The Fifth Element

Paul McGuinness scarcely needs an introduction. Affectionately known as Magoo (but never to his face), he’s undoubtedly most famous as the manager of U2. So much so that when the band appeared in The Simpsons, McGuinness was also featured – chiding Homer for being late with the backstage potatoes.

However, his company Principle Management – so named because McGuinness was determined to always be more principled than other rock ‘n’ roll managers – also looks after the affairs of PJ Harvey, The Rapture, Paddy Casey and others. An extremely smooth operator, he’s known as one of the sharpest, shrewdest and most erudite players in the music business. Although well-liked, it’s also understood that you cross him at your peril.
Five months ago, the Music Manager’s Forum awarded the 55-year-old the prestigious Peter Grant Award for Lifetime Achievement in Music. Presenting him with the award – the industry equivalent of an Oscar – Island’s Chris Blackwell commented, “Success has many fathers. But in U2 there’s only one father – Paul McGuinness!”
His business interests aren’t just confined to the music industry. His many directorships include TV3 and Ardmore Studios, as well as Beat FM and the incipient Phantom FM. He’s also a board member of the Digital Hub Development Agency and the UCD School of Film and Drama. Although no longer involved, he has served on three successive Arts Councils in the past.
Whew! With all of this going on, it’s amazing that he can spare the time to talk to hotpress. In truth, he only agreed to this interview in order to promote U2’s brilliant new DVD ZOO TV Live From Sydney. It’s not until we’re halfway through the conversation that realisation dawns. “Oh no,” he groans. “You’re going to bill this as the Paul McGuinness interview, aren’t you?”
Actually, that’s not a bad idea at all...

OLAF TYARANSEN: Are you happy with the new DVD?
PAUL McGUINNESS: Very. I mean, we’ve been looking forward to doing this for years. It was originally released on VHS, but the DVD boom has really been a good thing for projects like this. I mean, the original programme was shown on TV in a cut-down version and then released on VHS. But really people don’t hang onto VHS tapes – they get lost, there isn’t any kind of pride of ownership. And of course, the quality is so much better on DVD and you can add in all these extra things. So I’m very pleased with it.
Why did you choose to release the Sydney show rather than any of the others?
Well, partly because you always want to do the filmed record of a show when it’s really bedded in and running very smoothly. But on top of that, the venue where we shot it is pretty well perfect for rock ‘n’ roll. It’s a small football stadium with no running track, so the pitch is much closer to the seats and therefore the stage is much closer to the seats. And this particular football stadium is fairly modern, and it’s built out of this beautiful white steel. I don’t think you see much of it in the show, but aesthetically the venue was pretty well perfect. And we had the expectation of good weather.
With all the big screens, satellites and cars, ZOO TV must’ve been a madly expensive show.
Yeah, “grand madness” I think Bono called it. It was ludicrously expensive. And it was at a time, as well, when the band were very sensitive to the ticket price, and what it might be. And I always felt at that time that it was almost artificially low. So even though the ZOO TV tour was an enormous creative success, believe it or not we didn’t make much money out of it. I remember trying to get the band to agree to increase the ticket price. From memory, I think it was about $25. And I suppose that was before the worldwide increase in ticket prices generally.
That would’ve only been less than £15 in old Irish money.
Yeah – it was really a bargain. And we were very proud of it. There was new technology as well that we were getting our hands on. It doesn’t sound like new technology anymore. We actually ran most of the show off an old format called laser disc. Do you remember the old laser discs?
Yeah – massive things. You needed two per movie!
Yeah! (laughs) We had banks of those hidden under the stage. All the data storage was on laser disc. It was really the dawn of the digital era in terms of stage production. What we do nowadays is much more sophisticated technically and it’s all built on hard drives and much more reliable digital technology. And there was a new screen that had been invented which we were very interested in. It was called ‘Nightstar’. But it was made by Phillips who were the owners of Polygram at the time. And Polygram was our record company. And I thought there was a huge opportunity here to get this gear free. But the Dutch wouldn’t give it to us. They made us pay for it, which was a big disappointment. Being Dutch, of course they had spelt it wrong so that the product was actually known as ‘Nitstar’ – ha ha! – and we had banks of them on the stage. I remember trying to get Alain Leavy, who was the head of Polygram at the time to intercede with Phillips, who were the owners of the company, and get them to come to the party, but they wouldn’t. And in the end, he was rather embarrassed. I think he chipped in some Polygram money to subsidise the screens in a modest way. But anyway, that’s just me complaining about an old irritation. (laughs).
