can't Leave Behind, an album that saw U2 re-apply, as they like to put it, for the job of best band in the world. Well, the position, they'll be pleased to learn, is theirs once more.
These days, U2's live set maps out an extraordinary emotional journey through the past. We get "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day" from back when they were, in Bono's words, "a very, very loud folk band".

They pump out "With Or Without You", "Where The Streets Have No Name" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" from U2's earnest period: a time when they wore their heart on their sleeve and their hair on their shoulders. We get the Mississippi Delta via Dublin blues of "Desire", the howling electrict protests of "Bullet In The Blue Sky" [sic] and the bad-assed Berlin funk of "Mysterious Ways" and "The Fly".

By the time they are rumbling through their first single, "Out Of Control", the more mature fan feels as though he has been put through a particularly rigorous wringer. Needless to say, the big-boned blond audience go considerably, Swedishly, insane.
Out on the satellite stage, Mullen batters his bongos, Clayton masterfully fills out the bottom end, while Edge is noew officialy "on one".

Meanwhile Bono, jerking spasmodically and hitting notes above and beyond the call of duty, seems to be preparing to depart his mortal being. Twenty-one this year, and it's a pleasure to note that U2 are still kicking the arse and massaging the heart of rock'n'roll.
The last 12 months would have destroyed a lesser band. Not only was the new album crucial in terms of re-igniting their audience's passion, though by many to have grown cold, but also during the recording Bono almost lost his voice and, on a more profound level, U2 almost lost their singer.

A series of allergies were to blame for Bono's career-threatening throat condition, and were duly addressed. But a larger problem remained. Bono had become wholly immersed in Jubilee 2000, a political and economic initiative to write off Third World debt. He was spending an increasing amount of time on Capitol Hill, in the Vatican and at various treasuries, trying to convince presidents, capitains of industry and religious leaders that this was a sound idea. In the meantime, U2 were trying to make an album, but without lyrics, vocals and one quarter of the band present.

"We were worried about how far Bono was getting into it", Edge admits. "If only for himself. It all worked out in the end because we've got a great album, but there were times when we certainly needed him and he wasn't around. There were a few tense moments, definitely."

Back at the Stockholm Globe, no such tensions exist. Edge - still playing out of his skin - unleashes yet another eccentric solo. Bono returns the favour by kissing him. Then they duet together on "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", looking and sounding like a post-apocalyptic Everly Brothers.

Come the encores, I find myself at the lip of the stage beside a Swedish security official with a tree-trunk torso, aquatic blue eyes and arms like legs. A persuasive argument, you might say, for genetic cloning. He stands stock-still as Bono strums the four lonesome chords which sweetly suggest the song many of us have been waiting for all night.

Like "Hey Jude" or "Kashmir" or "Losing My Religion" or "Song 2", U2 had no right to come up with a classic when they did.

There were too far into their career, sold too many albums, lived too high on the hog, written more than their share of scarf-waving anthems.

So when they went to Berlin ten years ago, no one expected them to summon up a song of such spiritual and emotional resonance. Yet somehow they wrote "One".

Recorded in Hansa Studios, formerly a Nazi mess hall, the song came from nowhere. Bono had a couple of middle-eights that fitted together, and it was while fiddling around with these mongrel tunes that the inordinately emotive lyrics of "One" began to seep through. "They just fell out of the sky", says Bono. "A gift from above."

This much he knows: the Dalai Lama had asked U2 to participate in a festival called "Oneness". Having sensed the unsavoury whiff of hippiedom, Bono sent back a note saying, "One - but not the same". Unconsciously, this became his hook. As the melody flowed, he was thinking about untouchable sadness, disharmony and disease and relationships that end too soon. Within half an hour, they had recorded the bare bones of what Noel Gallagher now calls "the greatest song ever written".

Tonight, as "One" builds to its commanding climax and Bono beseeches us to "carry each other, carry each other", the Swedish security official tilts his mighty head to the north, but it doesn't stop the tears from cascading down his face.

