”I love the smell of chocolate in the morning,” says Bono, singer for one of the biggest rock bands in the world, U2.
And it`s a good thing, too. Because this town in central Pennsylvania, famous for little more than the way it has indulged chocolate lovers for decades and for its proximity to the twin towers of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in nearby Harrisburg and the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg, recently became U2`s international headquarters for a week.
It was here that the band chose to prepare for its first major North American tour in five years, which began last week in Giants Stadium in New Jersey and will arrive in Tinley Park, at the World Music Theatre, on Sept. 15 and 16.
On one sun-drenched afternoon in Hershey, U2 is running through its repertoire in fits and starts, playing to a vast-and very empty-football stadium. Outside in the parking lot, hundreds of die-hards cheer as every song ends or, just as often, dissipates inconclusively.
The next evening, Hersheypark Stadium would be clogged with many of those listeners and several thousand of their fellow U2 worshipers, as the band gave the city a thank-you present like no other: a full-blown concert, with all the proceeds donated to local charities. But on this day, the only people in sight who aren`t working on the stage rigging or fine-tuning the sound are two guys scribbling into their notepads, just trying to blend into their surroundings about 20 yards from the stage.
No such luck.
”Pen in hand means journalist at work,” says Bono, approaching his audience of two.
He strides down a raised walkway that leads from the main stage to a smaller platform in the middle of the field, where the next night U2 would perform several acoustic numbers in the midst of the crowd.
”This must be boring for you, like watching paint dry,” he says.
”Actually, we hate to rehearse.”
Then he proves it. Instead of joining the rest of the band on the small stage to work on the next song, he settles down on the runway, acoustic guitar in lap, and soaks up some sunshine and conversation. He sounds as if he`s about to embark on a vacation in the Catskills instead of the biggest, most expensive concert tour of his 31-year-old life.
”As you can see, things aren`t set at the moment,” he says with a wave of his hand and a laugh. ”I mean, we`ve got at least 24 hours to get our act together.”
The what-me-worry demeanor belies the fact that this second-to-last rehearsal has indeed been a bit bumpy, as the band tinkers with new arrangements of songs both new (a Hank Williams-like version of ”The Fly”)
and old (long-ago hits ”Sunday Bloody Sunday” and ”New Year`s Day” have both been resurrected after being absent from the set during the band`s brief indoor tour of America last spring).
As the band waddles through a stripped-down version of ”Who`s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” Bono cuts it short. ”A bit of crap, that was,” he mutters.
But there`s no nastiness in his voice, only a matter-of-fact certainty that the band is wasting its time. Then it`s quickly on to something else: an acoustic ”Mystery Girl,” a tune Bono wrote years ago that Roy Orbison recorded; a shattering, garage-rock version of ”Sunday Bloody Sunday”; an impromptu solo rendition of Elvis Presley`s ”Can`t Help Falling in Love”
that Bono finishes off with a falsetto flourish.
At one point, Bono wanders off the stage, and, hand cupped over the sunglasses wrapped around his eyes, looks back to admire the musical crunch of his band mates-guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr.-as they churn impressively through ”Until the End of the World.” At this moment, they sound like the best power trio in the world.
The next minute, Bono`s waltzing down the runway like a maniacal elf in black, with a shopping cart full of inflatable playthings that were to have been incorporated into the show. He holds aloft a plastic fish. As the band wails on the main stage, Bono cries, ”Look, Edge, three chords and a trout!” It`s a self-deprecating reference to the group`s sloganeering cry from an earlier album-”three chords and the truth”-the type of earnest declaration that won the band a reputation for unparalleled self-righteousness.
A 3-ring circus
But on this day, and on this tour, U2 is anything but full of itself.
As Bono says, ”It feels like we`ve got Ken Russell in here.”
Like the moviemaker, there`s more than a little camp and craziness in the band`s current show, which bashes together dozens of cable television and video images, hangs 11 gutted German cars from the ceiling, brings in a belly dancer and lets a costumed Bono play master of ceremonies. It`s a glitzy, multimedia extravaganza that still sounds a heck of a lot like rock `n` roll, if not the bare-bones rock `n` roll that U2 once specialized in.
