Bono Bono - The Thing is…

The Thing Is … you should get to the point, because the many thousands of radio shows I have presented, and articles I have written, and interviews I have conducted have never been about me. They are about the great bands, and unbelievable singers, and fantastic actors that I am lucky enough to get to talk to.

The Thing Is … I used to get to the Point a lot, when it existed, and one particular evening, 1 March 2004, I got there and had one of the best nights of my life – an evening that was so full of surprises, that it is as good a place as any to begin my story.

The Thing Is … I got to the Point that evening when it was still called the Point, before Dublin’s long-time prime music venue succumbed to a major concrete-and-glass overhaul and facelift and became the O2. I was there for the Meteor Awards, which as everyone knows are Ireland’s prestigious main rock and pop awards, dished out annually in front of a live TV audience.

I had been to the Meteors a lot over the years. My job had often taken me there. Two or three times, I had been lucky enough to be voted Best DJ, and I had shovelled out countless gongs as a presenter in the past. This year was different. In 2004, I was being given the Industry Award.

The Industry Award is like any of those Lifetime Achievement Awards that get dished out at such ceremonies. Basically they reward longevity and hanging on in there: they acknowledge that you have done what you do for more years than you care to remember. They are prizes for being a survivor; a recognition that you are still in the game, still doing it and, if you are lucky, you’ve still got all your own teeth.

I’m being flippant here but it was great that the Meteors had chosen to bestow this award on me, and so many highlights from my career were running through my mind as I stood at the side of the stage. Where to begin? There was the rock magazine I had edited on a shoestring … my strange all-night sessions on pirate radio … my twenty-five years on Ireland’s main radio network … my countless trips to London, New York and Los Angeles … hundreds of encounters with all my heroes and the great and the good of the music and movie worlds … Jaysus, I had been lucky, I reflected …

As the awards host, Dara Ó Briain, ran through his slick patter, I self-consciously mentally rehearsed a few words that would thank those kind souls who had helped my career, and my loved ones, while hopefully not boring everybody else to tears. ‘The Thing Is …’ I told myself, ‘… get to the point. Keep it simple.’

Then Dara introduced a film clip. It was new to me. I had never seen it before; did not even know it existed. It was U2, the band whose career I have been inextricably linked to more than any other. They were in the studio to record How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb , but the song they were singing now would not be going on the album.

U2 were serenading the Meteor Awards with a song called ‘David Watts’. Originally written by Ray Davies for The Kinks, it is probably better known for the cover version by the Jam. The actual track begins ‘I am a dull and simple lad/Cannot tell water from champagne’, before reaching the chorus of ‘Wish I could be like David Watts’, but those were not the words that Bono was singing that March evening. He had made a few crucial adjustments …

Fa fa fa fa fa FanningFa fa fa fa fa FanningFa fa fa fa fa FanningHe was a pirate on the radio …

Now this was quite something. This I hadn’t expected. U2, the biggest band in the world, had recorded a video tribute to me. That would be quite mind-boggling enough in itself. But they had gone one step further – they had done it in song.

On a four-man couch, Adam was on the right crooning smartly tuneful harmonies with Larry, who was drumming along. Edge sat at the other end and yer man Bono was exactly where he is always is, hogging the camera, giving out, singing …

… He played our songs on every show …

Ha! That was true! Or, at least, sometimes it must have seemed like it to the listeners. I probably had played more tracks by U2 than any other artist in my quarter-century on the radio. Our careers had always been closely intertwined. We hadn’t planned it that way – we had just emerged at the same time, in the same city, with the same drive and the same love of music.

… He was a punk but he kept his beard …

A punk? Was I? Well, I guess I must have been, back in the dogday end of the Seventies, when I was fresh out of college, desperate to avoid the nine-to-five grind, and filling my nights playing new music on an obscure, long-forgotten pirate radio station called the Big D.

As for the beard … well, it had made sense at the time. We all have these skeletons in our closet, don’t we? I mean, didn’t Bono used to have a mullet and wave a white flag?

… People think he’s straight but we know he’s weird …

I had to smile at that. Straight? Well, I had never been a drug addict or an alcoholic, sure, but I had spent twenty years living and breathing rock ’n’ roll, totally oblivious to the things that concerned most people, such as relationships or children or a lovely home. I had criss-crossed the globe; I had done five or six jobs at once; and all for the love of music. Yeah, I guess some people might think of that as weird …

… Wish I could be like Dave FanningWish I could be like Dave FanningWish I could be like Dave Fanning …

Now (as is still there for all to see on YouTube) Edge was joining in, and Larry and Adam, chiming their voices into the chorus. The Point was in hysterics; everybody in the audience was falling about. Bono was giving it his best rock-star face … How on earth was I to follow this?

He was the first man in our audience …

Ah, now this was an interesting one. Had I been the first person in U2’s audience? I had certainly been to enough shows, back in those super-early days, when there were two men and a dog there. But I think they were thinking more of the days on the pirate radio stations. The days when four young Irish kids without even a single to their name had come on to my show, and their lippy singer had talked long and hard into the night about their hopes, and dreams, and how they could maybe even cleave a path to world success like no Irish band had ever done before them.

Chances are U2 were thinking of the days before I transferred to RTÉ and Ireland’s first legal music station, Radio 2, where I interviewed them on five consecutive nights as we let our listeners choose their first single. Well, the connection was made – so much so that their manager, Paul McGuinness, now made sure that every U2 single was played on the Dave Fanning show on 2FM before anywhere else in the world.

… He never finished a sentence …

Were they saying I have a motormouth style? Yeah, probably guilty as charged, to be honest. Let’s face it, there is so much to be said, and only so much time to say it in.

… He mumbled along about Slaughter and the Dogs …

I had; it was true. And about Irish bands like the Vipers and the Outcasts and the Blades and a thousand other bands that were emerging from Ireland’s towns and cities in those exciting post-punk days when it seemed as if the world was changing and everything was possible. See, mythology has it that I loved U2 from the second I first heard them and made it my mission to lift them to the top, but it wasn’t like that at all. When I had first heard them, I thought they were OK; no more. I liked them as people but the music didn’t blow me away. Truth be told, I was more interested in the Undertones (they had an album!) or the second Boomtown Rats record.

… But he kept his hat for when he kicked his clogs …