Word: mullens
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...Bono was dubious at first about joining up ("I thought rock was ugly"), and the Edge at these early stages "didn't ever consider the band as anything other than a worthwhile thing to do on Wednesday afternoons." Mullen, the youngest of the group, could only dream of a career, while Bono and the Edge were getting on with their education and taking their final exams. Clayton, however, had been booted out of Mount Temple, and worried about "commitment" from the others. He hustled hard, trying to force their hand, and made contact with McGuinness...
...band, which had gone through a variety of names, including the Hype, was better with chutzpah than with chords. "You see," says Mullen, "we couldn't play. We were very, very, very bad." In the first hot flush of punk, this did not greatly matter, and after seeing them in 1978, McGuinness, who had done mostly film-production work up until that moment, agreed to become their manager. "It looked to me like they would be a great rock band," he says now, adding, "I've only had to be right once...
There were other ties, ones that stayed strong beneath the surface tension. Grief could be shared, understood. When he was 15, Bono's mother died from the effects of a stroke she suffered at his grandfather's funeral. Mullen lost his mother in a traffic accident in 1978. "The thing that has kept us going," he says now, "is the fact that we are friends. This whole band is based on our friendship. If it had originally been based on our music, we would have failed...
...Mullen, who added Junior to his surname after his father began to receive large tax bills meant for his prosperous son, lives on a beach near Dublin. His girlfriend does office-temp work, so she is free to join the tour at frequent intervals. "I live in a nice house and don't feel bad about it," he says. "But I don't drive a flashy car, first of all because I don't want to, and second of all because I think that would be rude in a country like Ireland, where there is high unemployment." Clayton lives...
...trying to provide an opportunity for Irish groups," McGuinness says. "You don't have to be Irish, but it helps. We do have one Scottish group." Besides the trip to El Salvador last year, Bono and Ali found time for seven weeks of relief work in Ethiopia, and Mullen tries to stay tapped in to the roots: "All the neighbors knew my mother, and I try to drop in on them occasionally, just to keep my foot in." Celebrity, however, does have its inconveniences. "When you go into a shop, and you're in the only successful band to have...