U2 #2: How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb

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Killing Bono: A True Story

Elton John says it's the best book he's ever read "about trying to make it in the music business." Blender magazine says it "multi-tasks as an affectionate coming-of-age memoir, an intimate rock biography and a Nick Hornsbyish mediation on growing up." Neil McCormick's Killing Bono finds an aging rock scribe not only wondering how his old schoolmate and current U2 vocalist conquered the pop world, but how similar lives can follow different trajectories. The pair were pals in their early Dublin days, and have kept in touch throughout the years. As the author wittily describes the parallels and intersections of their respective paths, he creates an insightful meditation on how music and art can radically overtake a person. Bono - no, he's not dead - deems it a "great book." We've excerpted the introduction and second chapter below.

PROLOGUE

I always knew I would be famous.

By the time I left school at 17, my life was planned down to the finest detail. I would form a rock band, make a series of epoch shifting albums, play technologically mind-blowing concerts in the biggest stadiums on the planet until I was universally acknowledged as the greatest superstar of my era. And I would indulge in all manor of diversions along the way: make films, write books, break hearts, befriend my idols ... oh, and promote world peace, feed the poor and save the planet while I was at it.

You might think I was just another arrogant teenage airhead with fantasies of omnipotence. Indeed, there were plenty around me at the time who did their best to persuade me this was the case. But I wasn't about to be put off by lesser mortals jealous of my talent. Because I knew, deep, deep in the very core of my being, that this wasn't just another empty dream. This was my destiny ...

So there I was, 35-years old, sitting in a shabby, unheated little excuse for an office above a bookie's in Piccadilly, watching the rain drizzle down my single, grimy window, wondering where it had all gone wrong. I wanted to be a rock star and wound up becoming a rock critic. To compound my torment, I was suffering from a bad case of writer's block with my newspaper deadline looming and the fucking telephone hadn't stopped ringing all morning with a succession of PRs pestering me about their shitty rock bands, all of whom I secretly resented for, I suppose, just being more famous than me. But at least talking on the phone gave me an excuse for not writing my column.

"It better be good," I snapped into the receiver.

"This is the voice of your conscience," announced my caller in a gravelly, wasted Dublin accent that reeked of smoke, late nights and fine wines.

"Bono," I said, in recognition.

"You can run but you can't hide," he laughed.

"The way I feel right now, I don't think I could even run," I sighed.

It was, indeed, Bono: rock legend, international superstar, roving ambassador for world peace and (though it is unlikely to feature prominently on his CV) a school friend of mine from Mount Temple Comprehensive.

"Where are you?" I enquired, listening to the echo of global distance bouncing down the phone line.

"Miami," he said. "Playground of America. Ever been to Miami? The gangsters look like fashion designers. Or maybe the fashion designers look like gangsters. Sometimes it's hard to tell..."

There was a time when we had both been singers in schoolboy bands, playing every toilet in Dublin, convinced against all the odds that we were the chosen ones, bound for glory. We moved in different circles these days. I wrote for a newspaper. He was the news. But every now and then, when something brought me to mind, Bono would call up out of the blue to fill me in on his latest adventures in the stratosphere of superstardom.

"I was out at a club last night," he said, slipping into raconteur mode, his voice an intimate whisper. "I think it was owned by some kind of mafiosi but, like I said, maybe it was just a fashion thing. Lots of men with moustaches and models draped over their shoulders, you know? Every man and woman in the place was puffing on enormous cigars. Clouds of smoke everywhere. Smoke rings rising up to the ceiling. There's something about a beautiful woman and a cigar, it's a very powerful combination, don't you think?"

"Until you kiss them and find out they taste like an ashtray," I grunted.

"You're such a romantic," said Bono. "So I'm led into this room at the back which is just filled with hundreds of little drawers, floor-to-ceiling. And each little drawer has a little plaque with a name on it. So I go up to one and see the name Madonna. Then I look at another one and it says Schwarzenneger. I'm still not that impressed. Then I look at another one and it says Sinatra! That's when I know this is the real deal. It's like a walk in humidor. All these personal stashes of illegally imported Cuban cigars maintained at perfect temperature and humidity for whenever they want to drop in and have a puff. I was looking for the president's name, cause I'm sure he has his own drawer in there somewhere. It was pure Miami. This whole city's like the shop window for the American dream."

As I listened, occasionally making encouraging noises, I watched a pigeon splashing about in a puddle that was building up on the ledge outside my rotting window frame. Miami seemed a long way away. Bono sounded woozy and happy after his night on the tiles but I had a strange feeling welling up in my chest, a disturbing swirl of conflicting emotions. I was pleased that Bono had called me. Flattered even. I liked and admired the man as much as anyone I had ever known. So why did his voice have the power to send a sharp stab of insecurity running right through my heart?

"I thought of you, cause I know you've always been a big fan of Frank," said Bono. "Did I ever tell you about our duet?"

