"Yes! Haha! They can get into the propellers! Cause big mess! Maybe even crash! Haha!"

The children or the seagulls?

"Haha! You are funny guy! Haha!"

The flight back to Akureyri is the longest twenty minutes of my life; the only other occasion I can remember time limping by quite so agonisingly slowly, I was reviewing The Eagles' reunion concert at Wembley Stadium. The tiny aeroplane pitches and lurches like a drunk man on a wonky footpath. The hoots and whines of the engine struggle to be heard over the hooting, whining wind, and the tormented creaks of the aircraft's structure compete with periodic shrieks of "Haha!" that emanate from the c.o.c.kpit. Approaching the runway, the plane bounces in mid-air with such violence that, my circulation-threateningly tight seatbelt notwithstanding, I crack my head against the ceiling, drawing blood. "Haha!" says the pilot.

Five quid a pint or not, I've earnt a drink, and I head into town to see what Akureyrians do for fun of an evening. Unbelievably, what they do is drive their cars in slow, nose-to-tail laps of the tiny main street and the two car parks at each end of it. The waitress in the bar I'm watching this nonsense from explains that the ritual is called the runtur runtur-a wheeled version of the Spanish corso, a sort of ritualised showing off. Unfortunately, only three of Akureyri's young blades have got the kind of motors necessary for doing this kind of adolescent preening properly-the owners of the Dodge GTS, the Ford Mustang and the Corvette. Everyone else here is starring in their own private Icelandic Graffiti Icelandic Graffiti in Saabs, Hondas and Renaults. in Saabs, Hondas and Renaults.

A LITTLE LESS than twelve months later, I'm back in Reykjavik, where it could not be said that Iceland's geologic majesty is high on anyone's list of priorities. A planeload of British press has been flown here by the Icelandic Arts Council, or someone, to experience an Icelandic Pop Festival, or something.

It strikes me sometime after midnight on the Friday that this is probably the most confused, exhausted and disoriented I've ever been, at least since that Eagles gig at Wembley. Four days ago, on Monday morning, I woke up in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. I'd got back to London, via Islamabad, on the Tuesday afternoon. On Thursday night I was on a plane to Reykjavik. Friday morning, I'd woken up in a park near the hotel.

And now I'm in a bar flooded with dazzling midnight sunlight, surrounded by Reykjavik's improbably perfectly-formed populace and several rather less exquisite fellow journalists, all behaving like Russian submariners on sh.o.r.e leave. The music is deafening and dizzying, and the vodka c.o.c.ktails are not helping. I keep thinking that a week ago I was urging a Kabuli taxi driver to step on it a bit, lest we be caught blundering through the powercut-darkened streets after curfew, and I keep wishing that I could have brought my Afghan translator here with me tonight, so he could get some idea of how completely his city had perplexed me. If I'd told him what it was like to be right here, right now, where literally everything happening would, in his home town, be punishable by public flogging, he'd have thought I was winding him up, again.

"I have sent my boyfriend to the bar for some drinks," she's saying.

Well . . . okay. Though it must be my round by now.

"We have probably five minutes before he comes back. Let's get out of here."

Outside, there are no taxis, just the amiable affray that is closing time in downtown Reykjavik. Still, she's a woman as resourceful as she is determined. She flags down a pa.s.sing car.

"Where are you staying?"

The kid behind the wheel thought he was taking his mates home, but he resigns himself to events as quickly as I have. I tell him where the hotel is, and she writes him a cheque for his trouble while he drives.

We've made it as far as my room when something occurs to her.

"The babysitter!" she says, retrieving her shoes. "My G.o.d! I must go home at once and pay her."

Okay . . .

"In three weeks I will be in London. I have your number. I will come to stay with you." She never rang.

26.

MAGICAL MISSOURI TOUR.

Branson NOVEMBER 2008.

I WROTE SOMETHING elsewhere in this volume about my bafflement regarding, and/or horror of, holiday destinations. So it may seem nearly as peculiar to the pa.s.sing reader as it did to me that when I visited a place that exists for no other reason than to be a destination in which people take holidays, I had about as fine a weekend as I can imagine enjoying. WROTE SOMETHING elsewhere in this volume about my bafflement regarding, and/or horror of, holiday destinations. So it may seem nearly as peculiar to the pa.s.sing reader as it did to me that when I visited a place that exists for no other reason than to be a destination in which people take holidays, I had about as fine a weekend as I can imagine enjoying.

This was, granted, substantially to do with the company. A lot of the travelling I've done has been solo, and there is much to be said for that. Alone in an unfamiliar place, your perceptions are raw and immediate. Liberated from having to care overmuch what anyone else thinks of you, you're more open to allowing yourself to be led even further astray than you already are: there is a wondrously whimsical aspect to sauntering along a city street secure in the certain knowledge that you are not going to b.u.mp into anybody you know. You could be anyone, and so could everyone else.

That much acknowledged, an astute choice of travelling companion can make anywhere the only place you'd want to be-even, yes, Branson, Missouri (though possibly not Ashford, England-there are limits). Sartre was entirely correct when he observed that h.e.l.l is other people, but he'd have been just as accurate-if much less appealing to subsequent generations of moody students in maladroitly applied eyeliner-if he'd observed that heaven is constructed of precisely the same material.

And counter-intuitive though it may seem, Branson was probably as pure a travel experience as I've had. The place is, yes, a tourist trap of elephantine proportions. However, Branson is unusual among tourist traps in that it is only being what it is, rather than trying to be what it thinks visitors might want. Most tourist destinations, whether Caribbean resorts, Spanish hotel complexes, paradisical tropical islands the world over, labour to make their guests feel, essentially, like they're still at home but someone has turned the weather up-encounters with the reality of the locality, if they must be endured, tend to be restricted to picturesque ruins and waiters in silly waistcoats. Branson, by contrast, is everything the self-conscious travel sn.o.b who ostentatiously abjures such places generally claims to seek-an unadulterated and authentic expression of a living native culture. Honestly, the only thing I'd change about the place is the volume of the thunderstorm sound effects at the indoor jungle-themed mini-golf course-Branson is a justly popular destination for veterans' reunions, and I'm not sure the combination of dense foliage and sudden loud noises is a congenial one for all its visitors.

