"The World Put Its Arms Around Us"
1998, hot off Bono´s typewriter
Q Magazine, Feb 99, p.78
He saved Ireland; he "got" Pinochet, he played footer with Romario, and still found time to stick up for The Temperer, have a Number 1 album, get a photo of his arse in the Daily Star and pen this personal account of 1998. Good old Bono. Footnotes by Stuart Maconie.
is there life after Frank?... I wasn´t sure on the sad day when the chairman departed his board, I was brokenhearted, it was like the sky had lost the north star, things would be duller. In the way that you do with famous people... I felt I knew him which was mad... I was a fan, he has lef me wanting to be a singer... he did invite me to captain the Frank Sinatra golf classic in palm springs which was too cool but a worry in that I don´t play golf... I of course accepted... the way I look at it FRANK SINATRA (1) made a man out of me... in rock and pop most males play girls or boys...
1998 was the year of hip pop. There were of course exceptions ULTRA SOUND BEASTIES SMASHING PUMPKINS REM MERCURY REV BECK but in 98 pop was more innovative than rock, fresher-AIR ... better melodies ALL SAINTS ... sexier ... sexier... TAMPERER (2) , LAURYN HILL was the truly sacred talent of the year. I read mostly newspapers but BREAKFAST ON PLUTO by pat mccabe (3) is a classic so is poet eugene petersons (4) translation of the NEW TESTAMENT AND PSALMS I discovered late through the eyes of a seven year old the appeal of the TITANIC as metaphor for the Nuclear power industry on the rim of the 21st century, it can creep up...it was a great year for U2s POPMART, with the exception of Japan which was amazing, we ended the tour in the southern hemisphere... Australia saying one last goodbye to our mate MICHAEL HUTCHENCE where on the mention of his name and the recitation "if the thunder cloud passes rain" the Sydney sky lit up with lightning and we all got soaked....that´s singers for you
SOUTH AMERICA in RIO we palyed footie with ROMARIO (5) on his birthday on a floodlit pitch in his back garden with half the Brazil squad - FUCK OFF... SAO PAULO, BUENOS AIRES, THE STADIUMS ARE LIKE CATHEDRALS, soccer and music are religion ...mind you they even seem to get religion sort of right, sort of. In CHILE we got to harass GENERAL PINOCHET (6) . On a live tv broadcast of Popmart fifty or so MOTHERS OF THE DISAPPEARED (7) walked on stage with photo placards of their lost loved ones, some of whom had been torturated to death in that same stadium...the next week the opposition did a similar protest in parliament citing the concert as an inspiration... it was amazing and confounding to discover that on our most 'pop' of tours some of the best shows were in political hotspots like SANTIAGO, SARAJEVO TEL AVIV BELFAST JO´BURG anywhere music meant more than entertainment, in CAPETOWN we had our minds blown by ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU (8) . He is known to his colleagues as THE ARCH I kid you not "THE EDGE this is THE ARCH" and extraordinary man whose TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION programme is keeping that country together and a lesson for everyone in grace. AFRICA is overpowering in its beauty. THE VERY REVEREND unravelled the place for us with one word UBUNTO he said was the essence of the continent "I am because we are" the interdependentness of people on each other... it sounds like a gaelic word, we need such words in IRELAND, words like 'compromise' have historically had a bad rap... to be filling in the JOHN HUME DAVID TRIMBLE (9) sandwich on stage in the waterfront hall Belfast was a great honour. U2's role was a proud one but small it was ASH who put on the concert (if Brian WILSON had a punk band it would be ash...) the bomb in OMAGH destroyed a perfect summer, hundreds of people's lives but not the peace process. Ironically the irish people had never been as united as they were this august, in travail weeping along with a mother trying to remember the exact shape of her dead son's green eyes retching at the sight of the carnage united in grief and resolve to go the distance with the good Friday peace accord. When JOHN HUME AND DAVID TRIMBLE took the noble peace prize it was as if the rest of the world had put its arms around us. It seems TONY BLAIR (10) whom we first met at the Q awards had the brains as well as the "muchos quevos" Jah's man for the job.
Apart from the peace process in N.I. the most inspirational thought I bumped into last year was the concept of JUBILEE 2000 (11) a call to cancel third world debts going into the next millenium and to give crippled nations a chance to get up off their knees and walk again.
Without a real commitment to do something about the dire circumstances of a third of the population of the planet all new year´s eve 99 will amount to is an up drawbridge scenario, a fancy dress ball at the castlewhere we all play louis 14 pissing across a moat of champagne on the poor JUBILEE 2000 is a coalition of organisations from War Child to Unicef the TUC to the BRITISH Medical Association, their phone nu. is 0171 401 9999
Compilation records don´t deserve the kind of welcome U2´s BEST OF 80 to 90 received and of course its not a qualitative thing, in our heads it was housekeeping a bit of tyding up for the era conscious...you´d probably call it cleaning up which is eh.... fair. I must say the success of the best of and SWEETEST THING has raised the game on our next studio album lest its original title "U2 LOVE YOUR EARLY STUFF" proved a pronouncement on our new material for this reason THE EDGE, ADAM, LARRY and myself have been in our rehearsal room in DUBLIN OCT NOV DEC having the time, hanging out, listening to other people´s tunes and trying to write better ones. Edge seems to have rediscovered the electric guitar after falling out with it for most of the nineties. Anyway they´ve kissed and made up in a spectacular way, a way that makes me want to go to work in 99.
ps POPMART live from MEXICO is the best thing U2 ever did...please pass on our thanks to ANDREW COLLINS for his generous review.
