Free Killing Bono by Neil McCormick Page A

moments.
    They were starting to look like a rock band now. Bono wore black turtlenecks and black jeans and affected a sleek, new-wave look. Dave Edge had taken to sporting stripy T-shirts and red jeans, offset by a ludicrously outsized black blazer, complete with naval insignia. Adam had always looked like a rock star and Larry was so pretty-boy handsome it didn’t matter how he dressed. The younger kids in school treated them like celebrities, following them around the corridors, giggling and pointing.
    I went along to the Hype’s next weekend rehearsal. The school was eerily deserted as I strolled in, with just the strange echo of distant electric guitars and the clatter of drums rising up above the playground. They were in full flow in the music room, guitar and bass amps positioned either side of Larry’s kit, everyone ranged in a circle so that they could watch each other play. Bono, who had by now abandoned attempts to play guitar and had assumed the role of lead vocalist, was the center of attention, a whirl of energy and activity, one moment frantically waving his arms as if conducting the Edge’s and Dick’s guitars, the next squeezing his eyes tightly shut to extemporize vocals, as if summoning them from the ether, talking in tongues like his friends in the Christian Movement. “Someday…Maybe tomorrow…New direction…Hello…Oh, no, no, no…,” he half spoke, half sang in a Bowie-esque drawl. They were working on a song of their own. It bore scant resemblance to the derivative country rocker from the Marine. This was an amorphous, sprawling rocker, built around fast, punchy bass and drums with Dick scratching a choppy rhythm while the Edge concocted a spiraling lead. Bono, meanwhile, groped about at the center of this often chaotic noise, grasping for words. The phrases that emerged were elliptical, elusive, barely making sense. “I walk tall, I walk in a wild wind…I love to stare, I…I love to watch myself grow…Some say…Maybe tomorrow…Resurrection hello…Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no…”
    They must have played that song for over an hour, with the groove constantly breaking down and slowly coming back together, interspersed with bursts of excited chatter—mostly between Bono and the Edge—about where it might go next. Sure, the playing may have verged on the shambolic, while the song itself somehow stubbornly resisted their best efforts to manipulate it into shape, but the mood throughout was inspiring: five young musicians struggling to carve out their own sonic terrain and discover what it was that they wanted to express. The chorus itself was revealing, Bono repeating a single phrase over and over: “Street missions…Street missions…Street missions…Street missions…” I could picture Bono as a preacher, standing on his soapbox in the park, trying to bring his message to the world. First he had to work out what that message was, of course. Whenever in doubt, he would sing, “Hello, oh no, oh-oh-oh-oh.” I think those phrases could be found somewhere in every one of the group’s early songs.
    Afterward, Adam cheerfully sat down to show me his bass guitar. It was a shit-brown Ibanez copy, physically ugly and of piss-poor quality. Not that I knew the difference. He told me that he would reluctantly let it go for £70, just to help me out. This was probably twice what it had cost him but sounded plausible to me. I was completely out of my depth, a fact that I am sure had not passed Adam by. I sat around and plonked away at the strings, listening to the satisfying low rumble emerging from his amp. Adam took it from me and, cigarette dangling, began to pick out a riff. “It’s got good action,” he declared, encouragingly. “Yeah, it sure has,” I knowledgeably agreed, wondering where the action was and if there was a switch to control it.
    I handed over the wedge of