This circus act requires 52 semitrailers, 12 buses and a 40-passenger chartered jet to haul its 2.4 million pounds of equipment and more than 100 personnel around the country. Setup for each show requires 12 forklifts, 120 40-foot cranes and four days of labor. Budget estimates for the whole shebang have run as high as $2 million.
A smaller version of the show lost money in Europe over the summer, says the band`s Dublin-based manager, Paul McGuinness, but he`s not concerned about the American leg.
”Those were smaller shows in Europe,” he says. ”The indoor shows were just a tease for this part of the tour. This is designed to make money.”
Besides, after already selling 8 million copies worldwide of its most recent album, ”Achtung Baby,” U2 doesn`t have to sweat the profit margins so much.
No wonder, then, that with a tour this size and a band of this stature, every waking step taken by Bono and the boys has been dutifully reported by the local media in Hershey.
”It`s very hard to rehearse in a stadium for a week without somebody noticing,” McGuinness dryly notes.
A media betrayal
What`s more troubling in the U2 camp is that even those locals who wouldn`t know the Irish band from a rugby team can tell a visitor where it`s hanging out away from the stadium. A newspaper report early in the week revealed that U2 was staying at the Harrisburg Hilton and Towers, then radio deejays began blabbing about it, and soon fans from as far away as Baltimore were holding round-the-clock vigils outside the hotel.
That development manages to ruffle even the band`s usually unruffable publicist, Paul Wasserman, who rasps his betrayal: ”I can`t believe they printed where they`re staying!”
But as hundreds of zealots bearing posters, T-shirts and record sleeves mill around the lobby, waiting for the band to emerge before making its daily 11-mile trip to the practice field, U2 takes it all in stride.
”You`ve heard the story about the mansion on the hill?” Bono says while munching dinner at the stadium. ”People over here in America, they say, `One day I`m gonna live there.` Whereas people back home in Dublin say, `One day I`m gonna get that bastard.` We`re used to people looking down on us. . . . And we`re very lucky to have such fans.”
Clayton recalls how at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis, a family of domesticated ducks would stride through the lobby and climb aboard an elevator at the same hour every day, turning every passerby into a gawker.
”Coming out of our hotel is a bit like that,” he says with a laugh.
”They know at half past two we`re gonna walk out the front, and they`ve got their cameras and pictures ready, and we walk in our cars and off we go.” Often with a caravan of fans right behind.
The band members take turns piloting their own topless Cadillac down the freeway to Hersheypark, while tour manager Dennis Sheehan navigates in the lead luxury mobile. A car full of giggling women pulls ahead of the caravan and, at a stoplight, dispenses a smiling passenger waving a U2 poster. But Sheehan calmly motions to her with one of those ”enough`s enough” waves of the hand, and she meekly retreats.
A polite distance
In Hershey and Harrisburg, U2 is in no danger of finding itself in a real-life remake of the Beatles` ”A Hard Day`s Night,” constantly running from zealots who scream, claw and pant while wiping tears and runny mascara from their faces.
The crowd draws close to the band members as they walk outside the hotel, but not too close. If Bono doesn`t want to sign autographs today, he walks by with a friendly wave, and the crowd waves back obligingly.
”We`ve had 500 kids in and out of the hotel each day,” says the band`s security chief, Darrel Ives. ”We don`t have a barricade, we don`t have 300 security people out there. The band doesn`t go through any back doors coming or going into restuarants or hotels. They go out there and accommodate everybody in the time frame they have to work with.”
That portrait of rock-star good will is seconded by a half-dozen fans outside the hotel. Some sport autographs from earlier days. Others report brief, pleasant conversations with the band members. All wear expressions of calm, transmitting a silent satisfaction that U2 was actually in their town and turned out to be pretty OK guys after all. There is no runny mascara to be found anywhere.
One bystander shatters the low-key vibe of the U2 watch by craning her neck toward the lobby entrance and bobbing up and down on her toes.
”I`ve been waiting two hours because I heard Bono signed autographs yesterday,” says Jennifer Parr from nearby Lebanon. ”We snuck up to the 13th floor of the hotel, and we were like, `Oh, my God! There they are!` Then they (security guards) told us to leave.”
”So what did you do then?” a reporter asks, envisioning an end run via the fire escape.
”We left.”
In certain parts of Pennsylvania, it seems, U2`s just another pleasant group of tourists from overseas.
