Book Review: Killing Bono: A True Story by Neil McCormick

By most people's standards, Killing Bono author Neil McCormick has led a successful life. He's a music columnist for The Daily Telegraph and has written for GQ, The Sunday Times and numerous other publications. However, there's one dream that he hasn't fulfilled - becoming a rock star, a "failure" only made more apparent by his longtime friend Bono's rise to fame.

McCormick went to Dublin's Mount Temple Comprehensive, a secondary school that the boys who grew up to form the rock band U2 also attended. As Paul Hewson (Bono), Dave Evans (The Edge), Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen formed the band that would later take the world by storm, McCormick and his brother Ivan were also forming bands, optimistic that they would find success. For McCormick, it isn't a question of if he will become a rock star, but when. In chapter one, he writes, "And if they had informed me that among this generation of students were four individuals who would become the most famous Irish exports since Guinness, why, I would have shrugged bashfully before looking around at my schoolmates to try to work out who were the other three."
The irony of that statement is of course that he is not among those four - an irony that is obvious to the reader, but unknowable to McCormick at that point in his life.

McCormick and the bands that he assembles throughout the years with his brother Ivan are the central figures in Killing Bono, but U2's growth from local band to international phenomenon is an undercurrent throughout the book. Each time it looks like McCormick's bands Yeah! Yeah! and Shook Up! will get a record deal, something happens. Oftentimes that something is seemingly arbitrary such as when the head of WEA U.K. vetoes signing Shook Up! because he thinks McCormick's hair is too short. He didn't even listen to their demos. Sometimes the rejection hits closer to home such as when U2 decides against putting a Shook Up! single out on the band's Mother label because one person among the bandmates and their manager voted against it. As McCormick's music career slopes downward, U2 and especially Bono reach a level of fame that extends outside the music business -- a contrast that's the heart of the book and gives the book its title. During one phone conversation, Bono tells McCormick that he's his doppelganger and that if he wants his life back, he'll have to kill him.

Overall, Killing Bono will appeal most readily to U2 fans because of its candid portrayal of the personalities that make up the band. However, aspiring musicians who are trying to "make it" in the music business will relate to McCormick's struggles even if they don't like U2.