The editor who commissioned this a.s.signment, Rahul Jacob at The Financial Times Financial Times' travel section, instructed that I refrain from sneering at my subject, and quite rightly so. Branson, for all its indisputable-and utterly undisguised-foibes, and its breezy brashness, is an altogether una.s.suming place, and I didn't meet a single person who wasn't courteous, chatty, and hospitable. I would be appalled to learn that anyone who had read my dispatch was inspired to visit Branson in order to laugh at it. Laughing with Branson, of course, is fine-especially once you realize how wise, warm, and refreshingly lacking in malice the joke is. This one's for my Huckleberry friend, without whom it would very likely have soared over my head.

IN A SOUVENIR shop in Branson's downtown district, I am given, with the most purehearted of intent, the least helpful directions I have ever received. "The post office?" says the woman behind the counter. "Go around the corner, walk three blocks, it's the building with the big American flag out front." In Branson, Missouri, this is approximately as helpful as saying "It's the building": everything has a big American flag out front.

TO FOREIGNERS WHO'VE heard of it, and to many Americans, Branson is a punchline: a chintzy, cheesy, corny, hopelessly downmarket destination, an above-ground cemetery for has-been and never-will-be entertainers and those visitors whose critical faculties are sufficiently derailed by old age to appreciate them. It represents an America generally disdained and/or misunderstood by foreign tourists, who tend to gravitate to big cities on the coasts-and it's the very definition of what metropolitan Americans mean when they snort, "flyover country." Branson is a place altogether unburdened by the ironic, a place where one may-as someone has-open a theatre bar called G.o.d & Country, knowing that n.o.body will think this gauche, a place where all the applause is sincere. It's also great fun, so long as your idea of fun includes jungle-themed indoor mini-golf, four-storey go-kart tracks and listening to lesser Osmond brothers singing Christmas carols on a Friday morning in November.

Even if all those things are your idea of fun-and they are mine, or can be, given the right company and blood alcohol level-you still really have to want to go to Branson. The sole irony available in Branson is its location: though Branson exists almost exclusively for tourists, it is situated almost exactly in the middle of nowhere, tucked into the Ozark mountains along Missouri's border with Arkansas. It has no airport of its own (though one is, at the time of my visit, scheduled for imminent opening, only half a century after the debut of Branson's first live theatre show, The Baldk.n.o.bbers' Hillbilly Jamboree The Baldk.n.o.bbers' Hillbilly Jamboree; according to the literature I have been emailed, this show is still going, though without, I'm a.s.suming/hoping, much of the original cast). The nearest place I can fly to is Springfield, which has no connections to any of the major coastal hubs (I travelled from Philadelphia via Dallas). Even once I've made it that far, I'm still an hour by road from my destination, and there are no buses (most people who go to Branson do so in their own vehicles, or on the coaches provided by whichever old folks' package tour they've booked). For a non-driving such as myself, the only option is to make some taxi driver very happy indeed.

Fortunately, however, I do really want to go to Branson, and the billboards lining Route 65 from Springfield do nothing to temper my antic.i.p.ation. Most of these advertise live performances by people I'd have a.s.sumed, had I given them any thought in the last three or four decades, were long dead: Roy Clark, Bill Medley, Paul Revere and the Raiders. Others boast truly treasurably cra.s.s copywriting and/or inadvertent prompts to ponder such interesting questions as why some disasters become entertainment, and others do not: Branson's t.i.tanic t.i.tanic museum is touted as "a family experience," which is not a billing anybody would bestow upon a memorial to the Hindenburg or the Lusitania. museum is touted as "a family experience," which is not a billing anybody would bestow upon a memorial to the Hindenburg or the Lusitania.

My lodgings in Branson are in the Hilton situated in the new Branson Landing shopping complex by Lake Taneycomo. Branson Landing is an attempt to combine the facilities of a modern shopping mall with the folksy charm of a small country town. Which is to say that Branson Landing is a reasonable approximation of h.e.l.l. In a thoughtfully diabolical touch, muzak is broadcast through speakers mounted outside the shops-a looping selection of Yuletide standards punctuated, bafflingly, by Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Up Around The Bend," possibly a wry reference to where this soundtrack will swiftly drive a sane person. The racket is still audible in my hotel suite above the arcade, even after I've closed all the windows. It feels a bit like suffering the onset of a delusional psychosis in which one is convinced that one is receiving secret instructions from Mariah Carey, with specific reference to what she wants for Christmas.

In the middle of Branson Landing, an American flag flies above a fountain fitted with a battery of ten flamethrowers. At sunset, the festive hits are mercifully, if temporarily, silenced and the speakers bellow "The Star Spangled Banner" as jets of water and eruptions of flame roar towards the pinking sky. And all the shoppers shuffle to a stop, and hold their baseball caps over their hearts.

ALMOST EVERYTHING IN Branson is arranged along one road, a highway called Route 76, known locally as The Strip. A drive along The Strip offers sights including-but by no means limited to-a museum in the shape of the t.i.tanic t.i.tanic, a motel resembling a riverboat, a souvenir barn painted in the black and white patchwork of a Friesian cow, a replica of Mount Rushmore featuring the heads of John Wayne, Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe and Charlie Chaplin, a Veterans' Memorial Garden festooned with yellow ribbons, a statue of a horse draped in the Confederate flag, and one theatre (specifically, the Dolly Partonowned Dixie Stampede) whose digital billboard promises a dinner show including ostrich-and pig-racing (to my sorrow, if not surprise, tickets are sold out).

