Killing Bono Read Free Page B

first record I ever bought should be something so trite. I wish I could claim, like most rock critics, that I was into the Velvet Underground before I even learned to read. But there you have it. In 1974, this maudlin ballad of a dying man bidding farewell to those he has loved appealed to the tragic self-dramatist in me. All together now: “We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun…”
    To my horror, my selection did not go down at all well among the young bohemians in Sutton Park, some of whom groaned loudly while others sang along with the chorus in silly voices. My teacher praised the song’s melody and economy of storytelling, which only made my peers’ mockery worse. I felt my cheeks burning with humiliation when he decided to spin the B-side, a sentimental country song about an old lady who couldn’t feed her dog because there were no bones left in the cupboard. I was suddenly confronted with the sheer banality of my musical tastes. Terry Jacks did not even wear makeup, for goodness’ sake. I was thirteen now, and there were no excuses for being so uncool. When I got home, I contemplated the seven inches of black vinyl with a sense of intense shame. Stella, who had always hated the song, finally put me out of my misery. She took the single from my hands and with a nail file proceeded to gouge an enormous scratch across the record’s surface before coolly replacing it in its paper bag and handing it back to me. “There,” she said, with assured finality. I didn’t even protest. I simply returned the scratched record to the rack, never to be played again.
    The next single I bought was Ralph McTell’s “Streets of London.” Would I never learn?
    The McCormicks liked to think of themselves as a musical family, although our instrumental skills left something to be desired. My grandfather would proudly proclaim that he had never had a lesson in his life as he regaled us with near-unrecognizable organ renditions of “Amazing Grace” and popular classical pieces replete with false starts and bum notes. He was the first in a mercifully short line of self-taught musicians. My father learned to play guitar by following a series on television, frequently blaming his inability to play a complete piece from beginning to end on the fact that he had missed episodes two and five. My mother, meanwhile, shrugged aside the minor handicap of being tone deaf to apply herself to mastering the out-of-tune piano that occupied our dining room. Our regular family singsongs were not for the faint-hearted.
    Ivan was the first to apply himself to learning to play an instrument properly, attending guitar lessons from an early age. While at Sutton Park he formed his first group, Electronic Wizard. They made their debut at a lunchtime concert in the school, kicking off with an original composition, the opening couplet of which I still vividly remember: “Electronic Wizard is our name / Playing electric music is our game.” This bold assertion was somewhat undermined by the fact that the quartet’s lineup consisted of three acoustic guitars and a snare drum. I swiftly concluded that Ivan’s musical ambitions represented no significant threat to my plan to become the first famous McCormick.
    I wanted to be an actor and, while waiting to be discovered by Hollywood, I landed the lead role in the school’s annual end-of-year theatrical production. In 1975, at only fourteen years old, I was to make my debut as Hamlet. I prepared by walking around reading poetry, muttering to no one in particular and generally affecting intense self-absorption, although I doubt anybody but me noticed a great change in my behavior. I even started spending time in the cemetery that bordered the rear of the school, which was where, two weeks before the end of term, disaster struck. Posing dramatically on a cemetery wall, I lost my balance and plummeted to the gravestones below, breaking