HelloAngel
ONE love, blood, life
By Sharon Swadis
2004.10
When Salman Rushdie joined U2 onstage at Wembley Stadium in 1993, he needed no introduction. The well-known author, in hiding after an Iranian death threat, waved a finger at Bono, dressed up as the devil MacPhisto, and, as recalled in “U2 at the End of the World,” exclaimed, “I’m not afraid of you! Real devils don’t wear horns!”
Four years earlier, Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” had so enraged Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that he issued a fatwa, or decree, imploring “all zealous Muslims” to execute Rushdie and his publishers. U2 wanted to make a show of solidarity with the author and the 80,000-plus Wembley audience joined in cheering him on. In an interview with BP Fallon, Bono and Edge called Rushdie the most inspiring person they met on the Zooropa tour.
Rushdie is a man of extraordinary talent and imagination and “The Satanic Verses” bears this out. It begins with the novel’s two main characters, Saladin and Gibreel, falling 29,000 feet from an airplane blown apart by an explosion—and surviving. Their fall from grace, i.e. the sky, is a life-changing event—one man becomes a devil, the other an angel, and neither is quite prepared for the consequences.
Before the fall Saladin was an Anglo-Indian actor who eschewed his Indian background, grows horns, a tail and animal-like hair, then loses them and eventually returns home to his Bombay roots. Gibreel, as a result of his miraculous survival, begins to believe he is an archangel and, in extended dream sequences that eventually overtake his life, questions the divinity of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, the portion of the book that incurred the fatwa. “The Satanic Verses” is a complex story of love, redemption and metamorphosis, and stands as one of Rushdie’s best works to date.
It wasn’t “The Satanic Verses,” however, that first drew Bono to Rushdie. In 1986 Rushdie visited Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua and wrote “The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey,” a portrait of the war-torn country. Bono, who had also visited the county, read the book and found he and the author had a common interest in politics. In his non-fiction collection “Step Across This Line,” Rushdie recalls his first meeting with Bono: “My friend the composer Michael Berkeley asked me if I wanted to go to a U2 ‘Achtung Baby’ gig. In those days it was hard for me to go most places, but I said yes. Backstage after the show I was shown into a mobile home full of sandwiches and children. Bono came in and was instantly festooned with daughters. My memory of that first chat is that I wanted to talk about music and he was keen to talk politics—Nicaragua, an upcoming protest against nuclear waste at Sellafield, his support for me and my work. We didn’t spend long together, but we both enjoyed it... I think, too, that the band’s involvement in religion—as inescapable a subject in Ireland as it is in India—gave us, when we first met, a subject and an enemy (fanaticism) in common.”
U2 is well known for its opposition to Ireland’s Catholic/Protestant conflict and songs including “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” and “Like a Song” are impassioned pleas for peace. Rushdie, born in India in 1947, grew up Muslim in mostly Hindu Bombay. India’s endemic conflict between Islam and Hinduism is a common theme in his works, just as the Irish conflict between Protestant and Catholic has been a driving force in the lives and work of U2. Rushdie’s prose uses religious references. He addresses religion in essays and articles and in the books “Shame,” a critique of Pakistan, and “Midnight’s Children,” taking place in 1947 post-independence India.
After spending his youth in Bombay, Rushdie experienced culture shock as a teenager when he attended school in England. He idealized British society but found he was considered an outsider, a social pariah. When he returned to India he felt no more at home. The Bombay of his youth, which Rushdie writes about with nostalgia, had changed and most of his family had moved to Pakistan. The feeling of being an outsider runs deep in Rushdie’s writings, and, considering the fatwa he endured for many years, his life. Bono, in his own life, knows what it’s like being an outsider. He was born to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother in a country where religion matters very much. Their upbringings, and the fact that they were both raised in countries vulnerable to religious fanaticism, have given them a unique perspective on life and a common bond. These men refuse to stand quiet or let intimidations keep them down.
When asked about life under the fatwa, Rushdie once told an interviewer: “If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder, and, if possible, better.” Rushdie refused to become timid or embittered, and was determined to write “the very best books I could find it in myself to write.” Bono, at the same time, was also determined to sing louder and better, and made the transition from “The Joshua Tree” into superstardom with “Achtung Baby.” Rushdie put a pen in his hand and wrote the beautiful fable “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” Bono put on Fly shades and wrote “One.”