Two things are essential to the proper enjoyment of these and other attractions. One is resolve to appreciate Branson on its own merits-Branson is so disarmingly guileless that adopting any att.i.tude of lofty aesthetic superiority, though the material to encourage same is abundant, would be as hollow a triumph as riffing wittily on the sandiness of the Sahara. The other is someone else: a course of three of Branson's Christmas shows in one day is not something that can or should be undertaken without moral support. I am joined in this enterprise by a friend of mine who lives in Missouri, knows Branson well and indeed goaded me into pitching it to the Financial Times Financial Times' travel section in the first place, so it seems like the least she can do.

There's a third, though obviously optional, item of psychological equipment which feels necessary to us: that somewhat dazed, dulled, impenetrably bemused mindset that one can only bring to bear on a day's outing when one has prepared oneself carefully the night before by sleeping far too little and drinking far too much. Suitably fortified, which is to say burdened by hangovers which are a hazard to overflying birdlife, we report to the Branson Variety Theatre for the 10:00 AM performance of the Spirit of Christmas Spirit of Christmas show (Branson theatres keep weird hours, to accommodate the schedules of tourist buses and the bedtimes of the city's mostly pensionable visitors-not much happens after 10:00 PM, and many venues stage three shows every day). From the carpark behind the Branson Variety Theatre, I can see another venue, a gleaming leviathan called the White House Theatre, upon which is painted, in immense blue letters, the definitive, reductive Branson enticement: "SHOWS & FOOD." show (Branson theatres keep weird hours, to accommodate the schedules of tourist buses and the bedtimes of the city's mostly pensionable visitors-not much happens after 10:00 PM, and many venues stage three shows every day). From the carpark behind the Branson Variety Theatre, I can see another venue, a gleaming leviathan called the White House Theatre, upon which is painted, in immense blue letters, the definitive, reductive Branson enticement: "SHOWS & FOOD."

The reasons we have settled upon the Spirit of Christmas Spirit of Christmas show to the exclusion of everything else on offer-Branson, population 7,435, has 53 theatres, 207 hotels and 458 restaurants-are the guest stars: Wayne, Jay and Jimmy Osmond. The latter still enjoys a certain infamy back in Britain, thanks to his vexingly unforgettable 1972 hit "Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool." Released when Little Jimmy Osmond, as he was then known, was just nine years old, it remains plausibly the worst UK Number One single ever: the sort of thing only grandmothers liked. It is a demographic that has remained loyal: an aerial shot of the pre-show throng in the lobby would resemble a crocheted quilt cover of blue and silver. It is doubtless in acknowledgement of the audience's age, and the bodily aches that time engenders, that the concession stand sells aspirin along with popcorn and ice cream, but all things-and by "all things," I mean temples throbbing like the ba.s.s guitar part in The Osmonds' "Crazy Horses"-considered, I am not ungrateful. show to the exclusion of everything else on offer-Branson, population 7,435, has 53 theatres, 207 hotels and 458 restaurants-are the guest stars: Wayne, Jay and Jimmy Osmond. The latter still enjoys a certain infamy back in Britain, thanks to his vexingly unforgettable 1972 hit "Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool." Released when Little Jimmy Osmond, as he was then known, was just nine years old, it remains plausibly the worst UK Number One single ever: the sort of thing only grandmothers liked. It is a demographic that has remained loyal: an aerial shot of the pre-show throng in the lobby would resemble a crocheted quilt cover of blue and silver. It is doubtless in acknowledgement of the audience's age, and the bodily aches that time engenders, that the concession stand sells aspirin along with popcorn and ice cream, but all things-and by "all things," I mean temples throbbing like the ba.s.s guitar part in The Osmonds' "Crazy Horses"-considered, I am not ungrateful.

Most of the Spirit of Christmas Spirit of Christmas show consists of a chorus line capering to numbingly predictable Christmas favourites in exactly the costumes you'd expect them to wear. The dancers are competent at best, but their rather overlong routines at least allow plenty of time for whispered-behind-programme speculations about the cast-which backing hoofer is conspiring to overthrow the female lead, which is the impressionable sidekick abetting her in this treachery, which male dancer has most often prompted his father to declare that "the boy ain't right," etcetera. show consists of a chorus line capering to numbingly predictable Christmas favourites in exactly the costumes you'd expect them to wear. The dancers are competent at best, but their rather overlong routines at least allow plenty of time for whispered-behind-programme speculations about the cast-which backing hoofer is conspiring to overthrow the female lead, which is the impressionable sidekick abetting her in this treachery, which male dancer has most often prompted his father to declare that "the boy ain't right," etcetera.

The Osmonds appear in intermittent cameos, and are great. They'd be even better if "Crazy" Wayne Osmond desisted with his jokes, several of which might even be older than most of the audience, but they seem to amuse him, if n.o.body else. When the three of them sing together they do so beautifully, especially on a medley of hits by other brothers (Mills Brothers, Everly Brothers, Doobie Brothers, Blues Brothers-though my prayers for something off The Louvin Brothers' 1950s gothic gospel cla.s.sic Satan Is Real Satan Is Real languish regrettably unanswered). Jimmy is an effortlessly charming host, his exhortation to "Keep this party going"-to a theatre largely populated by a pre-lunchtime crowd of grandparents-conspicuously lacking the laboured, mordant self-mockery of celebrities starring in British pantomimes. He is a man utterly at peace with his place in the world, even if that place is a remote Ozark town where he sells memories at inconvenient hours. languish regrettably unanswered). Jimmy is an effortlessly charming host, his exhortation to "Keep this party going"-to a theatre largely populated by a pre-lunchtime crowd of grandparents-conspicuously lacking the laboured, mordant self-mockery of celebrities starring in British pantomimes. He is a man utterly at peace with his place in the world, even if that place is a remote Ozark town where he sells memories at inconvenient hours.

