Killing Bono by Neil McCormick (Pocket Books 2004)

I always knew I would be famous.

By the time I left school, at seventeen, my life was planned down to the finest detail. I would form a rock band, make a series of epoch-shifting albums, play technologically mind-blowing concerts in the biggest stadiums on the planet until I was universally acknowledged as the greatest superstar of my era. And I would indulge in all manner of diversions along the way: make films, write books, break hearts, befriend my idols . . . oh - and promote world peace, feed the poor and save the planet while I was at it.

You might think I was just another teenage airhead with fantasies of omnipotence. Indeed, there were plenty around me at the time who did their best to persuade me that this was the case. But I wasn't about to be put off by lesser mortals jealous of my talent. Because I knew, deep, deep in the very core of my being, that this wasn't just another empty dream. This was my destiny . . . 

So there I was, thirty-five years old, sitting in a shabby, unheated little excuse for an office above a bookie's in Piccadilly, watching the rain drizzle down my single, grimy window, wondering where it had all gone wrong. I'd wanted to be a rock star and wound up becoming a rock critic. To compound my torment, I was suffering from a bad case of writer's block with my newspaper deadline looming and the fucking telephone hadn't stopped ringing all morning with a succession of PRs pestering me about their shitty rock bands, all of whom I secretly resented for, I suppose, just being more famous than me. But at least talking on the phone gave me an excuse for not writing my column.

"It better be good," I snapped into the receiver.

"This is the voice of your conscience," announced my caller in a gravelly, wasted Dublin accent that reeked of smoke, late nights and fine wines.

"Bono," I said in recognition.

"You can run but you can't hide," he laughed.

"The way I feel right now, I don't think I could even run," I sighed.

It was, indeed, Bono: rock legend, international superstar, roving ambassador for world peace and (though it is unlikely to feature prominently on his CV) a schoolfriend of mine from Mount Temple Comprehensive.

Old Waves

Morphing Into A Music Blog (5)

Accidents Will Happen I hope it amounts to more than Elvis Costello doing a 'Phil Caine'* ('Don't like paying the taxes . . . . they've got no ambition in Britain'.) Just don't tell me that he lives in Chelsea, Manhattan.

Time's Up I listen to the first couple of U2 albums and always want to cut Bono some slack, but when I read him spouting shite like this in the Rolling Stone:

"Just being in D.C., and meeting all the people I've met - I've now been going there for nearly ten years. They let me in their rooms and they listen to my rhetoric or invective or whatever it turns out to be. And I come away from that city not with nausea but with admiration. These people work like dogs. These lawmakers, they're trying to move between their families back home and Washington. All of them could make much more money in the private sector. Not all, but most of them are there for the right reasons. There's very little glamour. And they're listening to me, who's completely over-rewarded for what I do."

. . . I just want to take an axe to his Joshua Tree. I don't think I've ever witnessed a smarmier politician than that *@#%. I don't care if he thinks he's doing it for the right reasons. Spot the reference to the Buzzcocks' 'Spiral Scratch' EP in the interview, and wonder if Bono thinks it's 1993, he's Damon Albarn and he's talking about his new album, Modern Life is Rubbish.**

Step Back in Time That's enough ranting about the posters on your wall falling to the floor, back to when old waves was post-punk, and the best track from Scritti Politti's 1979 EP, '4 A-Sides'

Scritti Politti - P.A.s mp3

For extra credit, flick through Robert Lumley's 'States of Emergency', whilst wondering out loud 'Whatever happened to Big Flame?'***

*The alternative name was Michael Collins. You figure it out.

**Yep, first found out about Bono in the Rolling Stone via The Blogging Equivalent of U2 (Had a soft spot for the early stuff. Turned into bloated insufferable wankers ever since.)

***Yep, I know Green Gartside was a YCLer and had a bad case of the Gramscian MT's to prove it but, in an alternative universe, back in 77/78 he should have been the activities officer of the St Pancras branch of the Lotta Continua

'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For . . .'

News reports today mention that the rough cut of U2's next studio album has gone missing, presumed stolen, whilst the band were doing a photoshoot for the cover of the  proposed album. French police have issued the following description of a man they want to interview about the disappearance of the CD.*       * OK - It's a fair cop - the joke above is fifteen years out of date, but: 1) So are U2. 2) I had to post something to get back in the habit of blogging.