Are you a real nuts and bolts kind of manager? Do you make it your business to become familiar with the technology and the equipment and so on?
Yeah. Because there are costs and there are budgets and so on. In U2, we always felt that it’d be pathetic to be, if you like, good at the music and bad at the business. And when you’re running a show like that, the costs can get out of control very, very quickly. And the daily running costs of a production like the one that we had this year are three or four hundred thousand dollars. I mean, the costs were less in the early 90s, but they’re still very considerable.
And I think it’s part of the bargain with the audience. When they come to a U2 show, the audience is expecting something big in production terms. And even when we were starting out, we tried to do as much production as we could. And when we got into stadiums for the first time with The Joshua Tree, that production shifted from indoors to outdoors, and I think we always felt that we’d missed an opportunity to design a full-blooded outdoor production. And we kind of took that opportunity in 1991 with ZOO TV. Partly because we were bigger and could afford it, but also the technology had improved so much.
I don’t know if people remember what it was like going to a stadium show in the 80s. Even before there was video reinforcement – or IMAG, as we called it, Image Magnification – it was really quite a frustrating experience to be in a football stadium with somebody performing a quarter of a mile away. You’d absolutely no idea what was going on. So when the technical developments started to make real presentations possible, I think it was the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd and U2 who really grasped that opportunity most successfully.
As their manager, did your heart sink when the band originally said, “Listen, we want big TV screens and cars hanging from the ceiling,” and so on?
No, not at all. I thought it was fantastic. No, no, we were very much acting in concert. And we had designers who were thinking big as well. Willie Williams, who had been with the band since the 80s as a lighting designer, had done other work. When he wasn’t working for U2 he had worked in ballet and theatre presentations and car launches and things like that. And we put him together with Mark Fischer for the first time. Mark Fischer was an English architect who had been involved in the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd shows. And he had a great mixture of artistic sensibility and architectural know-how. So the ideas could actually be translated into something that was not just visually appealing, but also could be put up in the very short periods of time that we had available. And be trucked in an economical way.
I remember there were a lot of trucks on that tour!
Yeah! Ha ha! I say ‘an economical way’, but ‘economical’ is not the word! I couldn’t believe how many trucks there were.
What are your main memories of that tour?
Just that, at the time, it was world beating – and spectacular. And I remember the effect it had on audiences who just stood there and gaped. I remember one of the things I liked hearing most at the time – and I heard it over and over again – would be people saying to me, “It’s too much to take in – there’s far too much going on to absorb!” And that kind of overload was absolutely the intention behind the show, and I think the new DVD really captures it.
Did you ever make a video confessional?
Ha, ha! In the box? No, I don’t think I did. But there were some very funny ones.
Any particularly memorable ones?
There were people who proposed to each other. There were people who confessed to adulterous liaisons. There were people who took their clothes off – that was quite common. Yeah, and there were people who made serious points. We used to edit them together in the afternoon before the show. Because we were playing these big stadiums, there would be two or three opening acts. And then because this was pre-digital, somebody would have to get the cassettes and splice together a montage which was then screened during the interval before the encores. That was the way it worked. And there’s a good sample of those on the DVD.
What was the Sarajevo connection on that tour?
There were satellite links. And what used to happen was that we would have an appointment – a sort of satellite appointment – with a studio in Sarajevo television. And this young American named Bill Carter would get somebody into the studio and at a certain time they would come up on the screen. And sometimes they’d do something kind of light-hearted and play a guitar or something. But I think the last time we did it was in Wembley Stadium and these three girls came up on the screen and they said, “This guy dragged us in off the streets. You’re all having a good time at Wembley Stadium, but we’re not having a good time and you’re not gonna do anything for us. We’re just providing gratuitous entertainment for you, and we don’t know what this is all about – but it seems pretty bad to us. Leave us alone or do something for us!” So that really killed the show that night. It was very difficult to recover from that.
Salman Rushdie appeared onstage at Wembley as well, didn’t he?
Yes. That was at Wembley.