That was it. Something popped in my head. "Stop!" I spluttered. "Enough! I should be doing a duet with Frank Sinatra! What's Sinatra to you? Just another famous scalp! I love Frank Sinatra. Leave him alone! Next you'll be telling me you've been asked to play James Bond."

There was a moment's uneasy silence, then Bono laughed. "Actually, the Edge and me have written the new Bond theme for Tina Turner."

"Oh, Fuck off!" I snapped. "The problem with knowing you is that you've done everything I ever wanted to do. I feel like you've lived my life."

Laughter echoed back down the line. "I'm your doppelganger," Bono said. "If you want your life back, you'll have to kill me."

Now there was a thought...

When I put down the phone I started to brood. Was Bono really my evil twin? Or was I his? Now that I thought about it, our careers had diverged early on and just kept on getting wider and wider apart. As he rose to the highest realms of fame and fortune, I had plummeted to the depths of anonymity, a rock and roll casualty, leaving only the briefest of traces in the margins of pop history, and that for being the first person to leave U2.

Oh yes. I didn't mention that, did I? But we'll get to it.

Perhaps I was the Yang to Bono's Yin. The dark counterbalance to his life of success and good fortune, absorbing all the bad luck and mischance that never seemed to go his way.

I pulled down a decaying, much-thumbed, hardback antique Oxford English Dictionary from my overcrowded bookshelves. Doppelganger: (ad. Ger. Double-ganger) The apparition of a living person; a double, a wraith. That's me alright, I thought. Just a phantom reflection of everything I ever wanted to be. And everything I ever wanted to be was personified by a bloke I had gone to school with. How cruel was that?

"Bono Must Die!" I typed into my computer. I blew it up, 72 point, bold, and printed it out. It looked good. I knew a few people who would wear that T-shirt.

"I, Bono," I typed. Perhaps I could sell my story to the National Enquirer. Bono Stole My Life.

Not that I hadn't achieved things in my own right. Deep inside, I knew that to be true. But in the blinding glare of superstardom, the small triumphs of ordinary existence don't always register. Instead you can easily become a footnote in somebody else's story.

So let me get something straight from the start. Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, I do not have the dubious distinction of being to U2 what Pete Best was to the Beatles: the man who missed the gravy train. I know, it is right there in black and white in the group's authorised biography, 'The Unforgettable Fire'. In Chapter Four, biographer Eamon Dunphy informs his readers of the first fateful gathering of the band that would become U2, to which Bono, apparently, 'turned up with another Mount Temple pupil, Neil McCormick who, like everyone else present, fancied being lead guitarist'. However, after a few grim renditions of rock standards including 'Brown Sugar' and 'Satisfaction', 'Neil decided to bale out'.

That rather trivial little tale seems to follow me around wherever I go, the source of many other biographical presumptions. I still wince whenever I see myself described in print as an 'original member of U2', or worse, 'ex-U2', as if the defining moment of my entire life was petulantly stomping out of a rehearsal room back in my schooldays. So please read the following carefully: I wasn't there and even if I had been, any ambitions to become lead axeman in the nascent combo would surely have been hampered by the fact that I had only ever mastered three chords on my daddy's Spanish guitar, and I wasn't even sure which chords they were.

But if something is printed often enough it becomes the truth, or at least the official version. I think the members of U2 actually believe it themselves at this stage. Certainly, backstage in Miami at the launch of their 2001 world tour, manager Paul McGuinness kept introducing me as a member of the original line-up. The fact that a former alumni of his band might now be a music critic for conservative British broadsheet The Daily Telegraph seemed to amuse him immensely.

The pouting and gorgeous Andrea Corr was there, somehow looking even more desirable than usual with a pint of Guinness in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. "Did you really walk out on U2?" she asked, sounding suitably impressed.

"I told Bono the band wasn't big enough for the both of us," I replied. "If they'd have stuck with me, they could have really gone places." (Come on. What was I supposed to say to the most beautiful woman in Ireland? It was just a misprint?)

"How does it feel seeing them on stage?" Andrea asked. "Do you think, 'that could have been me up there?'"

Now that was cutting a little too close to the bone.

I looked around the room, crowded with familiar faces. The sleek uber rock figure of Lenny Kravitz lingered in a corner, dressed in fake fur entirely inappropriate for the climate, his expression hidden behind omnipresent, impenetrable reflective shades. He was silently accompanied by someone who appeared to occupy the role of mobile phone roadie. Lenny would hold out a hand and a gleaming, mettallic phone would miraculously appear in it. When his conversation was over, he would hold it out again and the roadie would slip it back into his pocket.

Elvis Costello, an entity from a different end of the rock spectrum, portly, bespectacled and dressed like he had just been for a rummage in a charity shop, mopped his sweaty brow, engrossed in musical conversation with chrome domed producer Brian Eno.

