THEY say we hate it when our friends become successful – so spare a thought for wannabe rock star Neil McCormick.
As a teenager he was best friends with another schoolboy at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin by the name of Paul Hewson.
When his mate changed his name to Bono and formed a band called U2, Neil and his brother Ivan were determined to tread the same path to fame and fortune.
Only it didn’t quite work out as planned. With a movie adaptation of Neil’s book, Killing Bono, about to hit cinemas, the 49-year-old tells how he’s spent his life in the shadow of the world’s biggest rock star:
AS a teenage dreamer growing up in Dublin in the 1970s, I had my future worked out in detail.
I was going to form a rock band, make world-beating albums, play mindblowing concerts in the biggest stadiums on earth and promote world peace, feed the poor and save the planet while I was at it. There was one thing I hadn’t counted on. My school friend Paul Hewson had plans of his own.
Paul was a fellow teenage rock fan who answered to the frankly rather ridiculous nickname Bono Vox. You may have heard of him.
Bono is a big star these days but the truth is he was always a bit of a star, even in the school corridor.
Everyone knew Bono, with his restless energy, mischievous humour and friendly grin. We were in choir together, and while I can’t recall him contributing much to our classical performances, I still picture him entertaining choirgirls on away days, strumming his guitar and singing Beach Boys songs.
Bono caused hysteria in Mount Temple school one day when he turned up as our first punk, in a purple suit, cropped hair and a chain stretched from his earring to a safety pin through his mouth. Younger kids retreated screaming down the corridor.
His girlfriend Alison dumped him, although the relationship was patched up the next day when he agreed pins belonged in nappies. They are still together more than 30 years later.
Bono’s ascent to stardom began one Saturday in 1976 in the kitchen of our fellow pupil, drummer Larry Mullen.
Guitarist Dave “The Edge” Evans and bassist Adam Clayton were there, as was my younger brother Ivan, who made the legendary entry in his diary: “Watched TV. Joined a pop group with friends. Had a rehearsal. Great.”
This was the first gathering of a band who would go on to conquer the world – once they had got rid of my brother.
They told him they had a gig in a pub and he was too young to get in. It was only much later he realised they would have been too young as well.
At their first gig, U2 played on four tables held together by sticky tape in the school gym.
Bono lifted the microphone stand aloft and sang Peter Frampton’s Show Me The Way while the little girls from junior classes screamed. I was impressed. Ivan and I formed our own band, Frankie Corpse and the Undertakers. Well, it was 1977. We made our debut in the school disco with U2, all returning the next morning to sweep and mop the floors.
We played a lot of gigs together in those early days and I watched U2 turn into a white-hot rock group.
But it never distracted me from my own ambitions. Ivan and I went through a lot of haircuts and fashion makeovers with bands like Yeah! Yeah! and Shook Up!.
We got close enough to taste success, moving to London to sign a big record deal in 1983. But through bad luck, sharp practice, poor judgment and over-confidence, everything that could go wrong did. The bigger U2 grew, the more pathetic my own career seemed by comparison.
Bono became inescapable. Walk into a shop and there he was, blasting over the in-store stereo. Turn on the TV and there he was, shaking hands with presidents and prime ministers.
The worst moment may have been my seduction of a gorgeous model after a gig. I got her back to her bedroom only to find a huge poster of my schoolpal staring down at us from over her bed. It was probably the only time I ever asked a beautiful naked girl if we could turn the lights off. Eventually I had to accept the truth. My friend had become a rock star. I had to settle for life as a rock critic.
One day I was sitting in my shabby office, watching rain drizzle down a window, when Bono phoned from Miami to tell me about smoking cigars with presidents and singing duets with Frank Sinatra. I was in no mood to listen.
“The problem with knowing you is that you’ve done everything I ever wanted to do,” I complained. “I feel like you’ve lived my life.”
OVERWEIGHT
Bono replied: “I’m your doppelganger. If you want your life back, you will have to kill me.”
Now there was a thought.
So I wrote a book about trying to make it in the music business while being overshadowed by my friend. It was Bono himself who suggested the title, Killing Bono.
“I know a few people who would wear that T-shirt,” he joked. He started leaving messages on my answer machine: “Neil, it’s Bono. You have to kill me. It’s for your own good. And mine!”
Bono has admitted: “You’re not the only one of my friends who complains about how hard it is knowing me.” Hanging out with superstars can make your own small achievements pathetic by comparison.
There are compensations, though. I was with Bono when he met Bob Dylan for the first time, backstage at an open-air concert in Ireland in 1984.
Dylan asked Bono to join him on stage but Bono didn’t know any Dylan songs.
After making a few suggestions, Dylan insisted: “You must know Blowin’ In The Wind.” Seeing his chance slip away, Bono agreed to sing the classic, then came to me and said: “Do you know the lyrics?”
When Dylan announced him on-stage, Bono bounded on and made up whatever came into his head, stuff such as: “How many times must the newspapers bleed with the lives of innocent men?”
But he didn’t even know the chorus and just kept roaring, ‘How many times, how many times?’ while 100,000 fans were singing: “The answer my friend…”
The look on Dylan’s face was hilarious – complete eye-popping, jaw-dropping disbelief. Afterwards Bono said: “Do you think anyone noticed?”
And Bono took me to see the Pope as part of his campaign to eradicate Third World debt. The Vatican Swiss Guard insisted I wait outside the room, barring my way like overdressed bouncers.
“Just don’t tell them I’m not a Catholic,” Bono whispered as he was led into the Pope’s sanctum. This week, the film of my book is coming out, in which I am played by Ben Barnes, possibly the most handsome young actor in Britain.
You may know him as Prince Caspian in The Chronicles of Narnia. I suggested Brendan Gleeson or Colm Meaney to play Bono, a good Irish character actor, preferably old, overweight and balding.
That would have been the ultimate revenge. In the event they cast young Irish actor Martin McCann, who does such an incredible job that the first time I saw him I thought Bono had dropped by.
ENVY
I called Bono to tell him how great the actor was. “Just as long as he’s tall,” said Bono. “And modest.”
Those are perhaps not the things most people associate with Bono. But he’s a good man and he’s probably been a better friend to me than I have to him.
Envy may be a sin, but it’s good for comedy. The film is a very funny story of failure, even if it takes a lot of liberties with my book.
At the climax they have me running around Dublin with a gun, hunting down my old friend. Despite the title, I never really wanted to kill Bono. Maybe just maim him a little…
3Killing Bono (cert 15) is out in cinemas on Friday.