Vanity Fair Article

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RademR

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Ok, Im having a problem with my stupid scanner so I cant give u guys the scans from the article. It's Friday night (well, 2 in the morning) and I had to stay out of the bars for one night and take care of my girlfriend who is ill. And a promise is a promise, so I'll just type it out because its a good read, and I'm bored as hell and type very fast. Here goes:
_____________________________________

"U2'S UNFORGETTABLE FIRE"

u2 have stayed great - and stayed together, for more than a quarter-century. Observing the group from the 80's era of their first limo ride up to the Bono-crusading present (and this month, their 11th album), the author learns how.

-By Lisa Robinson
_______________________________________

July 27, 2004, Boston:
Symphony Hall is all dressed up in red, white, and blue balloons for the party honoring Senator Kennedy's 42 years of public service. The room is filled with 2,600 political contributors, friends of the Kennedys, members of the Kennedy family, and celebrities. Ben Affleck is here. So are Audra Mcdonald and Glenn Close. But as is often the case at such events, Bono, the rock star, the lead singer of u2, is (after the senator) the main attraction. Dressed in black, Bono walks onstage to join conductor John Williams and the Boston Pops Orchestra. He looks a bit unsure about himself being up there without his band - Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr. He sings u2's "Pride" with the Boston Pops and then, accompanied by Yo-Yo Ma and the orchestra, "The Hands that Built America." He gets a standing ovation. And then Bono walks offstage and mutters to me, "It's a long way from CBGB's."

u2, who thought they were a punk band when they started their quest for stardom at Dublin's Mount Temple public high school more than 25 years ago, never did perform at CBGB's. When they first came to America, in December 1980, intent on breaking America (and happy to come back time after time until they did), they performed in New York City at the Mudd Club. That same month, they did a show at the Ritz during a snowstorm with about 100 people in attendance - including their booking agent, Frank Barsalona, who told them they were going to be very big. Of course, Barsalona said that to all of his bands. But there was always something different about u2.
 
In the 21 years I have traveled with and talked to u2 for various syndicated newspaper columns, rock magazines, and radio shows, it has become clear that there has never been, and probably never will be again, a band like u2. A combination of the Beatles (hugely popular, melodic) and the New York punk band Television (innovative, uplifting), they also have the heart of the Ramones and the swagger of Frank Sinatra.

In their career-spanning quarter of a century, they have never had a band member arrested for carrying a gun, or punching a photographer, or been thrown out of a nightclub or dragged kicking and screaming out of an appartment building in a state of undress. No memer of u2 has had to hide stories from a wife about a visit to a strip club. Not one of the original members has quit the band, overdosed, commited suicied, been murdered, or died. Even though Bono writes the melodies and the words to the songs and Edge comes up with much of the rest of the music, the four of them truly work out songs together and have had an equal share in the money. They've had the same manager for 27 years, which is practically unheard of in the music business. In fact, Paul McGuinness, who was an assitant director of TV commercials when he started managing u2, is the fifth member of the band. They've had the same tour manager, Dennis Sheehan, for more than 20 years and an organization (staffed by mostly women) known for efficiency and good manners in a nasty, nasty business. And except for a brief period of time when Adam Clayton was engaged to model Naomi Campbell, they have never been fodder for the tabloids. u2, the only mega-band that sill makes both commercially succesful and vital music, avoided the rock-star cliche from the get-go.
 
They never backed themselves into a corner by saying they didn't want to sing a particular song when they were 40. They didn't pretend they didn't want to play large venues. And while every band that steps onstage really wants to be as big as th Beatles, u2 admitted it. Their songs were always described as anthemic, with soaring melodies and ringing guitars. They had big dreams, big ideas, and a big, atmospheric sound. u2 was, and is, a band that matters.
 
May 1983, the US Festival, Devore, California:
A Bronze statue of John Lennon on the side of the stage motivates Bono to climb onto the scaffolding mid-performance, wave a huge white flag, and lead the audience of 200,000 in "Give Peace a Chance." The words passionate, soulful, committed, conficited, naive, optimistic, operatic, heartfelt, idealistic, and enthusiastic could all have been coined with Bono in mind. After the show, he collapses into a chair backstage. I ask if u2 is a political band.