There were old friends of the band such as the extravagantly talented singer-songwriter and one man art installation Gavin Friday (who had an arm wrapped around one of the beautiful Corr sisters) and eternally poised press officer Regine Moylett. There was the red blazered Irish aristocrat Lord Henry Mountcharles, perhaps slightly the worse for wear, directing his conversation into the unconvincingly inflated cleavage of one of Miami's beach babe set. The small but perfectly formed figure of supermodel Helena Christiansen flitted by in a flimsy summer dress while Christy Turlington posed resplendently on the other side of the room. There were members of U2's crew and management, familiar faces from Dublin, many of them looking red and puffy following a few days on the tear in the Miami sunshine. There were wives, girlfriends, children. And there were a smattering of tanned and immaculately attired local worthies who had succeeded in blagging a coveted Access All Areas Pass.

Upstairs somewhere, a party was in full swing in an enormous ballroom with superstar DJ Paul Oakenfeld spinning discs and scantily clad waitresses serving free drinks for several hundred regular, common or garden VIPs. But this was where the real insiders could be found, crammed into a narrow corridor behind the stage, basking in the presence of the band.

Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen, the four members of U2, were scattered about the room, sweaty and exhausted after a two hour tour de force performance, graciously accepting fulsome praise from this ragged assembly of celebrities, family, friends, colleagues, freeloaders, liggers and assorted hangers on.

I watched it all and wondered: where exactly did I fit in? This was the very life I had imagined for myself all those years ago but here I was only by an accident of acquaintance. I caught Bono's eye. He was, as usual, the centre of a huddle of activity: rock stars and supermodels hanging on his every word. He winked at me and grinned.

I remembered a conversation we had, late one night, many, many years ago. We were talking about U2's first ever performance, playing cover versions on some rickety school tables held together by sticky tape in the Mount Temple gymnasium.

"That gig changed my life," I admitted to him.

"It changed mine too!" he excitedly replied.

The difference was, it changed his for the better.

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CHAPTER 2

Paul Hewson was in my sister's class, a year ahead of me, but we soon established something that was more than a nodding acquaintance if less than a friendship, falling into conversation at choir practice and morning assembly and during brief encounters as we made our way to separate classes. It was a passing relationship fuelled by one characteristic we have always had in common: a capacity to talk about anything as if we were experts on the subject, no matter how limited our actual knowledge.

My rapport with Paul did not much impress my sister, who was proprietorial about such matters and did not think I should be fraternising with any of her contemporaries. Indeed, in normal circumstances, there tended to be little socialising between pupils from different years. When you are young, even a year in age difference is usually perceived as an unbridgeable chasm. But, long before the days of his A list celebrity, Paul was already something of a star in the school corridor, known to one and all.

Even now, I think of Bono as The Man Who Knows Everyone. His visage is inescapable in modern media. Open a newspaper or magazine and there he is, standing shoulder to shoulder with world leaders and political agitators, poets and pop stars, showbusiness legends and flavours of the month. I've seen him pictured with his arms around presidents, glad-handing prime ministers, quaffing wine with Nobel prize winners and swapping sunglasses with the pope. Mention his name to movie and music stars and you are almost guaranteed to hear an amusing anecdote about their friend Bono, with a coda about what a nice guy he is. He was always a gregarious charmer, loping about Mount Temple like a stray dog, sniffing out interesting conversations and activities, making sure he was part of whatever was going on. There was a lot of mischief in his smile and he had a stubborn, jaw-jutting, bull-headed streak that emerged whenever he felt put upon but at his core there was a tangibly gentle, compassionate aspect that made him popular with girls (who always seemed to be fluttering about) and tolerant of younger pupils, such as myself. You felt honoured when Paul spoke to you.

He could often be found hanging out in our Common Room because Paul was engaged in a vigorous, amorous pursuit of Alison Stewart, one of the most beautiful and universally admired girls in our year. Alison had thick, black hair; smooth, olive skin; dark, warm eyes and deliciously curled lips. Being a hormonally charged fifteen year old boy, I could not help but notice these things. She was also smart, kind, good humoured, strong-willed and, frankly, way out of my league. Actually, at that stage in my adolescent development, pretty much any member of the opposite sex seemed out of my league. But some, at least, you felt you might have half a chance with. Alison had a sort of aura of impermiability about her. I never really felt she belonged in the same world as an ungainly youth like me. On principal, I was against older boys going out with girls in our class, since their seniority and bullish air of experience seemed to grant them unfair advantage, but Alison and Paul seemed to fit. He wooed her over the course of a long year, until, when you saw them nestle intimately amongst the stark arrangement of chairs and lockers in the common room, it became apparent that they were an item.

