Killing Bono (37 page)

You'll never guess what song he played (and no, it wasn't “I Found God”)…

It was a new version of “Sleepwalking.” It was the only old song of Ivan's and mine that I had recorded. It's just such a gorgeous song, I couldn't resist laying it down again with the great musicians I was working with. And the radio phone lines lit up while it was on. Callers wanted to know where they could get their hands on this record.

“I don't think it's actually available,” admitted Captain America.

He invited me out to dinner again. “Tell me about The Ghost Who Walks,” he said.

“Well,” I said, uncomfortably. “He's a singer-songwriter. He's been around. He's not that young.”

“Hmm,” said Nick, thoughtfully. “Can I meet him?”

“Uh, I don't know,” I said. “He doesn't like publicity.”

“This is you, isn't it?” he laughed.

“My secret is out,” I confessed.

“Can I put this out on Gravity?” he politely inquired.

I was genuinely taken aback. I didn't know if I wanted to put it out on a major label, with everything that would entail: promotion, touring, driving in a van up the M1 to play some god-awful toilet in the middle of nowhere to a bunch of drunken students. I had responsibilities these days. A mortgage. Children. A life. A nice, easy life, supported by a good job that I really enjoyed.

I suggested he let me finish the album and then we would talk again.

I discovered something very strange then. When you say no to a record company, they become even more eager. Nick kept calling up to see how things were progressing.

And I kept putting him off. It was ironic. After all those years chasing a deal, I had a record company chasing me and I wasn't even sure if I still wanted a deal. I didn't want to get excited. I didn't want to start dreaming of stardom. I didn't want to get caught up in the mania of my youth. And maybe I didn't want to risk disappointment. My heart had been broken by the music business too many times before.

But the time came when I had to admit I was finished. I had twelve tracks that I really liked, enough for an album. Musically, it was wildly varied stuff. I wanted it to sound like all the music I had ever loved jumbled together, as if the listener was lost in their favorite record store. Lyrically, there was a darkness to it, perhaps because the inspiration to write usually came to me when I was suffering. There were songs about death, addiction, loss, apocalypse and man's inhumanity to man, the same kind of stuff I used to write for Shook Up! really, but without the pop froth. I sent copies to a few close friends. The response was very encouraging. But the card from Bono meant most of all to me.

As it happened, Nick had spoken to Bono too. “He talks very highly of you,” Nick reported. He asked me to come and see him in his office at BMG.

“This is a work of godlike genius,” said Nick, perhaps exaggerating somewhat, but I wasn't complaining. “It deserves to be heard.” And he offered me a deal. It was a small deal, a long way removed from the kind of figures Ossie Kilkenny used to bandy about, but it was tailored to my unusual circumstances. Which was that I made it clear there was no way I was going to give up everything to hit the road and promote this with the desperate energy of a young wannabe. “In publishing terms,” I explained, “I don't need to be a best-selling author. I'd be quite happy being a minor poet.”

“I believe we can shift ten thousand,” he said, which would make it economically viable. “It deserves to sell a hundred thousand. But most of all it deserves to be out there. I'd be proud to have this on my label.”

And so we shook hands on a deal. He said he would get contracts drawn up. I said I'd get a solicitor.

I left the office in a daze. I could hardly believe what had just taken place. “Better twenty-five years late than never,” I thought.

I called my brother. He had remarried and lived down the country these days. He had a covers band called 29 Fingers who played weddings and he composed music for low-budget TV programs. He was proud to make his living as a working musician even if it was a long way from the fantasies of fame and fortune we had once mutually entertained. “You're never going to believe this,” I said. “I've been offered a record deal.”

“Congratulations,” he said grumpily. I knew enough about envy to understand how he was feeling.

“It's just a small deal,” I said, to try to make him feel better. But a dangerous thought was cannoning off the walls of my mind. “Nick said it deserves to sell a hundred thousand. What if I was to get out there and really work it?”

When I got home, I popped some champagne with Gloria. “I was thinking I might take a couple of months off when the record comes out,” I told her. “Give it a real go. You never know. I'm too old to be a pop star now but there's a lot of people my age out there looking for quality music and if I can just get this in front of them, Nick reckons we could shift a hundred thousand. And that's only the beginning. I'm already thinking about the next album. I know I can make a better record than this. I want to make a masterpiece. I want to make a record that moves the world. This could be the start of something big, babe. It could change our lives.”

A week later, Nick Stewart was made redundant.

I
t's hard to know where to end a life story, since life rolls remorselessly on. But let me fill you in on a few delicious ironies that have unfolded since I completed the manuscript.