"You saw the crowd," he says. "You saw the joy onstage. We don't use the stage as a soapbox, and we dont have a poker up our backsides. People are always reaching for a label, so they say were a "spiritual band" or a "political band". I'm freightened of all that. We play music. We're four people. We're u2. Cliches are killking music. In our music and our lifestyle, we're trying to avoid cliches."

I note that his voice is hoarse. "I paid a lot of money to see an incredible man, a voice specialist. And, basically, he told me to shut up."

_______________

"I want to be a certain kind of person, a good person, and I don't think I am one in my life. But when I get onstage, I'm a much better person - I'm the person I want to be." -Bono, 1985.
 
Wow, thanks for typing this up! Seems like a great article so far.
 
October 26, 1984, Paris, France:
The day after seeing u2 perform at the large Espace Ballard, I arrive at the Warwick hotel an hour late for my interview with Bono. He is barely awake, wearing a peach-colored terry-cloth bathrobe and, clearly, nothing underneath. I forgot to bring a cassette, so we go down the hall to borrow one from Edge, who is also wearing a peach-colored terry and I tell them they look like members of a cult. Edge gives me a tape of the band's soundcheck from the night before, and I record the interview over it. (Years later, reading my notes, I realize, big mistake).

I point out to Bono that he's not doing all that flag-waving and hanging off of things onstage as much as he used to , and he says, "I find the greater the crowd, the greater the charge, but adrenaline can get me into trouble. One night I threw Larry's drum kit into the audience, and it came to blows with the band that night. Edge actually socked me on the jaw, and you know him, he's a real gentleman. If things go bad, everyone will be silent on the way back to the hotel and then there'll be a phone call from Adam, hes the diplomat, and he'll say, 'Can we have a word with you?' I'll have to go down there and face the firing squad. They'll just say, 'Come on-you don't have to do this; you must keep control of this thing.' It's supportive; they know that if I fall off the stage I'll break some bones. They tell me the music should speak for itself."
 
Is u2 getting used to riding around in limousines?
"The first ride we had in a limo was in 1980," Bono says. "We arrived in Hollywood, and the record company laid on this long white stretch limo. We were completely redfaced riding around in it, but, at the same time, sort of curious. I remember we went to an import record shop in L.A. that had been supportive of the band, and we made the limo driver park around the corner while we all sort of slinked into the shop. We were so uncool. I've just never been into that rock n' roll star trip of surrounding yourself with people who applaud your every dull action as you invade yet another nightclub."

"Our goal is to write the perfect album. Every time we go into the studio we hope we'll get closer to that. But I very much doubt we'll ever attain that goal of perfection. It's like Mount Everest. That must be a terribly depressing place; you've spent all your time preparing to get up there, and when you get there all you can do is walk down again,." -Edge, 1985.
 
April 12, 1985, Brendan Byrne Arena, New Jersey:
I bring models Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington backstage to meet the band. Bono, who heretofore had seemed such a serious, poetic type, turns into an instant flirt. "Such beautiful women," he murmurs, smiling, eyes wide, kissing their hands. Bono tells me that now he considers u2 "the world's loudest folk band."

April 2, 1987:
In Las Vegas, the band goes to see Frank Sinatra, who introduces them from the stage. He announces that their album The Joshua Tree is currently No. 1, but notes, "they sure don't spend their money on their clothes."
 
May 7, 1987, Hartford, Conneticut:
I tell the band that the stark, serious, black n white Anton Corbijn photos that accompany the Joshua Tree makes them look like the Brothers Grimm. Bono registers at the J.P. Morgan Hotel under the name Tony Orlando. After the show at the Coliseum, we stay up all night in Bono's suite with J. Geils singer Peter Wolf, listening to Wolf's Hank Williams tapes and tapes of Television I'd recorded live at CBGB's.

And Bono talks. "Rock n' rollers generally do their best work in their first 10 years and then they break up like the Beatles," he says, "or they repeat themselves ad infinitum and just bore everyone to death. I just always believed that there was some special spark between us when we played and that we would continue to make records that people would want to hear. Plus, we were always on the lookout for the bullshit: like 'Here comes the Bullshit 'round the corner.' We wanted to protect our music and ourselves from all of that."