One of our principal topics of conversation at that time was God (the existence or non-existence thereof) and, indeed, this was to remain a subject of vigorous debate between us over the next twenty five years. My personal problems with the deity had not subsided, but my confidence in challenging the religious order imposed by Irish society was growing daily. To be fair, Religious Education in Mount Temple was a very different proposition than under the Christian Brothers. A consequence of it being the only non-denominational state school in mainly Catholic Ireland was that most pupils were drawn from Dublin's Protestant minority. The school itself, however, towed no sectarian line, offering RE classes characterised by a kind of woolly Christian liberalism, presided over by a well-meaning but, as far as I was concerned, drippily ineffective young teacher named Sophie Shirley. There would be bible readings and class discussions in which Jesus took on the character of a beatific hippy while God seemed to be personified as an avuncular old geezer who only wanted the best for his extended family, in which case, I wondered, why was I being kept awake at night wondering if the torments of hell awaited me when I died? I would fire this and related questions at my long suffering teacher but I never received satisfactory answers, just platitudes about Jesus loving me.

While the school's official policy on religious matters seemed nebulous at best, there was a curious, almost fundamentalist, born-again style sub-culture amongst a section of pupils known as the Christian Movement. Loosely organised in an unofficial capacity by Miss Shirley, they held regular prayer meetings to which a sign on the door announced that everyone was invited. Everyone except me, that was. One day when I stopped by to see what was going on, I was informed by a literally holier-than-thou classmate (one of Miss Shirley's leading disciples) that my confrontational approach to matters of the spirit meant that I would not be welcome at their mysterious jamboree.

"That's very Christian of you," I commented as he barred my way at the door.

"Ah now, Neil, don't be like that," said my flustered class mate. "You know you'd only sit at the back making trouble." Which was, to be fair, my intention but I still felt it was hypocritical not to give me the benefit of the doubt.

Excluded from an organisation I had no intention of joining, I made it my business to antagonise them at every opportunity. The thing that really perplexed me, and indeed intellectually infuriated me, was that many of my closest friends were members, not to mention some of the most attractive girls and coolest guys in the school. Paul and Alison occasionally attended the meetings, where they apparently studied the Gospels, unencumbered by secular ritual, and found solace, harmony and truth there. Yet when I read these same books, I found nothing but illogic and contradiction, fairy tales passed off as history. The apostle I identified most with was Doubting Thomas. While his scepticism about the appearance of the risen Christ was presented to us as a weakness of character, I always thought that insisting on poking his fingers through his ghostly leader's stigmata was the only sensible course of action under the exceedingly strange circumstances.

I was genuinely baffled as to how such a dynamic and evidently intelligent individual as Paul Hewson could be so committed to these ancient myths. He never became infuriated by my regular challenges to his convictions, however, always indulging my penchant for argument. "I like a good fight," was one of his mantras. "It's good to ask questions," he told me once. He would listen to my barrage of misgivings and criticisms of Christianity in all its guises and try to persuade me that the leap of faith required to open yourself up to God was worth it. "When you look around," he insisted, "you see the oceans, you see the sun, you see a storm, don't you think there must be something above man?" He would keep coming back to the issue of faith, although he himself was not immune to doubt. He didn't like organised religion or empty ritual and seemed to be engaged in a struggle to quell his own demons. Paul had a temper which could suddenly flare up, his face going red with rage, although I never felt it directed towards me. In the aftermath of his mother's death the year before, there had, apparently, been little explosions in class, with tables being tipped over and chairs kicked across the room. He told me once that there was a period of two weeks when he could not remember anything that happened. He had a total blank. He was undergoing some kind of existential crisis and almost buckled under the psychological pressure. "I faced ideas of suicide," he admitted. "I was very unhappy, my mind was speeding."

The school's response had been exemplary. Paul was told he could attend whatever classes he wanted, coming and go as it suited him until he found his feet again. One teacher in particular made himself available to talk and listen: Jack Heaslip, a counsellor to the pupils who oversaw classes in career guidance and social issues. Heaslip was a gentle, thoughtful, soft spoken, bearded man with strong spiritual leanings, who would eventually leave teaching to become a Protestant minister. Now Paul evidently had some strong childhood experience of "otherness", a sense that there was something bigger than mankind. He once told me he had been full of questions about existence and had called out, as he put it, and a voice answered from inside. But it had not been enough to change his life. "I just wandered on," he said. "I refused to believe in God, why should I? I'd go to church and there just seemed to be people there, singing psalms of glory but they didn't seem to feel anything, it seemed all wrong."

The death of his mother is undoubtedly what tipped the balance. "It shocked me into the insignificance of human life," he said. "One minute you can be alive, the next you're gone. I could not accept that people would just disappear. If life meant being on the earth for sixty or seventy years, I'd rather go now!" It is an argument never impressed me. The notion that 'there has to be a God because otherwise what is the point?' is not rational but emotive. But I hear myself saying this and I can see Bono gently smiling, chiding me about my preference for logic over faith. Somehow Paul had made a huge leap of faith and found himself standing on a rock of belief. He didn't have to question the past. He didn't have to let his own mind chase him round in circles of torment. He could pick himself up move forward. God, in a sense, became the defining ground to his character.