The same cannot quite be said of the next act we see-Roy Rogers Jr., at the Roy Rogers Museum theatre-but it is a nevertheless compelling spectacle. Roy Rogers Sr. was, during the 1940s and '50s, perhaps the most famous man in America, the occupants of the White House not excepted. He made movies, television shows and records (most of the latter are interesting only as period kitsch, but a couple, notably the early 70s alb.u.ms A Man from Duck Run A Man from Duck Run and and The Country Side of The Country Side of, aren't bad at all, the latter featuring jarringly sincere versions of the semi-ironic Merle Haggard redneck anthems "Okie From Muskogee" and "The Fightin' Side Of Me," which manage to sound both amiable and belligerent: listening to them is like being threatened by your uncle). He lent his image to uncountable items of merchandise, many of which are exhibited in the museum: comic books, toys, breakfast cereals, board games. Also enshrined are Rogers' clothes, cars and guns. Roy Rogers died in 1998, aged eighty-six. He left his son these display cases of mementoes, his name and some awesomely big-and audaciously embroidered-boots to fill.

Rogers Jr. does this with a grace, humility and reverence that verges on the weird. The show Rogers Jr. performs is, substantially, a memorial service to his legendary father, to his mother (Grace Arlene Wilkins), and to Rogers Sr.'s second wife and co-star (Dale Evans). In a half-filled, semi-circular theatre adjoining the museum, Rogers Jr. croons cowboy ballads while his backing band make the quietest amplified music I've ever heard. In between tunes, he tells stories of his upbringing, which was both blessed by the fortune and fame of his father, and plagued by the death and misfortune that insistently stalked the family. Rogers Jr.'s mother died of an embolism days after he was born. Rogers Sr. and Evans' first daughter was born with Down's Syndrome and died in infancy. Two of the children Rogers and Evans subsequently adopted also died young. One, a Korean war orphan, was killed in a road crash at age twelve, when her church bus collided with a car. Another choked to death while serving with the US army in Germany.

Rogers Jr. discusses these tragedies from the stage in detail that feels all at once forensic and dispa.s.sionate, and which leaves us altogether unsure how we're supposed to react. It's all rather odd. Rogers owns a pleasant, Jim Reeves-ish baritone, and his a capella version of the ancient spiritual "Wayfaring Stranger" is terrific. But it's hard to separate from the knowledge that it was, as he has explained at some length, the last thing he sang to Dale Evans before she died in 2001-and that he's still singing it twice a day, five days a week, in what is essentially his family mausoleum. He wishes his audience a "happy Branson cowboy Christmas" as artificial snow descends from the ceiling, and we leave thinking Jimmy Osmond should take him for a drink.

Neither the Osmonds nor Rogers would deny that we saved the best for last: indefatigable crooner Andy Williams, at his own Moon River theatre. His timing in comic set-pieces is faultless, his supporting cast brilliant, especially the astonishing mimic Bob Anderson, whose singular genius is for channeling the voices and mannerisms of lounge singers, including Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tom Jones, Ray Charles-and, for one memorably surreal duet, Andy Williams. Williams looks, sounds and seems five decades short of the eighty years he racked up the previous birthday. When he signs off with a sumptuous "Moon River," the few hairs remaining on the heads of his audience are thrilled upright, quite rightly.

WE SPEND SAt.u.r.dAY at Silver Dollar City theme park, whose attractions include the opportunity to pose for sepia portraits in antique costume (the woman running this operation agrees when I observe that they have a wider range of Confederate costumes than Union uniforms, and confesses that when people ask to dress as Yankees "they tend to kinda whisper"). That night, we attend a show by Kirby VanBurch, a magician with a Dutch pop star's accent and haircut. VanBurch is a Branson veteran. This theatre is, he notes, with perhaps understandable weariness, the ninth Branson venue he has played in. "I'm the only performer in Branson," he announces, "who is actually touring Branson."

It's the rest of the world's loss. VanBurch is fantastic. He produces bottles from empty tubes, cavorts with tigers, teleports a motorcycle and causes a helicopter to appear from thin air. His performance is also noteworthy for two defining moments, one very Branson, one not. The extremely Branson act is VanBurch's solemn presentation of one young a.s.sistant from the crowd with a dogtag inscribed with Isaiah 54:17 ("No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgement thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord"-which is at least more rarefied than "My grandmother went to Branson and all I got was this lousy t-shirt").

The jarringly un-Branson thing, which sums Branson up by being everything Branson is not, is a reflexive mis-step into sarcasm. Introducing an escape trick, VanBurch mentions Houdini. The crowd applaud. "Clap all you want, he's not coming out," smiles Kirby. "Not at these prices."

It's a good joke, but it dies, crushed by the truth it is bearing: that maybe we'd all rather be in Vegas, but realise that Sin City is just too brash, too cynical, too much, for any of us.

27.

LEMON ON A JET PLANE.

Around the world with U2 APRIL 1997-FEBRUARY 1998.

WHICH IS, IF you've been reading this book sequentially, where we came in, more or less. By accident and by design, my path crossed with U2's PopMart PopMart tour of 1997-98 fairly frequently. What follows is tour of 1997-98 fairly frequently. What follows is-if you will-kind of a director's cut of a sequence of articles written about the tour, largely for The Independent The Independent and and The Independent on Sunday The Independent on Sunday.

The PopMart PopMart tour was entirely preposterous-which was, of course, at least half the point. There was no doubt that U2 were in on the joke they were playing on themselves, their heritage and their reputation, even from the off. Their road crew certainly bought into the spirit of things early on. The afternoon before opening night, at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, a few of us journalists covering the show had wandered down to the venue to watch the final pieces of the immense and ludicrous set being erected. As we arrived, some or other prop was being gently lowered on cables from the rigging overhanging the stage. The roadie on the mixing desk beat us all to the punchline. "HEWN!" boomed a voice through the bank of bright orange speakers. "FROM THE LIVING ROCK! OF . . . STONE'ENGE!" tour was entirely preposterous-which was, of course, at least half the point. There was no doubt that U2 were in on the joke they were playing on themselves, their heritage and their reputation, even from the off. Their road crew certainly bought into the spirit of things early on. The afternoon before opening night, at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas, a few of us journalists covering the show had wandered down to the venue to watch the final pieces of the immense and ludicrous set being erected. As we arrived, some or other prop was being gently lowered on cables from the rigging overhanging the stage. The roadie on the mixing desk beat us all to the punchline. "HEWN!" boomed a voice through the bank of bright orange speakers. "FROM THE LIVING ROCK! OF . . . STONE'ENGE!"