“The thing about U2—and it was the same with the Beatles—is they never do the same thing twice,” Rushdie said in “U2 At The End of The World.” “That’s what interests me about this band. It seems to me they have that capacity to constantly reinvent itself that the great bands of the ‘60s did. I haven’t seen a band since that did that.” Bono’s interest in Rushdie, according to the author, is need. “Bono is very needy,” Rushdie said. “He needs food for his mind all the time. I think that one of the reasons he may be interested in meeting people like me or like Wim Wenders or many of the other artists that are around here is that they give him food. I like that hunger in him because it means that he won’t stand still.”
Bono certainly doesn’t stand still while there are worthy causes to fight for, and neither does Rushdie. Bono works for DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa), seeking to raise awareness and spark responses to crises engulfing Africa, including debt, unfair trade rules and the spread of AIDS. Rushdie is the president of the American Center of International PEN, a fellowship of writers who work to advance literature, promote a culture of reading and defend free expression. Bono and Rushdie’s talents and strong beliefs make them impassioned and effective advocates.
Not one to shy away from a challenge, in 1999 Rushdie turned his talents toward the world of rock ‘n’ roll. “I am a child of the rock ’n’ roll era,” Rushdie said in a 1999 interview with Pat Kane. “I did Elvis impressions with a broom handle in my Bombay bedroom. I wanted to write about rock not just because I’m a fan. I wanted to find a way to write about the modern era—what the last 50 years has been like for us all. And the tale of two mega-rock stars from Bombay seemed like an original way to do it.” The resulting tale, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet,” became one of Rushdie’s bestselling novels and the catalyst for a U2 song featured in “The Million Dollar Hotel," a film co-written by Bono.
“The Ground Beneath Her Feet” tells the story of Ormus and Vina, two lovers and aspiring rock stars who exceed all expectations. Their group, VTO, or Vina to Ormus, becomes a worldwide sensation. After Vina dies on Valentine’s Day 1989 (not coincidentally the same day the fatwa was imposed on Rushdie), the story traces the obsessive fan worship that follows her death, and Ormus’ eventual downfall.
Bono read the book pre-publication with the eye of a policeman, Rushdie said in “Step Across This Line.” “That is, to save me from my mistakes. Fortunately the novel passed the test.” In a 2000 interview on Yahoo! Bono said: “What I was surprised by in the novel was not the minutia, the detail, of the so-called Pop Life, which was pretty good considering Salman Rushdie is not known to hang out at raves or own a Marshall stack. But what he captured was the heady confusion between the real and the surreal, between the imagined and the actual... and believe me, I would love to tell him if he flunked.”
The genesis of the U2 song “The Ground Beneath Her Feet,” came soon after Bono read the novel, and Rushdie talked about it in “Step Across This Line:” “Deep inside it is the lyric of what Bono called the novel’s ‘title track,’ a sad elegy written by the main male character about the woman he loved. Bono called me. ‘I’ve written this melody for your words, and I think it might be one of the best things I’ve done.’ I was astonished. One of the novel’s principal images is that of the permeable frontier between the world of the imagination and the one we inhabit, and here was an imaginary song crossing that frontier.”
When Wim Wenders, director of “The Million Dollar Hotel,” heard the song, he asked Bono if he could use it. “The movie is a love story, quite a tragic love story… and the song just fitted it perfectly,” Wenders said on the DVD “U2—Best of 1990-2000.” Bono played it to me before it was ever recorded and I just knew this had to be in the film.” The video for the song intertwines scenes from the film with scenes of U2 and Rushdie appearing in windows from the hotel featured in the film. Rushdie’s lyrics had undergone quite a metamorphosis from their original appearance on page 475 of “The Ground Beneath Her Feet.”
In 2003, Rushdie was in attendance when Bono received the Person of the Year award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Science’s MusiCares program. Although the Iranian government has said it won’t support anyone trying to kill Rushdie, isolated Islamic groups believe the fatwa is still in force, only Khomeini could revoke it and he died in 1989. Rushdie continues to be a prolific writer who passionately defends literary freedom.