Oddly enough, my RE teacher was unable to demonstrate quite the same sense of equable conviction. I would sit at the back of the class, flicking through a bible, seeking out anomalies to bring to her attention. Miss Shirley would be in the middle of some happy clappy sermon when my hand would shoot up. "Miss! Miss!" She would visibly stiffen while my fellow denizens of the back row stifled their giggles.

"Yes, Neil?"

She had a way of saying my name that conveyed both long suffering irritation and nervous apprehension. I never got the impression that she much enjoyed the cut and thrust of scriptural debate. One day, faced with another unanswerable contradiction from the good book on which she had based her life's work, she simply burst into tears. We all sat staring at her in stunned silence, a few of my more devout classmates casting dirty looks in my direction. Miss Shirley eventually managed to control herself enough to say, "If you don't want to be here, Neil, you should feel free to spend these periods in the library."

Well, cast thee out, Satan! I didn't know whether to feel triumphant or disappointed because I did actually enjoy the hurly burly of these classes, where I got to pit my sceptical wits against a member of the religious establishment, however lowly. On the other hand, a free library period every week was not to be sniffed at. I gathered up my books and made for the door. Whereupon the malcontents from the back row started sticking up their hands and asking if they could go too. "Anyone who wants to spend R.E. in the library should feel free to do so," declared Miss Shirley, sharply.

One by one we filed out of the class, leaving a rather forlorn looking teacher preaching to the converted, all six of them.

I spent a lot of time in the library, and not just because I was a voracious reader who had been dismissed from RE classes. I was also excused from Gaelic, which was a relief, since under the nationalistic ordinances of the era, if you failed your Irish exams, you failed everything.

The library is where I became properly acquainted with Dave Evans, the boy who would become known to the world as iconic guitar hero, musical boffin and the coolest bald man in rock'n'roll: The Edge. Having been born in London of Welsh parents, Dave had also managed to wangle his way out of Irish classes, although, since his family had relocated to Dublin when Dave was still a babe in swaddling, strictly speaking he should have been trying to get to grips with the ancient language of Eire along with the rest of the poor native born suckers. Raised in Malahide, north of Dublin, since the age of one, Dave nonetheless convincingly masqueraded as a Welshman, born and bred.

I have to say there was nothing particularly Edgy about Dave in those days. He had hair, a big, dark mop of it as I recall, but this would not have been considered worthy of note at the time. We all had hair, most of it pomped up in appalling, blow-dried Seventies bouffants that made our heads look twice the size they actually were. Dave was quiet and somewhat studious, more inclined to use his library time to do his homework than to sit and argue with me about whatever was the latest controversial concept percolating in my hyperactive brain. I remember him being respectful to adults, poised and serious, but with a quirky and sometimes cutting sense of humour. We were civil rather than intimate. I was probably too rebellious and argumentative for his disposition, while, for my part, I felt intimidated by his perpetual air of intellectual superiority. I felt certain that he took a dim view of many of my antics, such as my prank of loosening the library book shelves so that they would collapse whenever somebody returned a weighty volume. Dave's scepticism towards me was probably not much helped by the fact that he held strong religious beliefs and was close to the school's Christian movement, where, for some reason, I had a bad reputation.

Dave and I were rivals for the affections of certain school mates of the female persuasion. He caused me considerable torment when he succeeded in snogging Denise McIntyre, the unwitting object of my adoration, who I made a point of sitting next to in most classes. My distress when Denise blithely informed me of their brief encounter was only mildly mollified by her appraisal of my rival as a "sloppy kisser".

Adam Clayton arrived at Mount Temple in 1976 and made an immediate impact. There was his dress sense for one thing. The school did not have a uniform policy but amongst the pullovers and anoraks that passed for teen fashion in Dublin in the late seventies, Adam's long, afghan coat with shaggy trimmings and decorative stitched flowers certainly stood out. He would, from time to time, sport a kaftan beneath this beloved garment and went through a phase of wearing a yellow workman's helmet on top of his mop of blonde curls.

Adam was a gangly, upper middle class English boy with an insouciant line in faux sophistication that seemed to implicitly suggest he had already "been there, seen that, done it" at the age of not-so-sweet sixteen. He had certainly been more places, seen and done more than most of his contemporaries at Mount Temple, arriving at school fresh from a holiday in Pakistan, where he had hung out with hippies, smoked joints and engaged in a torrid romantic affair (or so he claimed). Adam had a rebellious, confrontational attitude towards authority that was only mildly disguised by his broad smile and impeccable manners. He carried a flask of coffee around with him, from which he would pour himself cups during lessons. Asked by exasperated teachers what he thought he was up to, he would politely explain that he was having a cup of coffee, always remembering to add "sir" or "miss" where appropriate. Adam was unfailingly courteous but determined to go his own way ... which was often straight to detention.