A few months later, in an irony too perfect to contrive, U2 ended up wearing their most ironic guise as they played what was-at least, perhaps, until their three-night stand at Madison Square Garden in October 2001-their least ironic concert. Their show at Sarajevo's Kosevo Stadium, on September 23, 1997, remains an absolute highlight of your correspondent's gig-going experience. On its own merits, it wasn't a great show, for the fairly fundamental reason that Bono's voice deserted him more or less completely (at time of writing, a YouTube clip of U2's performance of "Pride" captures his struggle acutely). But it was a resonant example of what U2 do-and what rock'n'roll does-best: elevates naivete into an inspirational, if wretchedly temporary, reality.

"THE highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week, which is forever trying to collect its limbs after yesterday's crash. The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour s.n.a.t.c.h the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time."-DADAIST MANIFESTO, BERLIN, 1918 "WHAT's b.o.n.e.r's problem?"-Beavis and b.u.t.t-Head, USA, 1994 ABOUT A HUNDRED miles from here, about a decade ago, four young Irishmen stood amid the cacti of Death Valley and gazed grimly towards the dusty horizons while Anton Corbijn took their pictures for the cover of The Joshua Tree The Joshua Tree, an alb.u.m that remains a benchmark for ascetic introspection. Tonight, the same four Irishmen will perform songs from an alb.u.m called Pop Pop on a stage decorated with a fifty-foot-high lemon-shaped mirror ball, an enormous glowing olive atop a towering swizzle stick, and a giant golden arch obviously intended to signal a.s.sociations with populism and disposability. U2's reinvention, first flagged with 1991's on a stage decorated with a fifty-foot-high lemon-shaped mirror ball, an enormous glowing olive atop a towering swizzle stick, and a giant golden arch obviously intended to signal a.s.sociations with populism and disposability. U2's reinvention, first flagged with 1991's Achtung Baby Achtung Baby alb.u.m and subsequent Zoo TV tour, has been an act of total auto-iconoclasm. It's been like watching a Pope touring the world's cathedrals with a tin of kerosene and a lighter and has, as such, been well rock'n'roll. alb.u.m and subsequent Zoo TV tour, has been an act of total auto-iconoclasm. It's been like watching a Pope touring the world's cathedrals with a tin of kerosene and a lighter and has, as such, been well rock'n'roll.

However, there's self-destruction and there's self-destruction, and when U2 open their PopMart PopMart world tour tonight in Las Vegas's 37,000-seater Sam Boyd Stadium, they deliver an excruciating example of the wrong kind. Beset by technical hitches, grappling with material that seems even less familiar to them than it does to the audience, U2 play a shocker. That they make little attempt to disguise their own disappointment is some mitigation, but not much-it's difficult to extend much sympathy for first-night nerves when tickets are $54.50 a shot. It's perhaps only this consideration that compels the band to grit their teeth and go the distance. If this had been a fight, it would have been stopped. world tour tonight in Las Vegas's 37,000-seater Sam Boyd Stadium, they deliver an excruciating example of the wrong kind. Beset by technical hitches, grappling with material that seems even less familiar to them than it does to the audience, U2 play a shocker. That they make little attempt to disguise their own disappointment is some mitigation, but not much-it's difficult to extend much sympathy for first-night nerves when tickets are $54.50 a shot. It's perhaps only this consideration that compels the band to grit their teeth and go the distance. If this had been a fight, it would have been stopped.

LAS VEGAS, WE press junketeers have been told, is a logistical rather than a conceptual choice for opening night. If this is true, it's the happiest of coincidences. Las Vegas is the city in which the characteristic American refusal to acknowledge that such a thing as vulgarity exists has reached a triumphantly cra.s.s apotheosis. In the arcade leading into Caesar's Palace, I stop, entranced, in a foyer where a faux-marble Aphrodite stands among the ten-cent slot machines. "Wow," says a camcorder-enc.u.mbered American next to me. "Isn't it beautiful?"

Vegas's casinos are fleetingly amusing but eventually terribly depressing places. At the endless rows of slot machines, people lose and win thousands with a total lack of emotion. I wonder how many of these dead-eyed people feeding in money, pulling a lever, feeding in money, pulling a lever, feeding in money, pulling a lever, are on holiday from repet.i.tive, menial factory jobs. As I sit around the roulette tables, every so often someone will swagger along, throw a ludicrous amount-five hundred, a thousand dollars-on one number and then, when they lose it, shrug and walk away, bearing a strained no-really-itdidn't-hurt-at-all expression. It seems bizarre to spend so much money to impress total strangers; there again, I've come to Vegas to watch U2 do exactly that.

If U2 have decided to see what happens when you submit to, even revel in, the junk, kitsch and flash of popular culture, they've come to ground zero. The only problem is that bringing a fifty-foot lemon-shaped mirror ball to Las Vegas, of all places, and expecting anyone to impressed, is a bit like trying to attract attention in London by driving around in a red double-decker bus. In a short walk along the Las Vegas Strip from my hotel, I see a pirate ship, King Kong, a blue gla.s.s pyramid, the New York City skyline, a volcano that erupts every fifteen minutes and marble dolphins frozen in mid-leap above the fountains next to an automatic walkway. To create a stir here on a purely visual level, U2 would have needed to invest in an entire fifty-foot mirror ball fruit salad.

Of course, for all the gaudy window-dressing of PopMart PopMart, it's the music that's supposed to carry it. Tonight, it mostly doesn't, though things start well. In fact, only rarely since the ancients of Babylon finished work on the Ishtar Gate have people made entrances this spectacular.