Are you as non-violent as your songs? "People think I must be some sort of guru because we write songs like "Pride" and are attracted to people like MLK and Gandhi. But I'm attracted to all that because I grew up in a very violent way, and I depise the violence that I see in myself. I'm much more the guy with the broken bottle in his hand than the guy who would turn the other cheek."
 
August 1992, New York City:
By now u2 has a touring entourage of more than 70 people. Private plans and limos transport them to their massive, sold-out concert all over the world. The Zoo TV tour is a big, technically ambitious production that promotes the technically ambitious Achtung Baby. There are huge video screens and computerized effects. Live onstage telephone hookups to the White House and Sarajevo. Pizza deliveries mid-concert, Belly dancers. (When the belly dancer who performs nightly to "Mysterious Ways," quites and leaves the tour, the band choreographer, Morleigh Steinberg, fills in. Later that year she and Edge- who is separated from his wife - fall in love.). Bono dresses up as two characters onstage; for "The Fly" he wears black leather ann wraparound glasses, as Macphisto, gold lame, lipstick, and red horns on his head. Have u2 gone techno? Disco?

I take Phil Spectrum to see u2 at Yankee Stadium. He brings a bottle of Dom Perignon as a gift to the band. He gets a bunch of policemen to escort him to the soundboard on the field. In the dressing room after the show are John McEnroe, Winona Ryder - who gazes adoringly at Bono - and Spector, who talks to Bono, then tells me that Bono is the only musician he's met who compares to John Lennon, and suggest that he producer a record with Bono in mono.
 
June 1993, Paris, France:
At some point prior to the band's 1993 European tour, Paul McGuinness calls and tells me that Adam and Naomi Campbell have fallen in love and are engaged. Now, due to the presence of Naomi and her pal Christy Turlington (who posed with Bono on the cover of the December 1992 British Vogue), u2 has crazed paparazzi follwing them everywhere.

When Adam and Naomi eventually do break up a few years later, rumors are that her dramatic, high-handed behavior was at odds with a u2 world that does not include ordering people around. Later, Adam (who has been with his girlfriend, Susie Smith, since 1994) would say about the paparazzi: "It's not really my cup of tea. I definetly prefer to live my life in a more private way. At the end of the day, those tabloid stories are hurtful."

And later still, commenting on his position as the band's token headonist: "I do think it was exaggerated over the years. I did enjoy myself as any young man would have done in a similar situation, but I don't think it was particularly excessive compared to most people. It may have seemed that I was more so because the others weren't so visible. But they have more than caught up, I must say."
 
1997:
The media miss the intended irony of the Popmart tour, and the shows - described by Bono as "the Super Bowl every night" - get off to a rock start. The daily operating costs are $250,000. Has u2 gone wacko? It's a long way from punk rock. Larry, who rarely talks to the press, and who feels that the songs off the Pop album were never really finished, appears uneasy, as if he's been outvoted on this enitre thing. When asked why they hadn't scaled things down after Zoo Tv Tour, Bono says, "that would have been too predictable. Our music is too big to have a roof over it's head. the worship of the garage come from people who never started out in one or can't get out if it. We did."

I ask Bono what he's like when he gets home after a long tour. "You find yourself on the dinner table," he says, "maniacally swinginng a lightbulb, telling jokes that aren't funny." Are you trapped by those tinted glasses? "Are you kidding? This is my way out. It's a mask." Aren't stadium shows dated? He agrees: "I think they're really, really dated, which is why I think a band like us can take this tired old 70s format into the next century."
 
Feb 2001, Los Angeles:
At the Grammy awards rehearsal for u2's "Beautiful Day" (which will win three awards), I tell Bono that Mick Jagger always said you need a lot of "front" to be a good lead singer. "I certainly have a lot of front," Bono says with a laugh. In an upstairs private room at the restaurant Cicada, at the Universal Music Group party after the awards, Bono, Dr. Dre, and Eminem talk about making records.

Feb 2002, Los Angeles:
u2 receive Grammy nominations for the All That You can't Leave Behind album, win four awards, but lose album of the year to O Brother Where Art Thou? Jimmy Iovine is furious. Iovine, described to me by Bono in 1983 as a "nutcase, I love him," is the band's former producer who went to Ireland in 1983 to audition for u2. Now he heads up their record company.

