Off The Record

Veteran Rolling Stone writer David Fricke caught up with Bono two days after U2 opened their European summer tour in Turin, Italy. Bono conducted the interview at his home in Nice, France, discussing getting back onstage after back surgery and U2’s future tour plans.

“I woke up on the morning of the show with a certain anxiety,” he tells Fricke. “I asked, ‘Can I hit those notes? Have I got it inside of me? Have we got what it takes to make this experience one that people will remember for the rest of their lives? Or is it going to be four over-rewarded musicians playing in a football stadium?’

“It's an unusual place to make magic. I was very nervous -- very, very nervous. We had done a rehearsal two nights previous. And I was okay. I got through it. But I'm used to total immersion. I'm not used to the feeling (of restraint) I had. I didn't like it.”

In one of those fluke happy accidents in life, I now count my wife’s ex-boyfriend among my closest friends. Phil and I used to eye one another cautiously over the years like the competitors that we were, but that child-like behavior has now passed with age as we have both settled into happy marriages with women far above our station.

We have discovered common traits that include a need to constantly poke fun at people around us that eventually gets turned on one another. Sometimes, when the bartender directs pints our way with the speed of an air traffic controller at JFK during Christmas week, that good-natured ribbing awakens the old rivalry about who might have been better in bed with my missus.

Is there anything more ridiculous than two Irishmen comparing the length of the wand and the magic of the stick with one another, given the bum reputation that our race has in that department? In fact, it is quite acceptable to make fun of the state of the our horizontal challenges even on Broadway; Martin Casella has had successful runs on both sides of the Atlantic with his comedic play called The Irish Curse.

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Perched atop a rustic bench in the snug of an Irish pub with a full pint at the end of a bent elbow in a tony suburban Orlando neighborhood, I was ready for what I thought might be the toughest writing assignment of my career.

My friend was dealing with a very lonely Irish mother in law and he was hoping to find her someone for the holidays. I was told that she was an extremely devout Catholic woman originally from Offaly who decided to set up shop on dating websites after a daughter and two girlfriends found love online and I was pitched as “the funny New York writer” in town to compose a snappy profile that would attract Mr. Right.

You’d know a man like Michael Ward from a mile away. The yellowed shirt had seen whiter days and it was tucked underneath a well worn suit and below a thatch of wiry white hair. Yet his appearance somehow revealed a certain level of bohemian elegance.

He was threadbare, not in an unkempt way, but in a warm and appealing manner akin to the catcher’s mitt that has seen its share of fast balls.