With typical understatement, Paul McGuinness, U2's debonair manager since year dot, arches an eyebrow, sips his Sancerre and says, "fairly good tonight, wasn't it ?"
He casually mentions that Robbie Williams has feverishly been trying to contact Bono. While in Ireland, Robbie told a journalist that he thought U2 were "the best fucking band on the planet". Honourably, the gentleman of the press filed an article in which Robbie snubsationally declared that U2 were "the worst fucking band on the planet". Naturally, Robbie is keen to set the record straight before the morning paper arrive.

But this is the least of McGuinness's worries. There's this giant lemon the can't shift.
The huge, yellow, ovoid object from which U2 emerged during 1997's patchy popmart tour has become an albatross. There are, it seems, few takers for outsized, hydraulically operated citrus fruit. Especially when they are second-hand. "One careful owner", offer McGuinness hopefully.

In a jubilant mood, Bono and Mullen decide a late drink is in order and lead a thirsty conga to the local nightclub. En route the two men - neither of whom will ever see six foot - walk in step, deep in conversation, breaking off from time to time for a conspiratorial giggle or a shocked double-take.
Both have recently become fathers again and are missing home, but they're still finding it difficult to contain their re-fired enthusiasm for all things U and 2. "It's such a cliché to say we're 'playing with renewed vigour' or we're'back on form' ", says Bono. "You'd hear the old dinosaurs say that and it would make you want to throw up. But in this case, it's absolutely true."

The small sea of 3am drinkers parts and the dance floor groovers - hitherto expression themselves in a Continental fashion - grind to a halt as the club manager proudly leads his celebrated guests to a back-room table. Once seated, Bono orders a bottle of Stolichnaya and scans the room for signs of mischief. "Kind of a posh place, isn't it ?" he frowns. "Maybe we should get some more Stolly in."

We are joined briefly, ans slightly surreally, by R&B thongsmith Sisqo. Bono attempts to engage the young buck in conversation, but a meeting of minds is unlikely. Despidte alighting on a small patch of common ground in the form of Destiny's Child, their conversational flight paths look unlikely to converge.
Having heard of the encounter the following day, Edge says, "Bono just wanted to meet Sisqo because he thought he was one of the few singers in the world who is shorter than he is." He strokes his beard and sighs. "And he was wrong by an inch".

Nevertheless, Bono charms Sisqo into staying for a drink or two, and rants into his ear as the younger man nervously adjusts his enormous trousers and nods furrow-browed over the good-time throb of the Eurodisco below. Finally, amid a confusion of hip-hop handshakes, Sisqo makes his excuses and goes to wait for his limo.

Bono refreshes his glass with a strictly non-metric measure before making fruity eye contact with two pretty women hovering on the periphery of the party. Having established a connection, he beckons the girls over, shifting himself down and moving people along to acommodate the new arrivals. He is strangely familiar with these two elegants beauties and introduces by name. Having briefly observed their pleasantly confident manner and deft drink-pouring technique, it comes as little surprise to learn that they work in the aviation business. Which airline ? "Elevation Air", they reply in unison.

Bono chuckles and chinks glasses with the girls. Elevation Air is the legend stencilled upon the fuselage of U2's brand new 40-seater 737, the jet that will be transporting band and entourage through international airspace for the next six months. "Meet the stewardesses", grinds Bono, a light drizzle of vodka-indebted perspiration forming on his brow. Hot towel, sir ?

Many, many drinks later and Bono is still trying to keep the end of the day at bay. Having climbed out through the skylight in his penthouse, he is now perched precariously on the roof of the Grand Hotel, leprechaun legs dangling over the precipice, woozily watching the sun come up over Stockholm.

Quite how we got up here is anyone's guess. The bar was closed (and rightly so, people were going to work as we walked back to the hotel).

Unfazed, Bono has sweet-talked the breakfast staff into procuring a few nightcaps and had effortlessly cajoled the night porter into allowing a heavily insured superstar to imbibe intoxicating liquor while sitting on the parapet of a very tall building.

