Confessions of a rock star

Bono on the birth of U2, that iTunes album, and the Live Aid show: 'There's only one thing I can see when I watch it: the mullet'

- Linda Brownlee

DRUMMER SEEKS MUSICIANS TO FORM BAND." How casually our destiny arrives. Quite a few wannabes had responded to Larry Mullen's invitation on the school noticeboard, and now, classes out for the day, we were all packed in the oven that was Larry's kitchen. How did we fit all the drums, the amps, and the apprentice rock stars into such a small room that first time we got together? Guitar and bass might have been squealing for attention with their amplifiers and distortion pedals making loud arguments for being there, but it was the drums that filled both physical and musical space.

On that first Wednesday after school, it felt as if no one was in tune but Larry, who appeared quite at home around all this metallic chaos. Well, he was at home. It was his kitchen. Everything I still love about Larry's playing was present then - the primal power of the tom-toms, the boot in the stomach of the kick drum, the snap and slap of the snare drum as it bounced off windows and walls. This indoor thunder, I thought, will bring the whole house down.

Soon I noticed another noise, an exterior one, the somewhat high-pitched sound of girls giggling and shouting outside the window. Larry already had a fanclub, and over the next hour he would offer us a lesson in the mystique of the rock star. He turned the garden hose on them.