U2
How to dismantle an atomic bomb

HOW TO DISMANTLE (A GROUP THAT USED TO BE) A BOMB.

March 2, 2006: 4 in the morning.
How I love the warm Argentine wind on my face. And the more I love this breeze, the more I'm pissed off by Argentina. Especially since I didn't even want to come here. I said, "let's wait for them to come to Europe in the summer, we're closer, less hassle, fewer kilometers," but no way.
The general of the B.M.A.B.M.* (* see the review on Bob Dylan) was adamant: we've let them float for too long, almost 10 years, and now it's over: you have to take out U2, now, right now, at their next concert on March 1st at the Buenos Aires stadium (as announced on www.u2place.net/pages/vertigotour_dett.asp?idData=1350). End of discussion.

Luckily, I only had to deal with Bono.
The general only wanted his carcass, also because the one who calls himself "The Edge" can play the guitar well, but for ten years has been doing the same echo, reverb, and sound mix tricks that are now more predictable than the end of a motionless snail a few millimeters from the wheel of a speeding truck. Basically, a number two...
The other two are like androids, with faces stuffed with psychotropic drugs to withstand all this stress of being shuttled around the 4 continents. Two who’ve always counted as much as the two of spades (my childhood friend Amilcare Zanardelli could have been the bassist, who played bass like my grandma beat the carpet with a carpet beater, which was all the same) and who follow the orders that BONO and THE EDGE (seriously?... not even Walt Disney went that far) give them on command. Someone goes around saying they’ve seen them outside the hotel room door, ready to eat dog food from bowls served directly by The Edge. Well, there must be a reason why the group is called U2 and not U4, right?!.

The fact is that with this latest album they’ve really hit rock bottom.
The inspiration of the past, the anger, the pride, in short, everything good they had is now an enormous promotional gadget selling takeaway ideals packaged like popcorn outside the cinema, served with large cups of fizzy rhetoric, nice speeches, humanitarian commitments, and millions of words to revive that "media blast" that the four once could conquer on the field for purely artistic merits. Now even Bono understands it. If you lack substance, throw yourself into politics and everything will come by itself.
Oh, how I hate myself when I always talk about the same things and how pathetic I find myself talking about the past.
Now you see them (yeah, even in the latest DVD "Vertigo Tour 05" they clearly look tired, with eyes lost in emptiness) more or less consciously victims of a commercial machinery larger than them and that, despite everything, refuse to let go. What else could these four do in a normal life? Retirees? Painters? Lecturers? Politicians? (to be clear, the machine still brings in tons of money for them, right? Not just peanuts!!) And so they keep bothering us with their expert but empty tricks made of songs now devoid of spirit and motivation felt from the depths.

Oh damn, it's 5 in the morning and not a shadow of those four little bastards. It's been almost eight hours that I've been dressed like a jerk in this bellhop outfit that's too tight and pulling all the buttons across my belly. Eight hours walking back and forth in the hall of this 5-star hotel waiting for these to come back from the concert held at the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires. What the hell do they do until 5 in the morning? Get drunk? Screw around? Get high? Dance the tango? Eat? I mean, I look at these damn clock hands every 10 minutes and these bitches only advance 10 minutes at a time. Of course, that's how it is, you'd say, but it pisses me off nonetheless!

I nervously light a cigarette and take unhealthy gulps of cancerous gases. A bald idiot dressed like me comes over and points out that the passive smoke I inhale is also harmful to others. I shove the whole barrel of my metallic baby into his throat: "Suck on this and tell me if it's better" and I repeatedly pull the trigger. I hide the hygienist penguin dressed in red polka dots in the wardrobe. "Minding your own business isn't very healthy either."

Here they are! they've just arrived.

I step out and dodge the three earpiece-wearing goons who constantly look left and right, take the four rock stars’ suitcases from the trunk of the Rolls. I head towards the elevator followed by the tipsy U4, who drunk and giggling follow me obediently, unaware of their fate.

A bald fool dressed like Matrix but moving like Napo Orsocapo opens the elevator and checks the cabin with a glance, Bono enters first, and I hurry to load the elevator with the guys’ six suitcases. Maximum load 400 kg. Me 100, Bono 80, the 6 suitcases weigh over 200 kg. I've never been good at math but at home, I know we are near FULL. I have my cap pulled low over my eyes and with a De Agostini Course accent I whisper: "Please, the floor?!"
Bono, with his ass-face, his nose still dusty with talcum powder, raises the key without pronouncing "A". Room 702, well, I say to myself: we have seven floors of softness ahead of us, just like that dear old toilet paper ad.

On the 4th floor I can't resist and press ALT.
Bono pulls a dumb face, the only one left to him, and comes out with a formal and ill-fitting "what’s happen?" He looks at my shirt cuff and notices two bloodstains from my other ex-colleague health nut. He lifts those damn piss-yellow glasses and goes, "what do you want...".

4 words, 4 rock stars, 4 floors, 4 shots, like the only 4 good and decent albums they've made in their twenty-five-year career. This number, if I make it out alive, I'll play it at Bingo next Saturday.
I press START again.
I get off at the 5th floor.
That bloody hand of Bono's has set off the alarm.
4 seconds and it's panic:
People running, royal chaos, blaring sirens, neurotic screams, everyone going wild, I'm fuming, basically all according to the script. The usual scenario of the situation.
Or of the damn.

I ditch the fake janitor’s coat, put on my bottle green '78 Ray-Bans, get in my limo and quietly drive away. I adjust the rearview mirror and see CNN correspondents, BBC photographers, SKY journalists, Mediaset jerks, helicopters everywhere, beams of light, bunches of roses, fascists with batons, flying ambulances, people dancing tango, scattered jackals, rear-ended cars in double parking, lives tied to a double knot.

Damn, I think, all this fuss... if I took out the Beatles what would have happened!? Everything in this world is relative. Let's give time to time... after a hundred years no one will care about them anymore. Does anyone remember Natalino Otto? No, eh? And Beniamino Gigli? Not really, right? Yet they were legends 70 years ago, legends that have now practically entered oblivion (or almost!).

What a crappy job.
All this killing for what in the end? As if it changed anything, as if taking one out would modify the state of things: everything ends up going back to how it was, the three will split and each of them will form another group more or less like U2 so we'll have three of them instead of one. Worse than Cerberus, the seven-headed monster of Ulysses.

Well, maybe I'll quit everything. I'm too old for this stuff, I'm still out of breath for a lousy job like this. Let's see: I could do a more peaceful job, in an office, a simple home-work thing.
I could, for instance, review albums on websites, but I immediately think it’s a foolish idea. Who would be so stupid as to waste all their time writing anonymous reviews, unpaid, and exposing themselves to being covered in shit by readers? I think no one.
Of normal people, I mean.