2004.10
When Salman Rushdie joined U2 onstage at Wembley Stadium in 1993, he needed no introduction. The well-known author, in hiding after an Iranian death threat, waved a finger at Bono, dressed up as the devil MacPhisto, and, as recalled in “U2 at the End of the World,” exclaimed, “I’m not afraid of you! Real devils don’t wear horns!”
Four years earlier, Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses” had so enraged Iran’s leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that he issued a fatwa, or decree, imploring “all zealous Muslims” to execute Rushdie and his publishers. U2 wanted to make a show of solidarity with the author and the 80,000-plus Wembley audience joined in cheering him on. In an interview with BP Fallon, Bono and Edge called Rushdie the most inspiring person they met on the Zooropa tour.
Rushdie is a man of extraordinary talent and imagination and “The Satanic Verses” bears this out. It begins with the novel’s two main characters, Saladin and Gibreel, falling 29,000 feet from an airplane blown apart by an explosion—and surviving. Their fall from grace, i.e. the sky, is a life-changing event—one man becomes a devil, the other an angel, and neither is quite prepared for the consequences.
Before the fall Saladin was an Anglo-Indian actor who eschewed his Indian background, grows horns, a tail and animal-like hair, then loses them and eventually returns home to his Bombay roots. Gibreel, as a result of his miraculous survival, begins to believe he is an archangel and, in extended dream sequences that eventually overtake his life, questions the divinity of the Islamic prophet Mohammed, the portion of the book that incurred the fatwa. “The Satanic Verses” is a complex story of love, redemption and metamorphosis, and stands as one of Rushdie’s best works to date.
It wasn’t “The Satanic Verses,” however, that first drew Bono to Rushdie. In 1986 Rushdie visited Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua and wrote “The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey,” a portrait of the war-torn country. Bono, who had also visited the county, read the book and found he and the author had a common interest in politics. In his non-fiction collection “Step Across This Line,” Rushdie recalls his first meeting with Bono: “My friend the composer Michael Berkeley asked me if I wanted to go to a U2 ‘Achtung Baby’ gig. In those days it was hard for me to go most places, but I said yes. Backstage after the show I was shown into a mobile home full of sandwiches and children. Bono came in and was instantly festooned with daughters. My memory of that first chat is that I wanted to talk about music and he was keen to talk politics—Nicaragua, an upcoming protest against nuclear waste at Sellafield, his support for me and my work. We didn’t spend long together, but we both enjoyed it... I think, too, that the band’s involvement in religion—as inescapable a subject in Ireland as it is in India—gave us, when we first met, a subject and an enemy (fanaticism) in common.”
U2 is well known for its opposition to Ireland’s Catholic/Protestant conflict and songs including “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” and “Like a Song” are impassioned pleas for peace. Rushdie, born in India in 1947, grew up Muslim in mostly Hindu Bombay. India’s endemic conflict between Islam and Hinduism is a common theme in his works, just as the Irish conflict between Protestant and Catholic has been a driving force in the lives and work of U2. Rushdie’s prose uses religious references. He addresses religion in essays and articles and in the books “Shame,” a critique of Pakistan, and “Midnight’s Children,” taking place in 1947 post-independence India.
After spending his youth in Bombay, Rushdie experienced culture shock as a teenager when he attended school in England. He idealized British society but found he was considered an outsider, a social pariah. When he returned to India he felt no more at home. The Bombay of his youth, which Rushdie writes about with nostalgia, had changed and most of his family had moved to Pakistan. The feeling of being an outsider runs deep in Rushdie’s writings, and, considering the fatwa he endured for many years, his life. Bono, in his own life, knows what it’s like being an outsider. He was born to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother in a country where religion matters very much. Their upbringings, and the fact that they were both raised in countries vulnerable to religious fanaticism, have given them a unique perspective on life and a common bond. These men refuse to stand quiet or let intimidations keep them down.
When asked about life under the fatwa, Rushdie once told an interviewer: “If somebody’s trying to shut you up, sing louder, and, if possible, better.” Rushdie refused to become timid or embittered, and was determined to write “the very best books I could find it in myself to write.” Bono, at the same time, was also determined to sing louder and better, and made the transition from “The Joshua Tree” into superstardom with “Achtung Baby.” Rushdie put a pen in his hand and wrote the beautiful fable “Haroun and the Sea of Stories,” Bono put on Fly shades and wrote “One.”