Emboldened by the booze and sluring only slightly, Bono is alarmingly relaxed up here. Cracking daft gags and cackling like a Moore

Street tinker, he frequently delves into a rich assortment of unerringly accurate accents. He speaks in great torrents of expletive-strewn consciousness, his flinty eyes sparking beneath the rim of a reverse-mode Che Guevara camouflage cap.

Looking dow at his ecclesiastical arrangement of black socks and sandals, he bemoans his woeful style sense. Only marginally more disturbing than his shocking fashion faux pas is the distant sight of the pavement which is undulating eight storeys beneath his feet.

How great is your life ?
It couldn't be better, it really couldn't.

Who do you envy ?
You know, there are moments when I've yearned to be a country and western singer. I'll go back to the hotel and there'll be someone singing [sings] "Oh, Ruby, don't take your love to town", and I'll be genuinely envious. Standing there in your cowboy hat and your soft shoes singing under your breath. I'd love to be a crooner. I say to Michael Stipe, "You're a crooner", and he gets upset, but it's the highest compliment I can think of paying anyone. I think, what am I doing slapping myself up on the flypaper everynight ? There's a cost to this opera. My old man always says to me, "You're a baritone who thinks he's a tenor". Now that may be a true metaphor in the greater scheme of things, but what's more worrying is that - specifically in the terms of singing - he's right.

Your voice has got deeper in the last few years ?
I've had sex. And sex with a woman too. Also I started smoking - cigars first and then cigarettes - but I've had to stop because I couldn't his the notes any more. There are full-voice B flats and B naturals which can be real bastards.

When did you last thump someone ?
It happens on and off. If I'm not drinking - unless it's a situation when someone is being a bully - then I'm obviously not going to do it. But if I am drinking and someone is being an arsehole then it's likely. I wouldn't like to go into the details.I mean, it's not cool and it's not something I'm proud of, but sometimes it just happens. It has costs me a few bob along the way, but I despise bullies and I always have. It's one of my earliest memories.it's probably little guy syndrome.

Do you ever go in with the head ?
That's the speciality. The forehead. I'm famous for it !

Ok. In a fight, who is the hardest member of U2 ? Clayton doesn't count because you could poleaxe him easily.
That's probably true. Although Edge has thumped me. Edge has attempted to take me out on a couple of occasions. But they're generally very peaceable non-violent people.

How about Brian Eno ? Could you have him ?
Well, when Brian Eno tried to erase the tape of Where The Streets Have No Name he physically had to be held down. He's got up that morning and thought, "this song's taking up too much time, I'm going to get rid of it". So he got to the studio before the band arrived and was about th erase it. I'm glad he didn't because that record wouldn't have been the same without that song.

Larry looks pretty handy.
One of my favourite memories of Larry is him coming up against a biker gang in a pub. They were being pretty obnoxious, but Larry walks up to the biggest guy and says, "listen", and the guy's like, "yeah ? what ?" and Larry goes, "if you're looking for trouble, I'll find you some". Because Larry is all about back-up. You wouldn't mess with Larry because you never know who's around the corner.

Why doesn't he ever get any older looking ?
You know the Picture Of Dorian Gray ? You know the painting in that attic ? Well, I am Larry's painting in the attic. That's what's going on.

Do you feel old ?
My old man's got a great line on that. I say, "you should look after yourself better". And he says, "you should look after yourself better". And I say, "I know people who really look after themselves and they're goig to live a lot longer than you." And he says, "it'll just feel longer."

Pop, the album: what was that all about ?
I was supposed to be a record celebrating a fantastic life of joyous fun and occasional recreational extremity, but it ended up sounding like that hangover after the party. There's some really special songwriting and some very interesting ideas which will be rooted out in time. Elvis Costello plays "Please" in his concerts now. We were really onto something therewe just didn't finish the fucking record. And you know why ? Because we'd boosted the tour and the tour was big business and we had to do it.

A lot of people gave up on you at that point.
And I understand that.