To a remixed fanfare of M's lone hit "Pop Muzik," U2 enter the arena from under one of the stands along the side. A spotlight tracks their progress through the crowd. Bono, his hair cropped and dyed blonde, is wearing a boxer's robe and sparring furiously. Edge is clad in a very Las Vegas rhinestone cowboy outfit and looks like an escapee from The Village People. Adam Clayton has drawn the short straw in the outfit department for roughly the thousandth time in U2's history-he wears an orange boiler suit and a facemask and looks like one of those poor Chern.o.byl technicians who were given a shovel and ten minutes to shift as much glowing rubble as they could off the roof of the reactor before they started growing extra heads. Larry Mullen Jr., consistent throughout U2's image rethinks, has come dressed as Larry Mullen Jr. (I've always imagined that, stuffed in some Dublin filing cabinet, there must be the dozens of extravagant costume ideas that the band have presented to Mullen over the years, only to be rebuffed every time with, "Well, I thought I'd wear the leather trousers and a t-shirt, again.") At the back of the stage, on the largest LED television screen ever built, the word "Pop" appears in red letters taller than your house, or taller than your house if you're not a member of U2. They start with "m.o.f.o," the most explicitly dance-oriented track from the new alb.u.m. Immense images of the band fill the screen. It looks fantastic, and sounds twice as good.

The wires start coming loose almost immediately. Having established a giddy forward momentum, U2 stick a pole in the spokes by exhuming their 1980 rabble-rouser "I Will Follow" and follow that with two relatively undemanding newer songs, "Even Better Than The Real Thing" and "Do You Feel Loved." When they go from those into "Pride" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," there's an almost audible grinding of gears. These two songs were among the most exciting parts of Zoo TV-the former was graced with a spectacular guest appearance by its subject, Martin Luther King Jr., testifying from the ether on video, and the latter sounded like a raging defiance of the temptation to rest on lucrative laurels. Tonight, they just sound tired, the evening is turning rapidly into a bewilderingly timid exercise in nostalgia, and I'm thinking of that episode of Yes, Prime Minister Yes, Prime Minister in which Sir Humphrey is advising Hacker about his address to the nation, counseling that if he's got nothing new to say, he should wear a bold modern suit and fill his office with abstract art. in which Sir Humphrey is advising Hacker about his address to the nation, counseling that if he's got nothing new to say, he should wear a bold modern suit and fill his office with abstract art.

It gets worse still when U2, hamstrung by sound which is killing the bottom end and making everything sound like it's being played down the phone, move down a catwalk to a smaller stage in the middle of the arena. "If G.o.d Will Send His Angels" is lovely, but "Staring at the Sun" is a disaster, lurching to an abrupt halt in the middle of the first chorus. "Talk amongst yourselves," says Bono. "We're just having a family row." They get all the way through at the second attempt. Edge leads the crowd in a karaoke sing-along of "Daydream Believer."

Some hope that PopMart PopMart is going to be something more than watered-down Warholia is provided by "Miami" and "Bullet The Blue Sky." Both are played with an intensity that verges on the deranged, and the latter is ill.u.s.trated with a dazzling animation of Roy Lichtenstein fighter planes, chasing each other across the immense screen while, around the stadium, perpendicular lasers point towards the summit of an immense pyramid of light. It's an unabashed steal from Albert Speer's Nuremberg illuminations: that the only lasting cultural legacy of n.a.z.ism is stadium rock is an irony U2 underscored during the Zoo TV shows by getting the crowds to clap along with a Hitler Youth drummer boy excerpted from Leni Riefeinstahl's is going to be something more than watered-down Warholia is provided by "Miami" and "Bullet The Blue Sky." Both are played with an intensity that verges on the deranged, and the latter is ill.u.s.trated with a dazzling animation of Roy Lichtenstein fighter planes, chasing each other across the immense screen while, around the stadium, perpendicular lasers point towards the summit of an immense pyramid of light. It's an unabashed steal from Albert Speer's Nuremberg illuminations: that the only lasting cultural legacy of n.a.z.ism is stadium rock is an irony U2 underscored during the Zoo TV shows by getting the crowds to clap along with a Hitler Youth drummer boy excerpted from Leni Riefeinstahl's Triumph Of The Will Triumph Of The Will. Bono has at last found his voice, along with a bowler hat and a stars'n'stripes umbrella, and is goosestepping along the catwalk in the style of Chaplin's Great Dictator Great Dictator. This is more like it: if Zoo TV marked the first time a band of U2's stature had acknowledged their own absurdity, this may be the first time such a band has asked its audience to do the same.

The rest of the set is an inevitable comedown, and the encores are flat enough to putt on. The giant disco lemon putters slowly down the catwalk in a tornado of dry ice fog, and U2 emerge from inside it. On a better night, this might look like endearing self-mockery, but given what has preceded it, it's a little too close to the pods scene from This Is Spinal Tap This Is Spinal Tap for comfort. U2 proceed to make rather a madwoman's custard of "Discotheque," follow that with an inconsequental "If You Wear That Velvet Dress" and then engage in an ungainly race with each other to the end of "With or Without You." They come back on once more, do a shambolic "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" and a desultory "Mysterious Ways" before locating some form to close with a beautifully turned-out "One," ill.u.s.trated with a touching Keith Haring sequence. for comfort. U2 proceed to make rather a madwoman's custard of "Discotheque," follow that with an inconsequental "If You Wear That Velvet Dress" and then engage in an ungainly race with each other to the end of "With or Without You." They come back on once more, do a shambolic "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" and a desultory "Mysterious Ways" before locating some form to close with a beautifully turned-out "One," ill.u.s.trated with a touching Keith Haring sequence.

U2 are about the only famous people on earth who don't make an appearance at the after-show party at the venue, or the after-after-show party in Vegas's Hard Rock Cafe. At both of these gatherings, there is much excitement about the presence of R.E.M., Dennis Hopper, Bruce Willis, Kylie Minogue, Helena Christensen, Winona Ryder, etc., etc., but I'm more interested in the large inflatable PopMart PopMart-logo-branded lemons suspended from the Hard Rock's ceiling. The more daiquiris I drink, the more convinced I become that one of them would look great on top of my fridge. With the help of some pa.s.sers-by, a table and two chairs, I get up high enough to get a grip on one and, despite the warnings of a bouncer shouting at me from the ground, remove it from its moorings and climb down.

