Room Service

In his wonderful book U2 At The End Of The World, Bill Flanagan recounts an amusing post-concert incident partway through the Zooropa tour, on 12th June 1993 in Cologne, Germany. When the Zoo crew find themselves starving hungry and unable to attract the attention of the hotel staff, MacPhisto takes matters into his own hands...

At the hotel after the show everyone congregates in Bono's suite in the hope of finding something to eat. Room service seems to have disappeared. The road crew are, as one of them describes it, lumbering around searching for food like a herd of migrating cattle. By 3 a.m. everyone's holding their belly and groaning. Sheila Roche, Suzanne Doyle and Regine Moylett have taken up seats on a couch by the phone and are calling the kitchen every half hour or so. Every time they get the same answer: 'Ten minutes.'
Finally Bono decides to step in. He grandly picks up the receiver and purrs, 'Hello! This is Mr MacPhisto. I ordered french fries and sandwiches an hour and a half ago and if I don't get them immediately I will...' and here he degenerates into a string of incomprehensible mumbles that must sound even more threatening in the translating imagination of German room service than they do in their native gibberish. Anyway, it works. Within minutes tray after tray of french fries is wheeled in by frightened-looking bellboys and the entire touring party falls on them famished. I whisper to Bono as he sticks a chip in his mouth, 'They probably spit on them.'

After playing two nights in Rome during the Zooropa tour, MacPhisto and his colleagues decided to do a little filming before they left town. This began with a photoshoot at the Hotel Majestic on 8th July 1993, and the recording of a special video message which has sadly never seen the light of day (if you know better, please get in touch!). B.P. Fallon describes it all in his book U2 Faraway So Close:

Bono in his gold suit and gold glitter platform boots is draped across a garish yellow-green sofa in the Hotel Majestic Roma. He's being filmed by Maurice and Ned. Fintan pushes Bono's hair into place, Nassim checks his white-face makeup. Now Bono is reading some lines into the camera, some lines Edge has written for this glitter-gulch character, all dark eyes and bright lies and webbed dreams. "They say" Bono intones into the camera, "He who loves his life loses it. But I say..." he pauses, Quentin Crisp's voodoo queen gone electronic on mind-altering chemicals and fathered by Gary Glitter. The head goes forward, sunken eyes peering into the bowels of the camera. "I say, hate your life enough and you can keep it forever."

During our Italian dates, in a performance-art moment, I had myself filmed walking across the square at the Vatican. MacPhisto had developed a limp at this point so I had a walking stick, and I was shooing the birds, dressed as the Devil, walking across the Vatican Square, muttering under my breath, 'One day, all of this will be mine. Oh no, I forgot, it is mine.'

Bono in MacPhisto drag is sitting beside you in the van as you drive to the Vatican, to St Peter's Square. You're saying that Marc Bolan, bless him, that Marc's vocal influences have their fingerprint on some of Bono's singing on 'Zooropa' and next you're telling Bono how Marc had gone to Paris where he'd met up with Salvador Dali who paraded the Champs-Elysées with a pair of leopards on a leash. [...]
Unlike Marc Bolan to whom Salvador Dali gave his ornate cane, MacPhisto couldn't get a cane at all. So a curtain rod from the Hotel Majestic Roma is made do. He bangs it against the cobbles of St Peter's in Rome, screeching "Shoo, shoo, out of my way, children" in a voice more camp than a row of tents. Pigeons flap out of the way, nuns look up nervously. The Devil is visiting his old kingdom. "I could have had all of this" he taunts himself in a sinewy whine, "but I didn't want it". He scuttles across the forecourt as the fountains spurt on unmoved and unimpressed, the statues of the twelve apostles glaring down imperiously at this waxen figure from hell. "Ah, Meester MacFeesto!" comes the shrill cry of recognition from some wandering fans. Startled, he signs his name - MacPhisto, naturally - and flees.

This sublime Zooropa track is surely the U2 song most strongly associated with MacPhisto. Not only did he bring it to life marvellously on the Zoomerang tour, he also played a starring role in the song's promotional video, released in September 1993.