Given that the fatwah was still very much in effect, were you at all worried about a security risk for the band?
No. I mean, of course there was a risk. But it was at a time when Salman Rushdie was receiving a lot of criticism in Britain – really quite racist criticism. He was being accused of being a troublemaker in the English press, and I think the band felt that just on an artist-to-artist basis, his freedom of speech should be protected or advocated. And we were in a position to do that. I can’t quite remember how it came about, but we’ve been friends ever since, as it happens.
U2 have had a lot of associations with controversial writers over the years. William Burroughs appeared in your ‘Last Night On Earth’ video.
Yes, he died shortly afterwards.
Actually, I was talking to Adam about that once – people dying shortly after working with the band. Burroughs died after working with the band, Allen Ginsberg died after working with the band...
The curse of U2! (laughs) And Roy Lichtenstein died shortly after working with us as well. We used his most famous image ‘Wham’ – where one plane shoots at another one – we animated that and had it across the whole of the back wall of the stadium on the LED screen. He loved that. He saw it in Giants Stadium in New York, and was thrilled.
Where did the tour actually kick off?
It was actually in Florida. And we were staying in the same hotel as Ben Dunne.
What? When the infamous hooker and cocaine incident happened?
Yeah! That week! He was in the next room.
The curse of U2 again!
Ha ha! I don’t think he came to the show. He was otherwise detained.
What was the critical response to the first show?
The critical response was just extraordinary. I think people realised immediately that this was different to anything that had ever gone before – and better. I remember when Mick Jagger saw the show in Dublin, I was standing with him and he said to me, “This is unbelievable. Wow! This is going to be like Star Wars. If you do something as big as this, we have to do something even bigger!” So it’s a little like an arms race.
The ZOO TV tour came off the back of Achtung Baby! – an album that almost broke U2 up. The band are on record as saying that the initial recording sessions were one of the lowest points in their history.
Well, the lowest – and maybe the highest.
I’m just thinking of those difficult recording sessions in Berlin. You’re often known as the fifth member of the band...
Well, I’m the fifth member of the board.
Okay, but as the band were experiencing creative constipation in Hansa Studios, were you involved at that point? Or do you just leave them to it and see what happens?
Well, I’m not part of the creative process. I’m a reasonably good critic. But really only of material when it’s pretty well finished. It’s very hard for me to discern the quality of the early stuff. U2 work in...
Mysterious ways!
Yeah. Ha ha! Well, they use the studio as a writing instrument basically. They go into the studio and they improvise and that’s how they write. So I don’t help them write the songs, but I certainly express my opinion as to which are better, which are singles. It’s very exciting hearing the material before anyone else. It’s one of the pleasures of managing the band.
Did you ever get it wrong? You know, in terms of saying, “Ah lads, that’s terrible shite!” and then the song was a huge hit.
Ha ha! I think the most famous occasion when we all got it wrong was on the Joshua Tree album when we all thought that a song called ‘Red Hill Mining Town’ was going to be the first single. And, in fact, it’s a completely forgotten track. We even made a video for it. Bono had read a book about the loss of libido amongst the British miners when they were on strike. And he’d come across this sociological survey which described how, when the men were on strike, their family lives or sex lives were disrupted. Anyway, the song was loosely connected to that idea, and we all thought it was going to be huge.
But, in fact, you learn very quickly – in those days when you released an album to album-radio in America, within a couple of days or a couple of weeks, the popularity of the tracks would become very clear statistically. And, in fact, the first number one single we ever had in America was ‘With Or Without You’ off that album. And we had a second number one single in America with ‘Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’. But ‘Red Hill Mining Town’ was never released as a single, and a video that Neil Jordan directed was never used.
Do you always travel with the band on tour or are you usually a city or two ahead of them, getting stuff organised?
I’m usually with them. I go on the tours because that’s the centre of our business. In the early days, I used to travel separately to them a lot more because there’d be a lot of lobbying and hustling the record company, and that could really only be done in London or New York or Los Angeles. But I’d still say I’ve seen the vast majority of their shows. I don’t think there’d be much point in being the manager of U2 without going to their shows. I like going to the shows. At this stage, I’m a connoisseur.
What’s the most memorable U2 show you’ve ever seen?