"Sir, I must ask you ..."

I was leaving anyway.

My hard-won souvenir nearly goes missing on the way back to the hotel, when I am diverted towards a roulette table somewhere en route. Using an infallible new system of my own instant and inebriated devising, I do okay, turning ten dollars into 500. Continuing with the same infallible system, I lose nearly all of it. I totter off to collect what remains of my winnings.

"Sir!" the croupier bellows across the casino floor. "Sir! You forgot your lemon!"

THERE IS ONE building in Sarajevo that would fit in nicely along the Las Vegas strip. The Holiday Inn, a distended cube of lurid purples, yellows and oranges, can only have been the work of an architect who was totally insensitive to the city's architectural heritage, or a chronic glue-sniffer, or both. The first time I came to Sarajevo, in March 1996, this absurd building, stranded in the open boulevard known as Sniper Alley, was a wreck, shot to pieces. It sat incongruously amid the ruins of the city's other, relatively demure, buildings looking like some b.u.mbling s.p.a.cecraft that had been brought down by crossfire.

The Holiday Inn has been repaired since Sarajevo's war ended in late 1995, though some twisted fragments of stubborn shrapnel still pock the walls. On a grey autumn morning, in a room decorated entirely in brown, a singer, who looks in need of some restoration work himself, is trying to explain what he's doing here.

"There is a history," croaks Bono, "of artists having a response-and they ought to have a response-to situations like this. Dada and surrealism were responses to fascism."

Last night, U2 brought PopMart PopMart to Sarajevo's Kosevo stadium, making good on a five-year-old promise to play in the Bosnian capital. Bono's voice didn't quite make the journey with him. to Sarajevo's Kosevo stadium, making good on a five-year-old promise to play in the Bosnian capital. Bono's voice didn't quite make the journey with him.

"They call it Las Vegas throat, did you know that?" says Bono, tentatively rubbing his neck. "It's the desert air. When seasoned old crooners hear of a new boy coming to Las Vegas they all giggle, because they know what's going to happen. We even rang Sinatra's people about this thing, and they just went naaaah, just keep drinking and smoking, it'll sort itself out."

When I first heard that U2 were definitely coming to Sarajevo, I a.s.sumed they'd be playing a scratch show with the bare minimum of equipment. When I heard that they were bringing the entire PopMart PopMart circus-500 tons of equipment carried by seventy-five trucks, operated by 250 personnel on sixteen buses and one Boeing 727, with a total daily operating cost of 160,000-I a.s.sumed they'd been out in the sun without hats on. It was less than a year since I'd come to Sarajevo with China Drum, all of whom fitted into one truck, and that had degenerated into the most ludicrous expedition undertaken by man or beast since Scott's to the Antarctic. circus-500 tons of equipment carried by seventy-five trucks, operated by 250 personnel on sixteen buses and one Boeing 727, with a total daily operating cost of 160,000-I a.s.sumed they'd been out in the sun without hats on. It was less than a year since I'd come to Sarajevo with China Drum, all of whom fitted into one truck, and that had degenerated into the most ludicrous expedition undertaken by man or beast since Scott's to the Antarctic.

"The idea," explains Bono, "was that we'd flash b.a.s.t.a.r.d it into town-you know, the big private plane with the lemon on the side, the police escort from the airport, the lot, you know, you saw it, you were there-and play a rock'n'roll show like rock'n'roll bands do. Don't patronise these people, just do it. That was the plan. I was gonna give 'em the full whack, you know. I just wasn't able to, because my voice kind of . . . went. But, you know, what happened last night. . . it dwarfed PopMart PopMart. That's what I thought was interesting. Arches, lemons, f.u.c.king drive-in movie screens, all kind of disappeared, because . . . something else went on, something that I, as an outsider in this city, probably can't fully understand. I just have to say that those were the cards we were dealt, and the crowd made it very special."

I'd been in Sarajevo a month previously, doing a story for The Sunday Times The Sunday Times about the rebirth of the city's tourist industry. Just about everything that wasn't moving was upholstered with U2 posters. The concert was all anyone was talking about. Even the staff of Sarajevo's newly reopened tourist office, whose average age was around seventy, said they were going. The excitement was about more than a big rock group coming to town: Sarajevo was going to be on CNN because something good was happening in it. about the rebirth of the city's tourist industry. Just about everything that wasn't moving was upholstered with U2 posters. The concert was all anyone was talking about. Even the staff of Sarajevo's newly reopened tourist office, whose average age was around seventy, said they were going. The excitement was about more than a big rock group coming to town: Sarajevo was going to be on CNN because something good was happening in it.

"Well," shrugs Bono, "I don't, as a general rule, suffer from any Catholic guilt, even though I'm half Catholic, but I think for any person who finds success, the instinctive reaction is to try and level the pitch a bit, with your friends, and your family, and I guess in the wider world, which is when you become a real pain in the hole. Or I guess the other extreme is to just put it all up your nose, and I thought I had a great nose, so I wasn't interested in that."

U2 had played a smart game: tickets were sold in Croatia, Slovenia and Yugoslavia, but there was no concert scheduled in Zagreb, Llubljana or Belgrade. Anyone between Austria and Greece who wanted to see U2 was going to have to come to Sarajevo, and they did, in their thousands. On the day of the show, trains had run into Sarajevo for the first time in four years. The city's roads were full of cars bearing Croatian and Yugoslav license plates. The bars were crowded with people with subtly different accents. There was no trouble-although, earlier this morning, I did see a local market trader knock on the window of a Belgrade-registered car, say something to the clearly affronted driver and walk off looking terribly pleased with himself; a friend translated the pedestrian's remarks as, "I've just f.u.c.ked your Hungarian mother with her dead horse's d.i.c.k."