It felt like you were taking the piss.
No, we weren't taking the piss. We really weren't. The whole idea of pop music as a commodity was interesting, but the songs weren't complete. The song Discothèque was meant to have been Sledgehammer, you know ?

The first show on that tour must have been pretty frightening. You didn't know half the new songs.
The sound of hubris. We chose to play the first show in Las Vegas, the middle of a desert. I've since found out that I can't sing in a desert because I'm allergic to this desert weed. When the guy told me I was like, "listen, I'm not Jewish neurotic, I'm Irish macho and we don't do allergies". He's like, "Fine, but don't ever try to play a show in a desert because your throat's going to close up". So we opened the entire tour in the desert and I completely clammed up. Couldn't. Sing. For. Shit.

But the whole PopMart thing felt contrived and camp.
Exactly ! And camp doesn't suit this band. We're not camp. We'd love to be, but we just can't do it. Even Edge with his fucking gay moustache. It's just not going to go off. We did this press conference to announce PopMart, and we thought we were being very Andy Warhol about it and everyone just went "Oh, fuck off !" But in a way it was the biggest compliment because we realised that people didn't want us to be clever and funny. They expected more than that from us. It was like the Pope coming round your house and doing Tommy Cooper impersonations. Spoon, jar, jar, spoon.

That's gert, Your Holiness, but could you do a bit of infallible now ?
Completely. People saw us in a different light. They wanted more than just pranks from us.

If you'd been a fan of U2, at what point would you have gone off them ?
There was a lot of kerfuffle around the time of Rattle And Hum. The feel of those songs would have bothered me as a fan. I hate to concede that, but I think they were a littleI don't know

Smug ?
Maybe. Even though we made that record as fans, I think we misjudged the situation.

You came across like you thought you were inventing the blues.
We didn't go into it like that but I can understand that it might have been a bit of a puzzle.

Are U2 a sexy band ?
I think there's certainly sexuality there.

When you jump into the crowd, does anyone ever grab your cock ?
Sometimes, yeah. Quite often you'll feel a hand getting a hold down there.

What do you think when that happens ?
Oh, mad shit. I try to lift myself out of it like Blake's angel. It's not that I don't want sex to be part of the equation, but I'm trying to elevate it to something higher. Our job - or our mission if you decided to accept it - was to try to not feel as if we were above sex but to make it about more than cock-rock. There's an instinct for transcendence, but there's also an instinct for baseness. I think the two can happily co-exist. Spirit and rock.

Do you reckon Tony Blair really plays guitar ?
He has one in his house. When I was there I actually opened it to check that it was in tune, and it was - which means he's playing it regularly. I said to his son, "Does he play it much then ?" And he said, "He plays it every day." That gives me something. These people who are supposed to be dull, grey men are listening to, I don't know, the Verve. That's the world I want to live in, even if we don't agree on everything. When Blair was photographed with his guitar, the chord he was holding down meant he could only have been playing "Stairway to heaven". I know the chord. It's the one you hear in every guitar shop.

Your involvement with Drop The Debt has been described as a "highly sophisticated use of celebrity". Do you go along with that ?
Celebrity diminishes the subject more often than it magnifies, and I'm aware of that. I'm also aware fo the absurdity of people with sploit lives discussing people who live on less than a dollar a day. I really don't want to be doing this, but I'm good at it. Celebrity is more than a bit silly and it upends God's order of things. Nurses, firemen, mothers are desperate for more money and then people like me are given this status and reward. You're inherently aware that there is something wrong with that.

Is that why celebrities club together ?
Maybe it is. I think that might be true. The thing is, you know celebrity is silly and if there's even a chance of making it a little less silly, I think you should try. But you have to face a lot of pratfalls, not that it's ever stopped me in the past. I got a bit of a hiding in the UK early on. It was like, "Oh, Jesus, he's off again. Let's break his legs before he gets into a sprint". But you have to create a climate where people are prepared to take these risks. The Schadenfreude aspect of the media in the UK comes from a fear of failure and being seen to make a mistake in public. I don't have a problem making an arse out of myself, as long as I feel that, in the process, I'm getting what is needed and that my brain is getting bigger. All of these so-called mistakes have made my life more interesting.