Oh, hard to say. But I think we’ve had some of the best shows we’ve ever had in Madison Square Garden, which again has a lot to do with the size of the venue. It’s the same size numerically as most other arenas, but it was built before the fashion or the custom for corporate boxes. And the corporate boxes in modern arenas take up a lot of space, and therefore the seats that are above them are that much further from the stage. There are no corporate boxes in Madison Square Garden, and so your eighteen or nineteen thousand seats are all proportionately closer to the stage and it’s just a very exciting venue for any performer to play. It’s New York, as well.
I think the best outdoor shows we’ve ever done have all been in Europe. I think the Slane shows were extraordinary. Last summer’s shows in Croke Park were extraordinary. I think Croke Park is the best big stadium. I mean, it’s the biggest stadium in Europe at this stage, but it’s perfectly shaped for rock and roll.
What about the earlier shows? I mean years back, when they were playing the Hope & Anchor and venues like that.
Well, the Hope & Anchor was a disaster! Ha, ha! God, the Hope & Anchor...
What I mean is a show when nobody had any money and things were really tight, and that show kept you all going.
Let me think. God, it’s very hard to isolate them, but the homecoming shows were usually memorable. We spent the early ‘80s constantly touring and we used to usually come home to Dublin just before Christmas. Those were always great shows. I remember some fantastic shows in the SFX in probably ’83. The old Television Club in Harcourt Street – I think that would’ve been ‘81.
Were you at the Dandelion Market shows?
Yes, I was there. They were pretty exciting. They’ve become a legend, of course, and if all the people who claimed to have been there had really been present, we would’ve been very happy. As it was, one of the reasons for doing those shows on a Saturday afternoon was because kids who couldn’t get into pubs because they were too young could attend those shows. It was only 50p in. So it was a great way of getting to the audience. And as far back as that, I think we’d always intended that U2 would have two parallel careers – one on record and one on the stage. Performing was always just as important as making records. And we never regarded the live activity as simply being in support of the records. It was always important in its own right.
Of course, it’s even more important now, given that the real money in rock & roll is in live activity rather than recorded work these days.
Well, U2 still sell. The current album is at about nine-and-a-half million. We’re still selling more records than anyone else, but you’re quite right – the economics of this business have changed. And we certainly make more money touring than selling records.
Is it Universal who are giving free downloads now?
Yeah. Universal have made an agreement with a company called Spiral Frog, who intend to give away free downloads – having paid Universal for them. They will be free to the consumer, Universal will still get paid and the artists will still get paid. And the consumer will be obliged to watch advertising before they get the music.
What do you think of that idea?
It sounds awful. I mean, I’m not particularly enthralled by the prospect and I’m not sure it’ll be a success. I think people are... Em, I think the iTunes model is the one that will succeed – well, it has succeeded. But I think in terms of the future of the record industry, the real question for the record business is, ‘Who has got our money?’ Ha, ha! And I think we all know who has got the money. The money is in the hands of the phone companies and the ISP’s. And the reason why somebody buys Broadband at $20 a month or whatever is not particularly to chat with their friends or read the Irish Times. It’s got a lot more to do with getting free downloads of movies and music. So that’s where the money is.
Let’s not forget pornography here!
Yeah, sure – absolutely! Ha, ha! But, in a way, the pornography industry has been far more efficient, I suspect, at collecting the money than the music business. The music business spent many years kind of doing nothing as this digital age dawned – and they’re now playing catch-up.
You have children, don’t you?
Em... yeah.
Is it difficult being away from families when you’re touring all the time?
We see a lot of them because everyone has kids. So U2 tours were always family affairs. There was always room on the planes for the families, and tours were booked around school holidays, and it was very much taken into account.
Both you and the band have had very impressive careers. In terms of following in footsteps, are any of you worried that it might all be quite daunting for your kids?
No, I think they all know how to handle it. They all grew up with it. And I certainly can’t speak about that for the other members of the band, but I think that my own family have always been kind of interested in what I did for a living, but without being over-impressed, if you like. Ha ha! They just think it’s normal. And it’s given them a chance to see the world, even if only because they were only visiting me or whatever.
I know that other bands have come to you to ask you to manage them. You’ve already got U2, Polly Harvey, Paddy Casey and...
And The Rapture. .
There was a rumour going around that Paddy and Principle had parted company...