"So no, it wasn't really what I'd planned," continues Bono, in what sounds a painful rasp. "I'd planned to be in fine voice. I have been in fine voice, of late, and I'd probably have been a terrible pain in the a.r.s.e if I had pulled that off. It was very humbling, actually. But maybe that allowed room for Sarajevo to kind of take the gig away from us, which is what they did. They could see that things could go very horribly wrong, but they'd come here, and they'd gone to a lot of trouble, and they were going to make it happen. And they did, and they just kind of carried me along. And the band also played with some real s.p.u.n.k, I thought. When I lost it on 'Pride,' and Edge started singing it, I thought, f.u.c.king h.e.l.l, now see what it feels like, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d, but he did it, you know, he got us there."

The first act on last night had been a local choir. They were followed by Protest, one of the better acts to have emerged from Sarajevo's wartime rock scene. Sikter followed them, starting their set by tearing up the Bosnian national anthem in the style of Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner," and playing a blinder after that. When U2 made their entrance, and the PopMart PopMart stage lit up on cue, the roars had been as much of relief as excitement. In a city which has come to view delivery on promises as very much the exception to the rule, there had been a general view that something would go wrong at the last minute. stage lit up on cue, the roars had been as much of relief as excitement. In a city which has come to view delivery on promises as very much the exception to the rule, there had been a general view that something would go wrong at the last minute.

In the event, the only thing that went wrong was Bono's voice. On any other night, this might have been catastrophic, but as Bono says, last night it really didn't matter. By the time the giant disco lemon rolled out for the encores, it felt less like another stadium concert, and more like a very, very large party with a band playing in one corner of it. Standing in the middle of it on the mixing desk was an overwhelming experience, if one leavened with a guilt at the privilege of being there without having suffered the same suspension of everyday life that everyone else was celebrating the end of. "Concerts are one of those things that happen in normal cities," Sikter's drummer Faris had said backstage before the show, twitching with nerves. "Tonight is one of the most important things that's ever happened here-way bigger than the Olympics." Faris is not, in my experience, p.r.o.ne to overstatement. "My father made me some new shoes especially," he laughed.

Two parts of PopMart PopMart had been tailored to the location. The karaoke singalong was replaced by Edge delivering a lovely, mournful solo reading of "Sunday b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday," and the encores included the first-ever live performance of "Miss Sarajevo"-the gorgeous song inspired by Bill Carter's film about a wartime beauty pageant, and recorded by U2, Brian Eno and Luciano Pavarotti under the name Pa.s.sengers. Last night, Eno joined U2 onstage in person, Pavarotti on tape. It had been a tentative performance. "Well, we wrote that song for you," Bono said, as it stumbled to a close, "and we can't f.u.c.king play it." had been tailored to the location. The karaoke singalong was replaced by Edge delivering a lovely, mournful solo reading of "Sunday b.l.o.o.d.y Sunday," and the encores included the first-ever live performance of "Miss Sarajevo"-the gorgeous song inspired by Bill Carter's film about a wartime beauty pageant, and recorded by U2, Brian Eno and Luciano Pavarotti under the name Pa.s.sengers. Last night, Eno joined U2 onstage in person, Pavarotti on tape. It had been a tentative performance. "Well, we wrote that song for you," Bono said, as it stumbled to a close, "and we can't f.u.c.king play it."

When the lights came up at the end of the show, and the crowd started filing out, something strange and wonderful happened. The stand along the left of the stadium, which was filled with ranks of uniformed soldiers serving with the multinational NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) stood, as one, and applauded the crowd, the people of Sarajevo. The punters leaving the ground stopped, turned around, and clapped back. A self-conscious, embarra.s.sed silence followed, eventually broken by the Spanish SFOR contingent, many wearing their national flag as bandannas, leading an impromptu ma.s.sed military choir in "Y Viva Espana" and, then, an altogether surreal line dance to "The Macarena."

With me on the mixing desk was the only other British journalist who'd flown out for the show, Mat Smith of the NME NME.

"It's amazing," he said. "Every time some idiot musician starts with that hippy-dippy music-bringing-people-together-as-one stuff, we just laugh at them. But look at this . . . they've actually done it. What the h.e.l.l are we going to write?"

At the Holiday Inn the next morning, Bono tries to give me a hand with that one.

"In the mid-80s," he says, "we were involved in America, and the concept of the two Americas, and that brought us on the one hand to Central America, Nicaragua and 'Bullet The Blue Sky' and on the other hand to Sun Studios. But it was all part of the same . . . it's sometimes helpful to make a parallel between bands and filmmakers. You go for whatever you're doing and just focus on it. And that's one of the reasons our records have real . . . they're caught in their time. When people look at the 80s, they will pick out one of our records, and they'll say that if you want to know what was going on in music, and you want to know what was going on . . . you know, America was what was going on, and this was a response to it. Achtung Baby Achtung Baby and and Zooropa Zooropa, again, that paints a picture of what was going on. I guess we should start just writing tunes, and just shut the f.u.c.k up, but if you're curious, and that's certainly my strongest suit, the tunes get set into a context of some kind . . . and here we are."

Someone comes to tell Bono to get a move on, as U2's plane has to leave.

"I've had, I guess, a few holidays in h.e.l.l, but I hate that-and you should be careful with that yourself-but the way it works with me, the way it works with the group, is whatever you're doing, you look under every stone of it. So Zoo TV brought us into that world of television, news, cartoons, Dada, and you end up following that through, and if you do that you end up in Sarajevo one minute and hanging out with some of the most beautiful women in the world the next, and you just get fully into it."

TWO MONTHS LATER, by the pool in the exquisite garden behind the impeccably renovated and uproariously expensive Delano Hotel in Miami's South Beach, we are hanging out with some of the most beautiful women in the world, getting fully into it. Photographer Rankin introduces me to Helena Christensen, and one of my chats with Bono is interrupted when he is distracted by Veronica Webb wandering over to say h.e.l.lo. I am inclined to forgive Bono for this, as Veronica Webb wandering over to say h.e.l.lo would be enough to distract a man performing an emergency tracheotomy on his brother.