The night I fell in love with greatest band in the world
Tuesday July 28 2009
One night in 1979 I bumped into a chap I vaguely knew. A young band he was managing was playing a one-night stand in McGonigal's club that evening: would I care to pop in? I wasn't interested in rock music -- but he had a certain plaintive look about him, so I said yes.
I went to the club alone. The band was awful: uncoordinated, slovenly, tuneless, raucous. I slipped out early, with the homeward urgency caused by both the fact that my departure was not entirely unaccompanied, and a desperate desire that my doomed friend should not spot me leaving.
Poor fellow! He was clearly not cut out for the music business, and as for the musicians, they had the talent of a quartet of winos after someone had doctored their rot-gut booze with laxative. Why, if he stayed in the music business, he'd soon be sipping gruel in a Simon Community hostel, or sitting on O'Connell Bridge, an inverted cloth-cap between his unclad feet, as he expelled and re-inhaled ancient phlegm from within a borrowed harmonica.
Well, it didn't quite work out like that. Because, for the first time since 1979, last Friday night I saw that band again, but now in Croke Park. Yes, it was U2, and yes, it was Paul McGuinness: I don't know what happened to the rest of the cast from that night, but I do know what happened to U2's one-night stand. It was a way-station to being the greatest rock band in the world. I know nothing about these things -- NOTHING, DO YOU HEAR ME? NOTHING -- but to judge from their performance at Croke Park, they still are.
It's often said that Paul McGuinness is the fifth member of U2. No he's not. He's the first member. Without him, U2 would have been playing a dreary circuit of mediocrity and failure in bingo-hall gigs in Crumlin and Drimnagh, their latent talents still latent, their small audiences growing ever-smaller. Soon, they would have ended up doing what all failed would-be rock stars do in Ireland, becoming journalists, or producers in RTE, or boozy, pot-bellied, balding, T-shirted roadies for other bands, themselves sliding towards failure.
So, firstly Paul McGuinness spotted what no-one else did -- that these were potentially world-class musicians. He then guided them up the ladder of success: and he has kept them at the very top, for a quarter of a century, by shrewd and brilliant management, by hard work, by unrelenting professionalism, by meticulous rehearsal and by clear, unyielding focus. If Elvis Presley had had such a manager, instead of sinking into the calamitous obesity of Las Vegas, with his vast belly and blocked rectum, his useful recording career would have lasted as long as U2's has. He'd have still been having hits, even as U2 arrived on the scene. What a rock continuum that would have been.
Now, I was unique in Croke Park on Friday, for the songs were new to me. Which was fine. They sounded great, despite their novelty. And in my woeful ignorance, I'd never realised that Larry Mullen was such a brilliant drummer: I mean, really, really brilliant. As a teenager, I endlessly played the old recordings of the great drummers of the big band era -- Gene Krupa, Louie Bellson and Buddy Rich most of all. Well, for the very first time since those distant teenage days, on Saturday evening I was captivated, enthralled, exhilarated by some truly magic syncopation. Steptoe and Son, with Kim Jong-il on vocals, would succeed as a rock band with a drummer like Larry Mullen.
Finally, I now understood why Bono has such a vast following. He is the consummate showman-musician, with unstoppable energy and boundless stage charisma.
Personally, I'd prefer if he lost the politics, but that's just me: most of the audience seemed to love it (this time with a few approving words for the 1916 Rising, which I could certainly have done without). But as a performer, he is in a class of his own.
Now, entirely by chance, I recently discovered on YouTube that he is a great admirer of the Roy Orbison song, 'The Crowd'. Listen. No one else in the entire world even knows that song. It flopped in the US. It got to number 40 for a single week in the UK. But it was the first 45 I ever bought, and I've never understood why no one else loved it as I do. Well, Bono does. So he can't be all that bad.
Adam Clayton and The Edge are Adam Clayton and The Edge. They have a classy, understated style, with fantastically rich riffs, and they don't try to compete with Bono. There's no reason to. He's almost nothing without their music, and they're almost nothing without him as singer. Which is the most important stone in an arch? There is none. The arch falls if any -- keystone, base or column -- is missing. U2 is the perfect five-stone arch: and on Saturday, that arch gave 83,000 long-standing fans, and a single new one, an absolutely brilliant, brilliant night.
kmyers@independent.ie
