U2 Conference: Neil McCormick

Neil McCormick is one of the UK’s best known music critics, author of Killing Bono and collaborator in U2 by U2. McCormick went to school with Bono and has lived with U2 as a background to his life, loves them like a family (but like any family, not without reservations).

A few thoughts from Neil McCormick:

• Lived with the band and watched them grow
• Went to Mount Temple Comprehensive School with the boys and was at their very first gig in the Mount Temple gym in 1976 (played Peter Frampton’s “Show Me the Way,” a Beach Boys medley and a Bay City Rollers medley)
• Bono is the psyche of the band. He drives and moves the band. He thinks constantly and wants to see his ideas come to fruition.
• Edge holds Bono back and brings a sense of realism; he’s a brilliant man who drives the sound of the band.
• Larry is in the band because he likes hitting things; he’s the “brake man” often saying, “No,” moving slowly, a complicated man who plays the simpleton
• Adam is a wandering point, the wild card; he’s very polite and gentlemanly and provides conflict resolution in the band; he wanted the “rock star” role
• The circumstances of the 70s provided the background for
• 1970s
  • Poorest country in the western hemisphere
  • 90+% white Catholic
  • Repressed: no divorce, no homosexuality, no sex, no separation of church and state, primary education was left to priests and nuns, unemployment was high, population of Ireland fell/left, a void in the country, looked down on by Britain, media was censored, The Troubles
  • Mount Temple Comprehensive was the only non-denominational school in Dublin, very progressive
• Neil showed us un published pictures of Bono and Edge in school before the start of U2
• Teachers at Mount Temple become very important people in the story
• The “born again” movement was really frowned upon; you had two choices: knuckle under or rebel
• The importance of religion for U2: 1) bind them together (Bono, Edge, Larry); 2) steadied them on the road and rise to popularity (while others were in it for sex and alcohol, U2 was in the back of the bus “having a prayer meeting”)
• There was no pop culture in Ireland so they were making up their own
• Bono and Larry each experience much loss; responses: Bono rushes ahead and drags everyone else along and Larry digs his heels in and gets dragged
• U2 were saved by punk, not the same kind of punk in Britain; they made up their own (Ramons, Clash, Patty Smyth were very important)
• Punk was about rejection of the past.
• All they ever hear about was the rebellion, the Brits, Jesus and the saints
• U2 rebelled against the rebellion
• Most important bands: Boom Town Rats, Radiators from Space
• They had an extraordinary imagination; the media show in that day would be a girl’s silhouette behind a screen and then Bono would run behind and dance with her
• Early songs: “Street Mission”
• “The Fool”: Out of mind / Out of the living world / Out of time / I break all the rules / They call me the fool

Comments

[Beth]

Tim - -thanks for these!
FYI, I actually thought I heard Neil say that the "born-again movement" at Mt Temple was seen as a fresh third way *between* the 2 choices of knuckling under to staid establishment Catholicism or rebelling against it -- that its sense of being authentically expressive made it *more* credible (tho not to him.)

[Tim]

Thanks Beth. I was actually trying to decipher what he was saying about it. I hope Scott and co. make some audio recordings available; that would be helpful. One of the "take aways" for me from Neil's presentation was that the boys were already attempting to be counter-cultural by not doing what everybody else was doing (i.e. rebelling against the establishment or blindly succumbing to it. Is that a fair assessment? It seems that the band was birthed in hope (as opposed to the anger/angst or apathy of their peers). While I realize there was still plenty of rage related to homes and culture, they were unique in that they were optomists. It's part of their DNA.