But you must regret the mullet.
I regret that my hair looked like it had been pressed by an iron at the back when we did Live Aid. That's still very hard to deal with.

Is it true the band were pissed off by your performance at Live Aid ?
Yes, they were. I threw the script away. We were meant to be playing another song in front of all those millions but I was looking for a dramatic moment. I'm a performer so I'm always looking out for that moment when you can connect with the audience. I saw it and just went for it.

Were you nervous ?
I met Pete Townshend just before the Who went on and I said to him, "Are you nervous ?" and he said, "I'll be nervous when I meet my maker. Apart from that, no". There was this steely look in his eye and I believed him. I feel like that now. I don't have the same fear I used to have. The lash of criticism doesn't worry me in the same way any more. Anyway, rock bands need a clip around the ear occasionally.

Anyway, back to the mullet.
Ah, but the mullet is back now, isn't it ? Very popular in Hoxton Square, so I'm told. I was just 15 years ahead of my time.

How about those skin-tight chequerboard trousers you used to wear ?
Unforgivable.

The Unforgivable Trousers.
Yeah, forget The Unforgettable Fire, what about the Unforgivable Trousers ?

We clamber back through the small porthole to the relative safety of the sitting room and, now award-winningly drunk, agree to have one last snifter. For the road. Just the one, mind.
In the hazy morning sunlight, I insist that what Bono is doing with Drop The Debt is an act of punk rock - the natural extension of the DIY ethic that inspired him to start a band.

So we chew that one over for a bit, then spend an impassioned half-hour discussing the song "Stuck in a moment you can't get out of", Bono's livid lament for his friend Michael Hutchence, who killed himself in 1997. "I was angry", he says sadly. "And I miss him so much".

We agree to disagree upon U2's best and worse albums - Bono maintains that they are currently in the process of "choping down The Joshua Tree" - and laughingly remember the band's first London gigs. "We were terrible", he grins. "But there was something there. We were smarter than the average bear". I blather on about how, amid the Maoist miserablism of the early Eighties, U2 brought optimism and joy back to rock music. But never one to be outdone when the talk turns to twaddle, he comes back with this :
"Music is magic, magic is religion and some night it's a religious experience playing with this band. It's not about the tunes or the words or the shoes. It's about magic, and magic in a digital age is something to get excited about". It's classic Bono.

Cracking into the minibar, he says that until last year he thought all politicians were intrinsically evil and corrupt but, having met most of the major players during this debt negociations, he has revised his opinion. He talks about meeting James Wolfensohn, the World Bank president, while dressed like a designer down-and-out; he recounts discussing the saxophone with the Federal Reserve chairman, and becoming friends with Larry Summers, the US Treasury Secretary and man whose signature is on every dollar bill.

Then he's off telling wild tales of striding into the Oval Office in big Prada boots, flirting with grim-faced German economists and giving Pope John Paul II his sunglasses.
Before we retire, I ask Bono - a man whose life sometimes resembles the strangest of dreams - what he actually dreams of. "I dream about being Andy Williams," he croaks, drawing himself up to his full 67 inches. "Which is what I intend to do right now. Shall we go to bed ?" Thought you'd never ask.

"I'm not sure what happened", says Edge the following afternoon in an effort to explain his turbocharged live performance the previous evening. "But I'm glad it did."

There are few finer hangover cures than a leisurely chat with Edge. A pensive and softly spoken soul, he exudes a natural calm that would wind up a Zen master. In Edge's company, the world takes on a pleasingly unstructured quality, and time becomes a midly diverting abstract.