Directed by Mark Neale, the video is an homage to the Victorian photographer Eadweard Muybridge, the first person to successfully capture fast motion on film (and the inventor of the appropriately-named Zoopraxiscope!). The Lemon video was filmed mainly in black and white against a grid-like background in tribute to his work, and imitates his studies of humans performing a variety of tasks, each described with a simple caption at the foot of the screen.

Bono as himself is almost completely absent from the video (visible only in a couple of brief group shots) - instead it's his alter-egos MacPhisto and The Fly who feature alongside his bandmates. MacPhisto takes on singing duties, while The Fly is seen getting up to his usual antics of posing with a mic stand, channel-hopping, spinning around with a handycam and so on.

MacPhisto appears in the video without his horns, but is instantly recognisable from his suit, make-up and theatrical behaviour!  He sings up close to the camera, smirking devilishly in between lines, displaying his full range of facial expressions from playful to tragic. At other times (mainly during the atmospheric chorus), MacPhisto and the band members are seen amid swirling smoke, standing apart from one another as the camera glides around them. These scenes are particularly beautiful, with MacPhisto drifting elegantly between them, even clinging tightly onto Adam at one point. The video wonderfully captures his exaggerated movements as he gestures to an imaginary audience or throws his arms into a statuesque pose. Another nice moment is the slow-motion shot as he sings "slowly, slowly, slowly..." after the first verse. MacPhisto is given the descriptive captions "Man singing", "Man gesturing", "Man holding hand over face", "Man waving", "Man putting hand to brow", and the best one: "Man fluttering fingers"!

In his commentary on the Best Of 1990-2000 DVD, director Mark Neale opines: "The MacPhisto side of it is probably the most remarkable thing about the video. Muybridge was originally doing what he called studies of the human figure in motion. And I think that this is a study of MacPhisto in motion." He goes on to say that "Bono as MacPhisto, I think, did something that he'd never done before, which was to become unrecognisable", and that he's struck by the combination of him looking "so utterly bizarre" with the use of the wide-angle lens. He reveals that Bono was initially "freaked" when he saw the footage and seemed unhappy with the video, to the point where Neale was worrying it would be scrapped. Thankfully when Larry arrived, he simply told Bono "I think this is the most amazing performance footage I've ever seen of you", which was enough to change the singer's mind and save the video!

Along with its fellow Zooropa singles Numb and Stay (Faraway, So Close!), Lemon certainly stands out as one of U2's best videos ever. You can watch it on YouTube here or here.

I've Got You Under My Skin

Bono's fabulous duet with Frank Sinatra was released as a double A-side with Stay (Faraway, So Close!) in November 1993. In the promo video, Sinatra can be seen briefly morphing into MacPhisto and back again at the 0:29 mark. There is a further clip of MacPhisto in concert at 2:32, raising his arms to the crowd.

YouTube has the video here or here.

After ZooTV...

In his Sydney speech, MacPhisto promised to be with us always - and he has indeed outlived the original tour.

Sometime after ZooTV came to an end, Bono and his demonic alter-ego seemingly had a bit of a falling-out. The singer was interviewed at the Q Awards on 9th November 1994, with the transcript published in the magazine's 100th edition. It included the following exchange:

Q: Has MacPhisto gone?
Bono: He's gone to bed, covered his head and won't get up till Monday.
Q: Where does he live?
Bono: I don't want to know any more. I've had it with him. Although they asked him to star in Batman, which I thought was quite a good idea.

Happily, it appears that Bono and MacPhisto managed to resolve their differences. When asked again about his stage persona in March 1996, Bono told Juice magazine:

"The stage is a platform shoe after all. All it does is make us look bigger. I think dressing up as the Devil was great, and I enjoyed every minute of it. In fact, I miss the old bird..."

Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me

It's true: Hollywood beckoned for Mr MacPhisto, when the creators of Batman Forever expressed an interest in giving him a movie role.