The last of the future superstars was Larry Mullen. He was in the year below mine, a handsome, self-contained blonde kid who, at that stage, simply did not register on any of our consciousnesses. But Larry was the start of it all.

In Autumn 1976, during my second year in Mount Temple, a notice appeared on the board in The Mall, the corridor that ran the length of the principal school building where we used to hang out. Drummer looking for musicians to form band. Contact Larry Mullen, third year. At thirteen, my brother was a year below Larry, but as the proud posessor of a Teisco Stratocaster Copy electric guitar, Ivan was invited to audition. On Saturday, September 25th, 1976, he turned up at Larry's modest, semi-detached house in Artane along with Paul, Adam, Dave and his elder brother Dick Evans.

So that's Ivan McCormick, right? Despite spending most of his life as a musician, being present at the early rehearsals for the group that would become U2 is Ivan's sole claim to anything approaching fame. And then a sloppy biographer handed it to his older brother, robbing him of even this footnote in rock history. So I am happy to have this opportunity to set the record straight. My brother was the loser who let superstardom slip through his careless fingers, not me.

The assembled ranks of would be rock stars crowded into the Mullen's kitchen to discuss their plans over tea and crackers. It was, as Ivan recalls, quickly agreed by everyone present that they were ready and willing to form a group. Names like Led Zepplin, Deep Purple and Fleetwood Mac were bandied about as worthy influences, groups who Ivan only had the faintest conception of. Ivan felt nervous and out of his depth, being by some way the youngest person present, but his trump card was that he had the most handsome guitar, clean and modern with a bright white and red body, which everyone admired. Dave Evans, on the other hand, had a small white acoustic which his mother had bought second hand for the princely sum of £1 (without strings). But, borrowing Ivan's electric, Dave demonstrated that he could play the solo from Irish rock hero Rory Gallagher's 'Blister On The Moon', which put him in pole position for the role of lead guitarist.

His brother, Dick, was the eldest, at 17. He had left school the previous year and, as if to signify his adult status, sported an outcrop of facial hair which he unconvincingly attempted to pass off as a beard. He had brought along a strange looking object with a body shape that was apparently supposed to resemble a swan in flight, hand painted bright yellow. Dick had constructed this instrument himself in the shed at the bottom of his garden, following instructions in an issue of Everyday Electronics magazine. The resulting instrument sounded about as convincing as it looked but at least Dick could play chords and hold down a rhythm. This was more than could be said for Paul, who also had a big, battered acoustic which he tackled with energy and gusto rather than anything approaching skill or finesse. But Paul made up for his lack of musical skills with his sense of passion and conviction, already talking as if they were a band and not just an ill-sorted gathering of schoolboys.

With four guitarists squeezing in between the fridge and the bread bin, the designated rhythm section was Adam (who owned a cheap Ibanez Copy bass, which he couldn't actually play but could certainly talk about) and Larry, who had opened the kitchen doors to create space to set his drum kit up, half in the kitchen and half in a small conservatory precariously attached to the back of the house. In these odd circumstances the meeting concluded with a chaotic jam session involving wobbly renditions of Rolling Stones classics 'Brown Sugar' and 'Satisfaction'. There were too many guitarists, not enough amplification and no consensus as to the correct chord sequences of the songs being played but none of that seemed to matter. A new star had appeared in the rock and roll firmament. For these plucky individuals, nothing would be the same again. Well, for some of them, anyway.

Ivan returned home on the 31 bus to announce that he had joined a new band. They were going to be called Feedback (allegedly a reference to the whining noise that emerged when Adam plugged his bass into a guitar amp). I noted this news with only a modicum of concern. If the name was anything to go by, this lot were going to be even less impressive (if perhaps more audibly so) than Electronic Wizard.

My thespian career was advancing, albeit at a much slower pace than I would have liked. I attended drama classes on Saturday afternoons and experienced a moment of encouragement when I won an acting competition known as the Father Matthew Feis (pronounced 'fesh', gaelic for 'entertainment'. I have no idea who Father Matthew was but presumably he liked to have a good time). It was a hideous affair, characterised by rampant overacting, with starry eyed juveniles racing energetically about every inch of the stage as if convinced the theatrical arts were a branch of the Olympics. When it came to my turn I stood stock still in the central spotlight. I would like to say this was a carefully contrived dramatic device but actually, my legs were trembling so much, I was afraid that if I moved I would fall over. It was my first time in front of a large audience and when the applause began my ego took a direct hit from a bolt of lightning. I staggered off dazed with happiness, physically buzzing from the adrenalin rush. This was everything I had ever dreamed about, especially when the results were announced and I was beckoned back on stage to receive a medal for first prize. The principal judge, an obscure drama critic whose authority was undisputed simply on the grounds that she had come all the way from England, whispered to me that my performance was the only interesting thing she had seen all day. Could it get any better than this? Well, yes, actually. On the citation I received, she had written: 'a performance of powerful understatement and great control. This boy has immense talent – please look after him.'

