OnFire
Acrobat
- Joined
- May 3, 2004
- Messages
- 386
Every time I see the October cover photo I think of Derek. He was just about a dead ringer for Bono in that photo, especially the hair.
We met in the fall of 1981 when we were both freshmen at a fairly large urban university. He was one of those guys that was into all the new obscure groups, Bauhaus, Echo, Joy Division, which was all new to me coming from a semi-rural high school. I was on a pretty tight budget then and had to pass on the one opportunity I had to see U2 do a club show with him.
It was all Derek talked about for weeks, said the singer made unblinking, direct eye contact with every member of the audience for what seemed like twenty minutes. When War came out Derek's attitude was, "well that was fun while it lasted but they're for the masses now." Still, neither of us begrudged them their success. They were a talented band with decent people who deserved their success. Besides, New Years Day blew away everything else on commercial radio stations at that time.
Sadly, Derek never got to hear everything U2 put out. He died of non-hodgkins lymphoma in the spring of 1988. Sorry to end this post on a bummer perhaps some of you have more uplifting stories of the person who introduced you to U2.
We met in the fall of 1981 when we were both freshmen at a fairly large urban university. He was one of those guys that was into all the new obscure groups, Bauhaus, Echo, Joy Division, which was all new to me coming from a semi-rural high school. I was on a pretty tight budget then and had to pass on the one opportunity I had to see U2 do a club show with him.
It was all Derek talked about for weeks, said the singer made unblinking, direct eye contact with every member of the audience for what seemed like twenty minutes. When War came out Derek's attitude was, "well that was fun while it lasted but they're for the masses now." Still, neither of us begrudged them their success. They were a talented band with decent people who deserved their success. Besides, New Years Day blew away everything else on commercial radio stations at that time.
Sadly, Derek never got to hear everything U2 put out. He died of non-hodgkins lymphoma in the spring of 1988. Sorry to end this post on a bummer perhaps some of you have more uplifting stories of the person who introduced you to U2.