Jan 20, 2001:
At the Golden Globe awards, u2 win best song for "The hands that Built America," from Gangs of New York, and Bono uses the word "fucking" as an adjective in his acceptance speech. (a year and a half later it causes a furor with the F.C.C.). Two months later, at the Academy Awards, u2 lose the best song Oscar to Eminem, who is home asleep in Detroit. At the Vanity Fair party, the u2 entourage - band, wives, management- arrives at Mortons. "Lose Youself is a great song," Bono says graciously, and they all drink and smoke and are the last to leave. The next day, Paul McGuinness calls to say, "I think that was the best party we ever went to in our lives."
 
July 27, 2004:
After Sen. Kennedy's party, Bono, Ali, Paul McGuinness, Bobby and Maria Shriver, and assorted friends and associates all hang out in a private suite of rooms on the fourth floor of the Fairmont Copley Plaza. I turn on my tape recorder and ask Bono how he balances his politcal work with the band. "It's a classic rock-star syndrome," he says. "I want to have fun and I want to save the world. The band has been incredibly tolerant. Let's face it, it's pretty unhip work; some of these people are just so uncool. The Band is occasionally frustrated and annoyed, but they're also very proud, and, therefore, they financially support my work. Because it takes two years to make a record that should take one, thats two years of their lives too that they are investing in this other stuff."

Why did the album take two years?
"Great hangs back until very good gets tired. Who wants a good, or even very good, u2 record right now? what's the point? We need 11 great reasons to leave home."

You're all very rich, how do you keep things in perspective?
"The bubbles might go to my head ocassionally. And the altitude sickness...it's called Vertigo," he says (referring to the title of the band's first single ffrom the new album). "I think it goes back to what we've said about punk rock. You're shaped at birth, your DNA is in place. For us, coming out of punk rock, we despise bands who thought it was just enough to turn up. That fat rock n' roll thing...they got the house and the car but lose everything else. Imprinted in us was that the only justification for success is not being crap. There's a deal with your audience - we have this life and we don't have to worry about the things they worry about - medical bills, where the kids go to school - and in return, don't be dull, don't give us your second best."
 
We order food. Bono, who has an allergy to red wine, drinks white wine and eats pizza. I tell him I cannot think of another band who have remained intact for so long, with, for example, no drug problems.

"Not interested," he says, "I mean, the people in this band that abused alcohol...we've made mistakes. The right to be ridiculous is something I hold very dear, especially when you're dealing with serious stuff a lot of the time. Also, I've noticed this not just with bands but with men as they older; they rid the room of arguement, they want to be lord of their own domain, and they eventually push out of their lives people who challenge their points of view. I noticed this with my father, cousins, uncles, brothers. They end up in a room where everybody agrees with them, which is like going solo. I think that's a mistake. It's really evolved to want to be in an equal partnership, because the friction keeps you sharp. I would say I need the band more than they need me, especially as a musician - becuase I haven't got the sophistication to play the melodies I make up in my head. But I also need them emotionally. A Lot."
 
Celebrity - good or bad?
"I understand the power of having a famous face, and I'm not being disingenious about a certain celebrity status that I might have - it comes in handy here and there, and it's an annoyance here and there. But I'm not sure I'm very good at it."

Who Is? Jack Nicholson?
"Jack Nicholson is a master at being in the public eye and giving absolutely nothing away. We don't get the paparazzi, we don't get all that kerfuffle. When the guys go back to the New York Post, and say, 'Here's a picture of Bono,' they don't go 'WOW'.

That's because you're out so much (laughter)
"It's because it's not our world," he says, "There was a time when we were playing with celebrity - we tried it on like a party dress, and I enjoyed it actually, but it is not the way people relate to us."
 
He talks about Ali, his wife of 22 years, who I note seems cynical about all the fuss. "I'm glad you spotted the cynicism," he says, "because she is serene, but she also is a great skeptic. Ali doesn't need the favor of anyone. She's very complex."

Also beautiful.
"I know this sounds like a line," he says, "but she doesn't see herself that way. I met her when we were 14, and she was an academic. Her mother made her clothes; she wore Wellington boots, and I found that absence of vanity very attractive. She understands that thing that men find hard to understadd which is mysterious distance. A lot of the relationships I see are like the 'Where were you? Who was there?' type of thing."