But nobody did look after me. Nobody ever would look after me. Not that I guessed that then, otherwise I might have had the good sense to jack it all in and concentrate on my technical drawing or some other useful subject. I remained convinced stardom was my destiny, although I was a little disillusioned to discover that a commendation from Father Matthew counted for very little in Hollywood.

Ivan continued to attend rehearsals for Feedback in the school music room after hours. Ivan was tolerated by the older boys primarily because of his guitar, which Dave would liberate him of for the duration of the session, leaving Ivan to strum inaudibly on Dave's cheap acoustic. Dick had been told he could remain in the fold on condition he got himself a decent instrument, preferably one not constructed in his garden shed. Adam had his bass and therefore his position was assured, all he had to do was learn how to play it. But Adam, at least, had attitude, confidence and all the right buzz words. With cigarette dangling from his bottom lip, he would talk about sorting out some "gigs" by making the right "connections". They needed "good management" and to "go on the road", apparently, if they were ever going to "land a deal". It all sounded good to the others, even if they only had the vaguest idea what he was banging on about.

Paul was another matter. He was really a frustrated musician. He could simply not get his guitar to do anything he wanted it to do, so would quickly abandon it, instead expending his considerable energy attempting to almost magically summon, coax and cajole music from the others. During an endless jam of Deep Purple's 'Smoke On The Water' (a song Ivan was hearing for the first time), Ivan was astonished to see Paul get down on his hands and knees in front of Dave as he played the famous riff, holding his fingers in front of Dave's fingers, as if he was trying to play the guitar himself without actually touching it. Paul assumed the role of organiser, telling everyone what they were going to play and how they would tackle it, although actually contributing little himself. He would sing along as best he could, struggling to find the right notes but, without a microphone, his vocal limitations were not immediately apparent to anyone other than himself. As the biggest character in the group he began to assume the role of frontman.

Excited about the band, Ivan decided to invest in a new amplifier, blowing his entire savings of £12 on a second hand Falcon combo. That very evening, as he sat at home fiddling with his new purchase, sending feedback howling through the house, he was summoned to the telephone by our mother. There was a very well spoken young man on the line who urgently needed to talk to him, apparently. It was Adam. He wanted to know if Ivan had the amp because of the group.

"Yes," said Ivan.

"I wish you'd spoken to me first," said Adam, improvising wildly. "You see, the band has got a gig ..."

"That's great," said Ivan, enthusiastically. On the road at last.

"The thing is, it's in a pub," said Adam. "And, you know, you're too young to get into pubs."

"Oh," said Ivan.

"In fact, all the gigs we'll be getting will be in pubs," said Adam. "And you won't be able to play any of them."

"I see," said Ivan.

"I knew you'd understand," said Adam. "Look, no hard feelings, eh?"

Even at 13, Ivan knew when he was being given the elbow, however diplomatically. He put the phone down in a state of utter dejection and went back to his guitar and amp, turning the volume up to the max and losing himself in a wall of noise.

There was, of course, no pub and certainly no gig. The group could barely string a whole song together, so attempting to deliver an entire set would have been premature to say the least. But as rehearsals began to illuminate everyone's strengths and weaknesses, so the band began to settle into a core line up of Larry on drums, Adam on bass, Paul on vocals, Dave on lead guitar and Dick on rhythm guitar. In fact, Dick, too, was not really wanted by his band mates but he simply ignored any intimations that he might be surplus to requirements, continuing to attend rehearsals until he had established himself as a member.

His pride wounded, Ivan neglected to inform the family of this new development. The truth did not emerge for weeks, until Stella asked Paul how he was getting along with her little brother and Paul, rather embarrassed, admitted they had kicked him out. "Why didn't you tell us?" asked my astonished father.

"It doesn't matter, anyway," said Ivan, defensively. "They're crap. I'm going to start my own group."

My acting career was not progressing any better. My parents like to proudly tell people their son was once in a play in the prestigious Gate Theatre with the venerable Irish thespian Cyril Cusack. What they neglect to add was that I was sacked after two performances for missing my cue. I thought the part was beneath me, anyway. I was a glorified stage hand with no lines whose sole purpose was to move furniture for the other actors. As far as I was concerned, anybody could have done it (well, anybody apart from me, it would seem). I craved the physical rush of performing in front of an audience, the ego buzz of recognition by other human beings allied to the strange sense of power that coursed through your body as you held strangers in your spell by sheer force of will. I wanted to utter speeches that resonated in my soul and made sense of my complex internal world. "To be or not to be?" That was the question I wanted to ask, almost the only question that mattered. I wanted to be Hamlet. But I couldn't even land a part in a burger commercial, when it was deemed that my mixed Scottish and Irish accent might be confusing to viewers. The director was not impressed when I suggested that the phrase "Mmm, deeeee-licious!" would have sounded equally lame in any accent.