No, not at all. Paddy’s preparing his next record, and we have high hopes for Paddy. It’s disappointing that he hasn’t been more successful outside of Ireland, but I hope we’ll be able to change that in the future.
Is it true that you once turned down an offer to manage the Red Hot Chili Peppers?
Ha ha! I certainly never heard that one before!! No, no, no.
But is it true that a lot of major bands have come to you and asked you to manage them?
Yeah. We get approached all the time.
Who’s the biggest name you’ve ever turned down?
I don’t think I wish to comment. Ha, ha! That’s really between them and me.
Okay, who’s the biggest name – that you don’t like – that you’ve ever turned down?
Ha ha! Again, it’s often difficult for me to answer questions like that, because I think of our clients as that – as clients. And I have a responsibility to be discreet and to observe what I regard as a professional responsibility to them and not discuss their affairs.
Okay then, back to your most famous clients. Mostly, I’m thinking about Bono – whom I actually have enormous respect for. But, when he’s on a rant about certain issues, even I have moments when I hear him talk and say to myself, “Oh, Bono – enough already!” Do you ever have those moments?
No. I think he knows exactly what he’s doing. And he’s taken a decision to use his prominence, if you like, to illustrate other issues. He has said that when the light’s shining on you, then you can get it turned onto something else. And I think that’s very much the way he sees it. Obviously, that kind of puts him in... em, some people don’t like it. And his motives can be questioned from time to time. But he’s tough enough to take that. And I think he’s long since made the decision to use his fame to benefit less fortunate people.
Does criticism of the band bother you?
Bother me?
Yeah – you. It’s your band, in many ways.
Em... criticism can be good or bad. It depends on whether it’s informed or not. If you’re talking about music, I think a lot of the people who know most about music are critics. And there are many critics that I have a lot of time for. It’s a little easier for me, perhaps, to say that because it’s not my creative work and it’s not my ass on the line. But I’m certainly not one of those people who say that critics don’t matter. Critics keep you sharp, I think.
Do the band get bothered by criticism?
You’d have to ask them! Ha ha!
Okay, well here’s a piece of criticism that actually affects all of you. The recent decision to move your financial operations to the Netherlands was...
[Sharply] I thought we were going to be talking about ZOO TV mainly.
Well, if you don’t want to talk about it...
[More sharply] I’m certainly not interested in talking about the band’s financial affairs.
Em, sure. But I wasn’t really interested in the nitty-gritty of the band’s financial affairs. Just wondering if the extent of the criticism made you feel that the move had backfired at all...
No. Here’s what I would say – and this is really all I have to say about it. The reality is that U2’s business is 90% conducted around the world. 90% of our tickets and 98% of our records are sold outside of Ireland. It’s where we live and where we work and where we employ a lot of people. But we pay taxes all over the world – of many different kinds. And like any other business, we’re perfectly entitled to minimise the tax we pay. And I’d say it’s a little rich that Ireland, ha ha! – Ireland particularly – which has benefited economically so enormously from attracting people to a low tax environment...I thought that point was being slightly missed. But that really is all I want to say about it.
Okay, let’s move on. Are you a friend of Kevin Myers?
Kevin Myers? Not really. I knew him when he was a left-wing radical student.
I only mention him because he’s been pretty vocal over the Netherlands thing. And it surprised me because I thought you were mates.
No, I read him and I’m entertained by him and I know what his job is – which is to be a sort of, em, a squeaky wheel. Ha, ha! But it does sometimes amuse me when I remember him as one of the leaders of the Students For Democratic Action in UCD in the late 1960’s, when he had a lot of very different opinions to the ones he has now. I think everyone’s opinions change as their life goes on – and Kevin’s certainly have.
You’re very friendly with Eamon Dunphy as well, aren’t you?
Dunphy I’m very friendly with, yeah.
Were you happy with [Dunphy’s U2 biography] The Unforgettable Fire?
Yes, I was – largely. It was an interesting book. I think it got a lot of criticism at the time from music journalists – because most of them in Dublin thought they should have written it! (laughs) But I think at the time it was a very good thing to have somebody from another world, if you like, coming in and seeing what they made of it. And yeah – I like the book. It was very much his work. I mean, it wasn’t in any way authorised. He wrote his own book and he got the money. And we didn’t participate in it in terms of editorial control or, indeed, financially.