I gave up on The Ghost for a while there. I had wasted enough time flogging dead horses. Gloria and I moved house and had a gorgeous baby boy, whom we have saddled with the name Finn Gabriel Cosmo Else McCormick (I figure if he ever decides he wants to be a rock star, he should have a range of names to choose from). So, one day, I was sitting in my temporary office in my basement, surrounded by packing crates, when the telephone rang. It was Mel Gibson's office calling from Los Angeles and they wanted to know if they could use my song “Harm's Way” on an album of music inspired by his film
The Passion of the Christ.
Naturally, I tried to act as if this kind of thing happened to me every day. I certainly didn't want to blow my cool by asking how on earth they had even heard my music. The truth emerged the next time I spoke to Bono. “It was Ali,” he told me. “She listens to your album a lot. It was on around the house and she just kind of took control of it. Then Mel's office called to talk about music that might suit
The Passion
and she said, ‘You've got to hear this song,' and played it down the phone to them! But here's the really funny thing: she didn't even know who it was! She asked me and you should have seen her face when I told her it was you. It was very funny. And the crushing irony is that the first song released by you on a major label is from
The Passion of the Christ
! Come on! And you say you don't believe in God!”

“Obviously He works in very mysterious ways,” I said.

“It just proves that God has a great sense of humor,” said Bono.

Meanwhile, Nick Stewart, a music man to his core, resurfaced with a new label, Endeavour, at Universal Records, where one of my old adversaries, Lucien Grainge, has risen to the ranks of MD. Nick immediately contacted me to find out if he could still release my album. I warned him that I had a bit of a history with Lucien. “Is there anyone in this business you haven't offended?” asked Nick. So, if Lucien has forgiven me for my rudeness back in the eighties, my album,
Mortal Coil
, should be available to the general public by September 2004.

The saga continues on www.neilmccormick.com

Anyone interested in hearing the music of Yeah! Yeah! and Shook Up! that fills these pages can look it up on www.realshookup.com

I have lots of people to thank but let me start with one who invades every corner of this book. Bono has been immensely encouraging to me ever since I called him to tell him I was thinking of putting my sorry saga in print. I told him my opening line and then listened to him guffaw with laughter for about two minutes. “It's not that funny,” I grumbled. “I could have been famous!” And you can blame him for the title. In the U.K., the book is called
I Was Bono's Doppelganger
(which was always my working title), but he came up with the alternative (favored by my American publishers) of
Killing Bono,
which he insisted was much more punchy. I told him I was worried it might give people ideas but I guess that's the kind of weirdness he has to live with all the time. I would just like to say, one more time, for the record, how much I admire the man. I was particularly impressed that, after he read the manuscript, he wanted to make only one change. And that was to add the phrase “tongue-in-cheek” to my revelation that they played a version of the Bay City Rollers' “Bye Bye Baby” at their first gig. “It's been an ongoing debate between us,” said Bono, “but you have to believe me: when we did the Bay City Rollers it was because they were a fucking teen band and we thought it was funny! The track listing was unhip enough but, even so, cast your mind back to being a fifteen-year-old boy—if you were into rock music, you hated the Bay City Rollers. It wasn't that we thought they were cool. No one thought they were cool! But as it happens the things we thought were cool were just as uncool! By the way, for the record, in those early gigs everyone in the band got a choice of material and Adam's, I think, was the Eagles, Edge's was Rory Gallagher but my uncool choice was the worst of all. I was responsible for ‘Nights in White Satin.' ”

I'm glad we cleared that up.

I'd like to thank Ali, too, who is always fiercely protective of Bono. I suspect she viewed this enterprise with a healthy degree of skepticism but she has never been less than gracious to me. Well, almost never. I do remember driving (erratically) with Bono in Dublin one evening when Ali called on the car speakerphone. “Here's a voice from your past,” said Bono, announcing my presence. After exchanging pleasantries, Ali said, rather pointedly, “Just remember to take everything he says with a pinch of salt.”

“I always do,” I said.

“I was talking to Bono!” she objected.

After Bono hung up, he laughed. “I thought she meant me as well,” he admitted.

People have asked how I remembered things with such clarity. Well, there were diaries, letters, tapes, photographs and lots of old friends to jog my memory, but it is worth making the point that this is my version of my life and not everyone remembers things exactly the same way. And so, in particular, I would like to express gratitude for the forbearance of my brother, Ivan, whose life story this also is. He did not agree with everything in the manuscript but asked for only one tiny change.