I resolved to solve my casting problems by writing plays myself. As the Autumn 1976 term drew to a close, it was announced that a talent contest would be staged in the gymnasium. This, I decided, would be the ideal opportunity to demonstrate my writing and acting skills. And so, with a couple of friends, I concocted a short comic play, which involved our teachers being put on trial for crimes against humanity. The parts were filled by various class mates, with the juicy role of judge being kept for myself. Banging my gavel to sentence unpopular teachers to a variety of extravagant punishments was sure to prove a crowd pleaser. We had a run through the week before for our avuncular form tutor, Mr Moxham, who was sufficiently impressed to schedule our production as the grand finale, on condition we went gently on his character and removed certain of our more cruel and tasteless gags.

I gathered with my small cast at the side of a makeshift stage of jammed-together tables, as a succession of pupils larked about, singing, dancing, playing accordions, telling jokes. The large audience of school kids heckled the performers mercilessly but most took it in good humour, shouting back insults. Mr Moxham cheerfully patrolled the gymnasium, patting pupils on the back, uttering words of encouragement.

"Ready for your moment of glory, lads?" he enquired of my little crew.

"We're ready, sir," I reported.

"And you have made those changes we discussed?"

"Do we really have to lose the gag about Mrs Prandy's dog, sir?" I asked.

"Only if you want to live through another term," replied Mr Moxham.

Four members of Feedback stood around their amps and drum kit, waiting to make their live debut. Dick was absent, since he was not a pupil at the school, but Paul, Dave, Adam and Larry were going to do a ten minute set, scheduled as the penultimate act, just before our play.

"Alright, Dave?" I enquired, feeling every inch the seasoned professional comforting a nervous debutant. Dave looked as if he was going to be sick from stage fright, clinging to his guitar and staring anxiously at the crowd. The others appeared considerably more at ease. Larry had played plenty of shows before, albeit with such less than rocking outfits as the Artane Boys Band and the Post Office Workers Band. Adam lounged about, effecting his usual "seen-it-all-before" cool. Paul was practically jumping up and down with anticipation, firing encouraging smiles and nods at his colleagues.

When their slot came, the group started to hoist their equipment onto the stage. It took them about ten minutes to set up, an extended period of inactivity in which any last remnants of discipline in the room evaporated. Kids were running about the gym in all directions, yelling at the tops of their voices, climbing the climbing frames. I was marshalling my cast, instructing them that as soon as the band were finished, we were going to get onto the stage and launch straight into our play. I really had no idea what was coming.

An electric hum began to sound in the room as the amps were turned on. Paul stood centre stage at his microphone, guitar slung around his neck, looking defiantly over the boisterous crowd. Dave and Adam stood either side of him. Larry clicked his sticks together and the group launched into a coarse, speeded-up version of Seventies pretty boy rock star Peter Frampton's 'Show Me The Way', kicking off with a roaring D chord that sent a shockwave through the room.

With the wisdom of hindsight, I know this debut performance of the group who would one day rock the world must have been, in truth, a fairly dubious affair. There was nothing remotely cool about their selection of songs, for a start. They played, of all things, a singalong version of the Bay City Roller's pop anthem 'Bye Bye Baby' and a Beach Boys medley. They had no soundcheck, no experience, nothing to go on but hope and desire. But I was completely stunned. Absolutely floored. This was the first live, electric band I had ever heard and a rush of adrenaline shot through my body, apparently disabling my central nervous system and rearranging my entire molecular structure. At least, that's what it felt like. Dave's guitar was splintering in my ears. The pounding of Larry's drums and Adam's bass shook the tables they were standing on and seemed to make the whole room vibrate. I had listened to records in my room, headbanging in headphones, but nothing prepared me for the sheer visceral thrill of live rock 'n' roll. When Paul stomped across the shaky stage, grabbing his microphone stand, yelling 'I want you ... show me the way!", the little girls from the junior classes started screaming.

And that was it for me. I turned to my fellow would-be thespians and announced there was absolutely no way I was going on after that. It was quickly and unanimously agreed that our play should be cancelled. Mr Moxham, as I recall, seemed quite relieved.

Feedback belted through their bizarre set and then stood there, stupid grins plastered across their faces, as the crowd roared for more. Their repertoire being rather limited in those days, they had to resort to a repeat version of 'Bye Bye Baby'. The gym was in complete uproar, with kids singing, yelling, screaming, clapping, dancing. I looked about me in a daze. A new vision of my future was forming in my feverish adolescent brain.

Forget about becoming a fabulously famous, multi-hyphenated actor-writer-director.

I was going to be a rock star.