Sticking with Irish people, I suppose the second most famous band manager in Ireland would be Louis Walsh. Do you think that Louis has made a significant contribution to Irish music?
I do, yeah. I like Louis very much. I’ve known him for a very long time – since he was booking Chips and Roly Daniels.
And you were booking Spud...
And I was booking Spud! And he was much more successful than me. He was a kind of teenage prodigy, really. He was the top booker in the country and he was very smart, and he was very good at that – at booking showbands. And it doesn’t surprise me at all that he’s been successful in the other things he does. He’s very funny, as well.
‘Bitchy’ is the word, Paul!
I dunno. I think he has a great sense of humour – and also a reasonable perspective on show-business. He does not take it too seriously and, at the same time, that humour masks a very, very thorough business brain and a comprehension of show-business and the way it works. He’s in a different part of show-business than the one I’m in, but I have enormous respect for Louis. I think he’s a – ha ha! – he’s a shining light.
I just want to go back to Sydney for a moment – and to that night on the Popmart tour, specifically, when Adam was too partied out to perform. I know that you and Adam are close allies within the U2 camp, so how did it feel for you when he was unable to play? Especially given that the gig was being filmed?
We all felt terrible for him, and we were also pretty worried because the reason you shoot these kind of shows over two nights is that if something goes wrong the first night – which could be a bad performance or a technical breakdown – you have the second night. You know, you have a second shot at it. So what that meant effectively was that we only had one shot at it. As it turned out, that seemed to add extra energy to the second night’s performance – and that’s the one that’s on the DVD. I watched it again recently and it was like seeing my life flash before me. I thought it was just brilliant.
Is it difficult keeping the four guys in U2 focused? Let’s face it, not a single member of the band needs the money.
No, I mean obviously U2 have been very successful. But it’s not all about the money. If it had been, you’re quite right – they might have eased up a long time ago. But as far as I can see, they work harder now than they did when I first met them in the late 70s. They’re very ambitious for the music. And I think they feel a responsibility to the audience not to be crap. And that’s probably what drives them more than anything else. And they’re intensely competitive. But they’re competitive not for the sake of competition, but because they want to go on being good. I think they’re making the best music they’ve ever made right now.
Have you heard any of the new stuff?
Oh yeah. They’re in Abbey Road at the moment. They’re recording a few new things. They’re doing a collaboration with Green Day.
Green Day?
Yeah. Ha, ha! They’re recording an old Skids song called ‘The Saints Are Coming’, which was a less well known Skids’ song than the one which made them famous, which was ‘Into The Valley’. And the reason they’re recording this song is that it’s a benefit single for a cause that Edge is involved in called Music Rising – which raises money to support musicians in New Orleans. It’s a big music town and a lot of musicians were completely wiped out by the flood – lost their instruments and so on. So Edge got together with the producer Bob Ezrin and they formed this charity called Music Rising, which has raised several million dollars to basically support the indigenous music community in New Orleans. Now the football team in New Orleans is called the Saints, and somebody had the idea that at their first game in the notorious Superdome – which takes place on the 25th of this month – this song ‘The Saints Are Coming’ would be performed before the game, and it all grew out of that. And they will perform that song together and, shortly afterwards, release it as a download single, again to aid the Music Rising cause.
Was there ever a point as manager where you just felt like quitting?
No! Ha ha! No, no – I think I have the best job in the world. And I enjoy it as much as I ever did. And, you know, over the years we’ve had... Em, one of the good things about success is you can build a proper organisation, and we always had that instinct that we wanted to be self-sufficient and to a large extent independent of any record company. Which has turned out to be a very good thing, because record companies nowadays are...
Owned by whiskey companies.
Yeah. The support you get from a record company – creatively and just in terms of things like packaging, promotion and publicity and marketing and so on – from the very beginning, Island Records recognised that we were very interested in all of that and allowed us basically to make the running. And so from the earliest days we operated pretty much as a label or a production company ourselves. We never really had an A&R man. The closest thing to an A&R would’ve been Chris Blackwell. He was always very involved. And Jimmy Iovine was always very involved. Before he became a tycoon, he was a producer. He produced two U2 records – Rattle & Hum and Under A Blood Red Sky in 1983.
