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He means depth of the commercial, not thematic variety, but he is right in either case. "People are always saying U2 is the largest underground act in the world," says their manager, Paul McGuinness. "I suppose that's true, but it is starting to change." And in a hurry, at that. Ask Thom House, who sold U2 concert tickets for local gigs via computer at his two video stores in New York and New Jersey. Crowds started lining up at his Manhattan store Thursday night, and at first, he says,"I had no idea why they were there. I chased them away, saying we were not selling tickets until Saturday. They kept coming back. We bought movie tickets and passed them out, so they could leave and come back. They stayed. It started raining. They stayed, hundreds of them. This group must rank close to the Beatles."
Just a second. The sound you hear is brakes being put on, and it is the band that has the heaviest foot on the pedal. "We don't think we're that good, really," says Bono, 26, who writes the lyrics and fronts the band both as lead singer and resident shaman. "We think we are overrated, and though we're concerned about living up to people's expectations, it scares us even to live up to our own expectations." "The band is at a frontier," says Bass Guitarist Adam Clayton, 27. "You don't get something for nothing. This tour is definitely frightening."
It is also taking on distinct phenomenological proportions. Even in Arizona, in the earliest stages, with Bono's voice raggedy from overrehearsing and with the band searching for a solid connection with both the audience and one another, there was a final fusion of performer and spectator that is one mark of great rock 'n' roll. Some of the songs, especially earlier efforts, can get tongue-tied by the unwieldy ambition of their lyrics and the discursiveness of the melody line. The audience shares a devotional intensity, however, that anchors the concert as a whole experience even when the tunes range free. Bono stalks a song as much as sings it, and the moment he takes the stage there is no doubt what his terms are: unconditional surrender. Clayton and Drummer Larry Mullen Jr., 25, have found some solid musical grounding, and the lead guitarist, the Edge, 25, can work a riff around to an epiphany.
(Of course you will want to know about those snappy nicknames before ! anything else. Bono, born Paul Hewson, got his off a sign advertising Bono Vox of O'Connell Street, a hearing-aid store in Dublin. Not until later did he learn that the phrase meant "good voice" in cockeyed Latin, but he had long since dropped the Vox. Bono -- say it Bon-no, to sound like the German city and not like the name of Cher's ex-husband -- came up with the name for David Evans. "The edge is the border between something and nothing," he announced. "I am not a particularly edgy person," the Edge elaborates, "so it is funny." Now, then.)
It is on Bono, however, that all eyes stay fixed. U2 carries the day, but he carries the show. That has always been the way, ever since the band's first scuffling days in Dublin during the punk whirligig."They were very bad," admits Manager McGuinness. "But it wasn't the songs that were the attraction. It was the energy and commitment to performance that were fantastic even then. Bono would run around looking for people to meet his eyes."