“The thing about U2—and it was the same with the Beatles—is they never do the same thing twice,” Rushdie said in “U2 At The End of The World.” “That’s what interests me about this band. It seems to me they have that capacity to constantly reinvent itself that the great bands of the ‘60s did. I haven’t seen a band since that did that.” Bono’s interest in Rushdie, according to the author, is need. “Bono is very needy,” Rushdie said. “He needs food for his mind all the time. I think that one of the reasons he may be interested in meeting people like me or like Wim Wenders or many of the other artists that are around here is that they give him food. I like that hunger in him because it means that he won’t stand still.”
Bono certainly doesn’t stand still while there are worthy causes to fight for, and neither does Rushdie. Bono works for DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa), seeking to raise awareness and spark responses to crises engulfing Africa, including debt, unfair trade rules and the spread of AIDS. Rushdie is the president of the American Center of International PEN, a fellowship of writers who work to advance literature, promote a culture of reading and defend free expression. Bono and Rushdie’s talents and strong beliefs make them impassioned and effective advocates.
Not one to shy away from a challenge, in 1999 Rushdie turned his talents toward the world of rock ‘n’ roll. “I am a child of the rock ’n’ roll era,” Rushdie said in a 1999 interview with Pat Kane. “I did Elvis impressions with a broom handle in my Bombay bedroom. I wanted to write about rock not just because I’m a fan. I wanted to find a way to write about the modern era—what the last 50 years has been like for us all. And the tale of two mega-rock stars from Bombay seemed like an original way to do it.” The resulting tale, “The Ground Beneath Her Feet,” became one of Rushdie’s bestselling novels and the catalyst for a U2 song featured in “The Million Dollar Hotel," a film co-written by Bono.
“The Ground Beneath Her Feet” tells the story of Ormus and Vina, two lovers and aspiring rock stars who exceed all expectations. Their group, VTO, or Vina to Ormus, becomes a worldwide sensation. After Vina dies on Valentine’s Day 1989 (not coincidentally the same day the fatwa was imposed on Rushdie), the story traces the obsessive fan worship that follows her death, and Ormus’ eventual downfall.
Bono read the book pre-publication with the eye of a policeman, Rushdie said in “Step Across This Line.” “That is, to save me from my mistakes. Fortunately the novel passed the test.” In a 2000 interview on Yahoo! Bono said: “What I was surprised by in the novel was not the minutia, the detail, of the so-called Pop Life, which was pretty good considering Salman Rushdie is not known to hang out at raves or own a Marshall stack. But what he captured was the heady confusion between the real and the surreal, between the imagined and the actual... and believe me, I would love to tell him if he flunked.”
The genesis of the U2 song “The Ground Beneath Her Feet,” came soon after Bono read the novel, and Rushdie talked about it in “Step Across This Line:” “Deep inside it is the lyric of what Bono called the novel’s ‘title track,’ a sad elegy written by the main male character about the woman he loved. Bono called me. ‘I’ve written this melody for your words, and I think it might be one of the best things I’ve done.’ I was astonished. One of the novel’s principal images is that of the permeable frontier between the world of the imagination and the one we inhabit, and here was an imaginary song crossing that frontier.”
When Wim Wenders, director of “The Million Dollar Hotel,” heard the song, he asked Bono if he could use it. “The movie is a love story, quite a tragic love story… and the song just fitted it perfectly,” Wenders said on the DVD “U2—Best of 1990-2000.” Bono played it to me before it was ever recorded and I just knew this had to be in the film.” The video for the song intertwines scenes from the film with scenes of U2 and Rushdie appearing in windows from the hotel featured in the film. Rushdie’s lyrics had undergone quite a metamorphosis from their original appearance on page 475 of “The Ground Beneath Her Feet.”
In 2003, Rushdie was in attendance when Bono received the Person of the Year award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Science’s MusiCares program. Although the Iranian government has said it won’t support anyone trying to kill Rushdie, isolated Islamic groups believe the fatwa is still in force, only Khomeini could revoke it and he died in 1989. Rushdie continues to be a prolific writer who passionately defends literary freedom.