(1) Frank Sinatra - To the end, Ol´Blue Eyes was surrounded in mystery, with some claiming he had actually died on the same day as Princess Diana but the news had been withheld until it would be more newsworthy. Francis Albert Sinatra passed away at the age of 82 at the Cedars Sinai Medical Centre, Loa Angeles. Bono sang with him on the 1993 album Duets and also presented him with his Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 1994. Release of recent ~FBI files on Sinatra prove little except that the FBI was very interested in Frank Sinatra.
(2) The Tamperer - Three Milanese DJs - Mario Fargetta, Alex Farolfi and Giuliano Saglia - and journeyperson helper Maya (currently in the West End´s Rent). May Number 1 Feel it was a souped-up remake of the Jacksons´Can You Feel It with the addition of the mysterious refrain "what´s she gonna look like with a chimney on her?"
(3) Patrick McCabe - The Sligo-based novelist, probably best known for his 1992 Booker-prize shortlisted novel, The Butcher Boy, the disturbing tale of a psychotic but genial adolescent and his surreal, bloody odyssey through 1970s Ireland, which was turned into a film by Patrick Jordan and released to great acclaim last year. Breakfast on Pluto is his latest work, the shocking memoir of one Patrick "Pussy" Braden, who flees his drunken foster mother in the town of Tyreelin and starts a new life in London, touring the pubs of Picadilly Circus in women´s clothing looking for "sport", all set against the harrowing and violent background of the Irish conflict, of course.
(4) Eugene Peterson - He´s the James M. Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College, and author of The Contemplative Pastor, Reversed Thunder, and more recently, Leap Over a Wall: Earthy Spirituality For Everyday Christians. Here, Bono checks his idiosyncratic translation of the New Testament, psalms and proverbs into lively modern English -- an attempt to get at the spirit of the robust, informal Greek of the originals. It´s the Christian publishing blockbuster of recent years.
(5) Romario - Flamboyantly talented, 32-year-old Brazilian striker (full name, Romario de Souza Faria), whose absence from the 1998 Worls cup due to a calf injury did much to boost Scottish morale briefly - they were paired in the opening match - before the Caledonians´ inevitable early return. Romario, 52 international goals to his name, is back with Valencia in Spain after a stormy relationship with Flamengo in Brazil was finally terminated. Depth Charge recently named an album after him.
(6) General Pinochet - Perhaps not how the general who overthrew Salvador Allende´s democratically elected Chilean government in 1973 expected to be celebrating his 83rd birthday: under arrest in a British hospital and awaiting extradition to Spain. He´s now holed up on a luxury Wentworth estate where his neighbours, bizarrely, include Russ Abbott and Bruce Forsyth. After Jack´s Straw decision, the Pinochet affair has brought many of Britain´s more demented commentators out of the woodwork. Margaret Thatcher has been telling anyone who´ll listen that he´s a great friend of the UK -- which must have been comforting to thew relatives of Sheila Cassidy, the British doctor tortured by Pinochet´s terror squads in the mid-70´s.
(7) Mothers of the Disappeared - A worldwide organisation with groups in many countries, including Peru, Chile, Turkey and Argentina, and the title (of course) of the last song on The Joshua Tree. These women have become the focus for global protest, as they seek to find out what happened to their loved ones, allegedly abducted under a variety of totalitarian regimes. Here Bono´s referring to one of the most memorable sections of the PopMart tour, when on February 11 he was joined on-stage by Chilean Mothers of the Disappeared in Santiago´s Estadio Nacional, the very stadium where many were murdered, Chilean protest singer Victor Jara among them.
(8) Truth and Reconciliation Committee - Cynics said the ambitiously named Truth and Reconciliation Committee could never hope to heal the raw wounds of South Africa´s past. In fact, it has been a model of its kind, likely to be followed in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. The committee, chaired by Archibishop Desmond Tutu, is now winding down its operation having heard statements from 20,000 witnesses, some 15 percent in public. The cost was put at around 120 million Rand over the two years of its existence, prompting some to gripe that it would have been better to buy everyone in South Africa a Coke. However, the committee has proved admirably even-handed: criticising both the Apartheid regime and the ANC for the excesses of their brutality.
(9) Hume and Trimble - The on-stage handshake between Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble and John Hume of the Nationalist SDLP seemed to promise the hitherto inconceivable: peace in Northern Ireland. The concert at Belfast´s Waterfront Hall was satged in front of two thousand 6th Formers from across the Province and was intended to raise support for a yes vote in the referendum on the Good Friday agreement. Astonishingly, Ian Paisley, mild-mannered medieval demagogue of the Democratic Unionist Party, poured cold water on the affair, claiming that the people of Northern Ireland were too sensible to vote yes merely on the say so of some rock musicians. As it turned out, May 22´s yes vote weighed in at a decisive 71 percent.
(10) Tony Blair - Described with the colloquialism as having "qué cojones" - "what balls" - by Bono at the 1996 Q Awards, Blair´s 36 hours of straight talking at the April 10 meeting when the Good Friday agreement was hammered out may turn out to be his noblest legacy. Those who saw Blair´s undergrad rock band Ugly Rumours in their pomp may disagree. Despite all this, Blair´s nomination of the Fender Stratocaster as the Artefact Of The 20th Century does seem rather an embarrassing, vicarish thing to say.
(11) Jubilee 2000 - Though a worldwide movement, Jubilee 2000 in the UK is a coalition of over 80 organisations including aid agencies, Trade Unions, women´s groups, religious organisations, black groups and the music industry. It is not a fund raising body. Its stated aim is to bring about the cancelling of the crushing burden of Third World debt and wipe the slate clean for the new millenium. One of the most high-profile Jubile 2000 events to date happened at the G8 summit in Birmingham this summer when several thousand supporters linked arms in a human chain around the International Convention Centre and were joined by many delegates.