I am acutely aware that people have full lives that intersect with mine only at various points, and so I apologize if any of my friends and relatives feel caricatured or reduced by my manuscript in any respect. I know my older sister, Stella, sometimes worries that the only way she will be known to the world at large will be through her imbalanced relationship with me. So, for the record, she's a bright, vibrant woman, devoted to her son, Nicholas, with a very full social life. And she insists she did not scratch my copy of “Seasons in the Sun” in front of me with a nail file. Apparently she smashed it behind my back. At any rate, it's all Terry Jacks deserved for making my adolescence such a misery.

I love my family. There are many more dimensions to them than can be contained within the pages of this story…But, frankly, if they want to set the record straight they are going to have to write books of their own. I am happy to report that my parents are still as stubbornly proud of their children as ever, even if we never quite achieved the things that once seemed possible. When Ivan and I gave up on our musical dreams, my dad started saying that Louise was always the real musical talent in the family (she's certainly a better singer than I could ever be). But eventually Louise also gave up on trying to make a living out of music, moving to Cork to raise her beautiful daughters, Juliet and Ophelia. And now that it looks like my album is going to get a major-label release, I can't help but notice that Dad is starting to swing back around to the idea that I am the real talent in the family. He's probably just waiting for me to repay all that money he invested in me.

I want to express my gratitude to all the other people who have become characters in my book. In particular, my ex-girlfriend Joan Cody. I am sorry that I broke your heart once. I hope reading about it has not been too painful. All I can say in my defense is that I was young and had a lot to learn about love. Joan is back in Ireland now; she has two fantastic children but currently no man in her life. She has, however, an abundance of admirers. When I go back to Howth, I am most renowned among the younger men of the village for having once squired the divine Ms. Cody!

I've lost touch with Barbara McCarney. She married my old bassist John McGlue and they moved to Australia. I gather that they are now happily divorced.

This is in danger of turning into an Oscars acceptance speech, but I'd like to thank all the musicians who put up with the battling McCormick brothers over the years. Great bonds are formed in bands, and Frank, Deco, Vlad, Damien and Steve will always be in my heart. But in particular Leo Regan remains my very close friend, a man of immense integrity who helps keep me on the straight and narrow. Leo has gone on to become a Bafta-winning director, no small achievement.

In the U2 camp, I'd like to thank Edge, Adam and Larry, who have always treated me with friendship and respect, even though I still don't know which one of those bastards vetoed Shook Up!'s single behind my back. Paul McGuinness has always been extremely friendly toward me, perhaps because he still harbors the delusion that I was once a member of U2. Sheila Roche, former number two at Principle Management, has been kind and helpful over the years and did everything in her power to facilitate this book. Anton Corjbin was extremely kind to let me use one of his classic photos for the British cover, especially given that he was initially very reluctant to let anyone tamper with his picture. But he read the book and got the joke. I have never met Candida Bottaci at Principle but she has always been at the end of an e-mail and willing to help out. I would like to thank Louise Butterly and, in particular, Regine Moylett at RMP, publicists to U2. Regine was a contemporary of mine on the punk scene in Dublin, where she played in bands and ran a clothing shop, No Romance (and can therefore be directly held responsible for some of my worst fashion excesses). Bono (who is very good at deciding what other people should do for a living) persuaded her to get into PR, where she has been a fantastic success. Regine has a quality of kindness, thoughtfulness and consideration rare in this business, and she has always been available to help me out even though this project really runs right outside her remit. Thanks also to Regine's husband, Kevin Davies, who supplied the fantastic U.S. cover shot. And a special mention to my great friend Darren Filkins, the photographer who dropped into Anton's picture. Darren could have written his own saga of life as a might-have-been, having quit the embryonic Blur to devote himself to photography, but, in his case, the choice never weighed heavily upon him. He is a superb guitarist (who guests on The Ghost Who Walks album) but a better photographer.

This book owes a great deal to the encouragement, perspective and advice of my hugely experienced agent, Araminta Whitley, her fantastic assistant, Celia Hayley, and my enthusiastic and thoughtful U.K. publisher, Rowland White. And I am immensely grateful for the kind words and ongoing support of my American publisher, Lauren McKenna, and U.S. agent, Sarah Lazin.

I would never have got this far without the support of my dearly beloved Gloria, whose giggling as she read selected highlights was immensely encouraging. Mind you, she still hasn't seen the passages dealing with sexual and narcotic excesses. I'm a different man since I met you, babe. And this book is especially for her sons, the lights of my life, Abner and Kamma. I hope you're not too shocked by what I got up to when I was your age! Remember, just say no to drugs, kids. And for my beautiful Finn—one day you'll read this and find out more about your dad than you really want to know. Just remember, we all had to start somewhere!

This has now run on longer than the credits on a hip-hop album. But, as I said at the start, books have to end somewhere. So this is it.