That choking thing....
"Choking is a very good word. She's the least choking person. It's sometimes unnverving, because we'll be about to go away on a tour and she's standing there at the door with the kids with a big smile on here face, waving. Whatever it is, it's immensly attractive. And sometimes hurtful. You know, performers are not the most secure people in the word. Why would you go on a stage if you were of sound mind? In a very, very, very, deep place I'm secure. And on the surface, secure. But somewhere in there I need 20,000 screaming people a night to feel normal. How sad is that? I mean, a secure person, of sound mind, is not aware of conversations going on in the other corner of the room. You're always expecting...where the blow is coming from. In the early days, if somebody was going to the bathroom or talking at a u2 show..."

You feel the room...
"you feel the room. You know where it is...it's over thre...no, now it's over there....So I'd push over a bunch of speaker stacks, or climb up, or set fire to myself."
 
Their new album titled How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb will be released on November 22. It has 11 soaring, melodic, complex, strong songs. There are plans for a yearlong, worldwide tour to start in March 2005, around the time the band will most likely be inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

Unlike the Who - who seem to have never written a song that hasn't been in a commercial - or the Rolling Stones, Iggy Pop, Led Zeppelin, Dylan, and others who've rented their music to ads, u2 has not allowed it's music to pitch cars, cameras, or cruise ships. "Beautiful Day," however, has been played at John Kerry rallies. (Next year's tour might very well be sponsored by an information-technology company; the debates among band members about that have been going on for years).
 
Bono's hair is lighter these days than the dark black of the last few years. ("You said I was starting to look like Roy Orbison," he told me, laughing, last Spring). Except for Adam - who has none - each band member has between two and five children. Every summer they decamp from their native Dublin, where they all still live, to houses they own in the South of France, where Edge married Morleigh Steinberg two years ago.

They have spent 25 years reading, learning, travelling, recording, raising families, performing. What has kept them together? "Each other and self-criticism," says Paul McGuiness, "mutually relentless self-criticism. It's true that there are four equal voices, and its makes the meetings very long." According to Adam, "sometimes I think being in u2 is being in one long meeting. Your own life is just a tea break betwen meetings."
 
Larry, who looked like a Bruce Weber model when he started the band and is still gorgeous, says, "I want to retract the statement I made to you in 1987 about not wanting to be known for my looks. Now I absolutely want to be known for my looks." Larry has been with Ann Acheson since he was 13. They have three children but "never got around to getting married."

Was this a problem with religion?
"For me, no," he says, "Other people had conflicts with it and lost sleep about it. I certainly didn't."

In another converstaion, I ask Adam about bands like Radiohead and Coldplay, who obviously have been influenced by u2. "well," he says, "I think it's great that Coldplay is a band that admits it."
 
"We're very lucky. Bono is a natural front man. I'm the guy who wants to deal with a problem and just wrestle it to the ground. Larry is one of those nuts-and-bolts kind of guys who want to tell it like it is; he's not going to take a step unless he knows where he's going, so he's a great anchor. And Adam is our great jazzman. Whenever things are getting too square, he'll throw in a curveball at us and send us in a different place." - EDGE, August, 2004.
 
THAT"S IT!!! IM DONE!!! IM GOING TO PASS OUT NOW!!!! :scream: :D

I'm really glad I did it though because I discovered what an amazing article this is. Great depth with Bono toward the end, some great quotes. The whole band must have been interviewed. I skipped a few lines here and there (couple facts that are common knowledge) but overall, great article. I'm off to the masseuse. :wink:
 
O, I missed this, I think this is the PERFECT way to end the article, really cool:

"They are champions. They hold a title. And if anyone wants to try and take that title away from them, they're welcome to try. But until then, we're holding on to it."
-Paul McGuinness, August 2004.
 
Thanks alot RademR! A good read. I like this quote:

"Our goal is to write the perfect album. Every time we go into the studio we hope we'll get closer to that. But I very much doubt we'll ever attain that goal of perfection. It's like Mount Everest. That must be a terribly depressing place; you've spent all your time preparing to get up there, and when you get there all you can do is walk down again,." -Edge, 1985.

:D :D
 
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