Actually, speaking of Under A Blood Red Sky, is it true that when it was filmed, the band manipulated the images of the crowd to make it seem a lot bigger than it was?
No! (laughs) No. That was in the early days of video, I’m afraid. I don’t think there was that much manipulation that you could do – certainly not compared to what you can do nowadays. But it’s absolutely true that the crowd wasn’t very big. And that venue takes about 7,000 people and it was not full, and it was pouring with rain. I think we had sold 5,000 tickets and because the weather was so bad – which it can be at any time of the year in Denver – we had announced that we were going to do a second show indoors in Boulder, Colorado, the following night.
Did that keep people away?
Well, the promoter wanted to cancel the show and we didn’t. And the rain let up sufficiently to perform, but it was still pretty wet. And it’s up in the mountains so there were clouds in the venue. And it ended up looking perhaps like there was a bigger crowd than it really was. But that was a pure accident! Digital manipulation was 15 years later.
Are U2 going to make an appearance in the upcoming Simpsons movie?
Em... no, not that I’m aware of.
You’ve made an appearance in The Simpsons yourself.
I appeared in The Simpsons, yes.
A proud moment?
Oh yeah. They were certainly proud in my family!
Moving back to Ireland for a moment. You used to be a member of the Arts Council, so I’m just wondering what your opinion of John O’Donaghue is. A lot of people reckon that he doesn’t know the first thing about the Arts.
Well, I’m not involved in the Arts Council and I haven’t been for quite a number of years. I enjoyed that work. I think it’s very important work. When I was first appointed to the Arts Council, it was really very badly under-funded I think. The annual budget was four or five million pounds. Now it’s up around 70 or 80 million. I think it’s a very good thing that the country is putting proper investment into the Arts and that it’s high on the political agenda.
Do you think it was a good idea to cap the tax exemption for artists?
I don’t really have an opinion about that. I thought that... [pauses]. Actually, I don’t really want to talk about that. Ha ha!
You’ve heard that Michael McDowell has taken over as head of the PD’s?
Again, these are not really my subjects.
But you know him, don’t you?
I knew him back in the ‘80s when I used to spend my Saturday afternoons in The Unicorn with a group of people including Michael McDowell and PJ Mara and Eamon Dunphy and Jean Anne Crowley and Dermot Morgan. In those days it was a kind of low priced café and we used to sit around there on Saturday afternoons and enjoy each others company. It was a time I look back on with pleasure, I think.
Do you have much contact with Bill Clinton these days?
I don’t have any contact with Clinton. I mean, I’ve met him lots of times. He and Bono are quite friendly.
Have you met George Bush?
No. Never met him.
Blair?
Blair I’ve met, yeah. I knew Blair before he came to power, because he was in a band at Oxford with a good friend of mine called Mark Ellen, who was the founding editor of Q magazine. And Mark used to bring Tony Blair to the Q Awards lunch. And I remember meeting him – gosh, it must have been the early ‘90s, maybe even the late ‘80s – at those sort of occasions. I’m not a good friend of his, but I’ve certainly met him over the years.
Do you think he should step down?
Ha ha! Do you mean should he step down as the leader of the Ugly Rumours? That was the name of his group. Ha, ha! I certainly don’t have any political advice for him.
Okay, just before we wrap up, a couple of quick questions. Outside of U2’s stuff, what’s your favourite Irish album?
Oh. Off the top of my head... Astral Weeks.
Your favourite international album?
Hmmm. Of all time? Em... it’s probably a Steely Dan record. I’m a long time Steely Dan fan. It would be Steely Dan or Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen.
Your favourite U2 album?
I think my favourite U2 album is How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. I think it’s their best work so far. And I look forward to the next one.
Your nickname is Magoo, isn’t it?
So I’ve heard.
Do you mind?
I certainly don’t mind people giving me nicknames. Ha ha!
Would you describe your relationship with the band as fatherly or big brotherly or what?
Oh no. They’re my clients. That’s the relationship.
Do you have a motto in life?
I probably have far too many proverbs, but I’ll give you two of them. One of which Bono has repeatedly disproved. I used to say, ‘You could only be famous for doing one thing at a time’. Ha ha! So fuck that! And the other one would be, ‘If it was easy, everyone would be doing it’.