U2's musical conscience, he can always be relied upon to have an exotic CD about his person. He doesn't disappoint today: he announces that his current crush is an album by two steel guitar players from the mid-Fifties called Stratosphere Boogies: The Flaming Guitars Of Speedy West And Jimmy Bryant. "It's like early rock'n'roll meets bluegrass with a Hawaiian influence," Edge reports proudly. "It's wacky stuff but it kind of makes you happy just having it on".

That's not to say that he hasn't been keeping an ear on the opposition. "I'm really getting into the REM album", he reveals. "It's a slow burn but I like it a lot. And although I wouldn't consider either REM or Radiohead to be in competition with us, I've listened to Kid A a great deal - it's brilliant - and I'm just starting to get to grips with Amnesiac. I love what they do. It's incredibly powerful. I'm very glad they're around. What I like about them is that they are following their creative instincts and aren't bothered by commercial concerns. In the end it's all about whether the work has something special about it, their does. You have to put in the effort but there's enough real music fans out there to keep Radiohead in jumpers".

Clad himself in tired jeans and a T-shirt of no discernible design, Edge could pass for a Radiohead roadie on dress-down Friday. He orders black coffee and still water then, over the course of the next hour, touches neither. His thoughts come in neat, punctuated paragraphs upon which he runs a thorough sense-check before giving them voice. It leave you with a haunting thought: a game of snap with Edge could take weeks.

In faintly nostalgic mode, we are leafing through U2's back pages. Edge readily agrees that arriving, as U2 did, between the darkest hour of New Wave and the dawn of New Romanticism, they were seen as anything but cool.

"Being cool wasn't high on our list of priorities," he laughs. "It wasn't really a Dublin thing to do. It wasn't cool to be happy or celebratory at the time. We enjoyed the energy of punk, but we neglected to take on board the nihilism and negativity. I remember seeing the Jam on Top Of The Pops doing their first single - the sheer adrenaline was an inspiration. But we didn't have that cynical London attitude or the right clothes. We came at it from another angle altogether".

By way of illustration, he recalls U2 supporting Slade at the Lyceum in London, prior to the release of their first album. "We thought it might be an odd move", he muses."But I remember just being amazed by Noddy Holder in full flight. This astonishing voice. Really pared-down songs. No artifice whatever. It didn't really strike us as being a naff thing to do. We just figured it might be interesting, educational even. And it was".
It could well be this curiosity and intelligence that has sustained U2 through the years when they were achingly un-hip and musically out on a limb. Even an album as critically feted as Achtung Baby - which, in spite of its gloomy subject matter, remains one of Edge's favourite U2 records - was recorded in the face of the grunge groundswell and the globalisation of hip-hop. Without even trying, U2 were unfashionable once again.

"We could have released that album to total indifference", Edge says. "Our whole future was hanging on people getting that vibe. There was a lot of personal turmoil within the band at the time. A lot of tensions. It really could have all gone badly wrong".

Or course it didn't and, the Achtung traumas firmly behind him, Edge cautiously allowas that life has been kind to him of late. He attributes this to the love of a good woman - ZOO TV's resident belly dancer Morleigh Steinberg, who has been Mrs Edge in all but name for the best part of a decade - and his five children, who range in age from one to 17. "It's a terrible cliché," he apologises, "but they are the most important thing in my life. More than any album. They're where it's at".

Having only had two hours' sleep, Bono stops by for a make-or-break cup of coffee. Unsurprisingly, he looks a little blurred. "I need between six and eight hours", he explains groggily, adding just the daintiest splash of milk. "But I rarely sleep beyond nine in the morning".

Bono is concerned that he might have made a fool of himself last night. "Was I effing this and effing that ?" he asks anxiously. "I don't want to come across like some swearing fecking eejit". Reassured that he was eloquent as he was erudite, he brightens up. "It was beautiful watching the sun coming up," he croons. He then squints through his blue shades into the middle distance. There's more classic Bono brewing.

"Sunrises are God's hit singles, aren't they," he improvises impressively. "Do the big number first and then you just get on with the rest of the show".

U2: Band Of The Year. Band Of The Last 21 Years. They're just getting on with the rest of the show.