There are conflicting stories as to what exactly they had in mind, and who eventually decided against it happening. Director Joel Schumacher told the media that Bono "asked to be in the movie" and that "I wanted him in it", but there wasn't a role for him. One website states that the film's producers "very much wanted Bono to make a cameo appearance as MacPhisto, supposedly singing his heart out atop a piano". They are said to have been fascinated by the character and felt they could make him fit within the movie, but alas Bono declined the offer, instead proposing to contribute a song to the soundtrack. Schumacher confirms they discussed the idea of him performing in a party scene, although he says nothing about Bono refusing to resurrect the persona: "I thought I could have him standing on a piano in costume as MacPhisto. But I wasn't sure it would work out for him to sing an entire song and advised him the idea wasn't a good one for him. He agreed."

ShowBiz Ireland go one step further and suggest that Bono was "up for the lead role as an evil villain", but Schumacher was forced to drop him after casting the roles of The Riddler and Two-Face. The director is quoted as saying: "I met with him while I was putting Batman Forever together and he wanted to play a villain in The Riddler's world. But we had Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones and I didn't have a part for him. He understood my reasoning and then he wrote that fabulous song for us which was wonderful."

Whatever the size of the role, it would have been truly fantastic to see MacPhisto immortalised on the silver screen, but sadly it wasn't to be. This decision wasn't all bad, though, as it did result in U2 contributing one of their greatest songs to the film's soundtrack - Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me, released as a single in June 1995. And thanks to its animated video, MacPhisto got to become a comic supervillain after all!

The video, directed by Maurice Linnane and Kevin Godley, combines clips from the movie with cartoon scenes of U2 in Gotham City. MacPhisto - the first animated character to appear in the video - is seen grinning evilly and dancing on a rooftop as the rest of the band play around him. Later, rival persona The Fly can be seen crawling, Spiderman-like, down a neon sign that reads "THINGS" (sliding down the surface of things?). He drops to the ground and is briefly seen facing MacPhisto as the camera pans down to another scene from the movie. The two alter-egos take it in turns to sing lines from the chorus, smirking as they emerge from the darkness and then disappear again.

As the video progresses, the U2 and Batman elements become more tightly interwoven. An animated version of The Riddler shows up in front of the ZooTV-esque screens on MacPhisto's rooftop, perhaps in reference to the planned alliance between the two characters. Another scene shows the Bat-Signal morphing into a similar MacPhisto logo, which then appears on all the video screens.

During the bridge of the song, The Fly loses his shades whilst leaping between buildings, and finds himself vulnerable to the dazzling glare of approaching photographers. This cuts to a flashback scene in which a comic strip declares "This man is a so called rock star. So Pure! So Righteous! So Honest! SO WHAT!"  Bono responds by ripping off his halo and transforming it into those famous bug-eyed goggles, a metaphor for the shield of irony and humour that U2 created to destroy their earnest '80s image. Back in the present, The Fly is cornered by the paparazzi and falls off the roof, but is saved when Larry throws his shades back to him - turning him into an agile superhero as soon as he puts them on. The Fly immediately goes to confront MacPhisto, who is seen with the familiar prop of a telephone. :) This showdown is interrupted by the Batplane bursting through the video screens, and U2 attacking it with flamethrowers built into their guitars!  MacPhisto and the band jump into their own flying car (with the 'BatPhisto' symbol decorating the hubcaps) and a chase begins.

The next U2 sequence appears to be another flashback, and shows the band leaving Mr Pussy's Café De Luxe (the Dublin cabaret club jointly owned by Bono - renamed 'Mister Swampy's' for the American video). Larry, Edge and Adam leap out of the way of a speeding car, but Bono wanders across the road with his head buried in a copy of The Screwtape Letters and is consequently run over by Elvis! We then see Bono strapped into a hospital bed, where he seemingly dies... only to wake up as MacPhisto, much to the shock of his bandmates and doctors!

As the song draws to a close, a jubilant MacPhisto is seen on the rooftop in another familiar situation, dancing with a girl - although she's gagged and looks terrified. ;) The lush strings of the outro are played by an orchestra of identical shadowy Batmen, and MacPhisto tears off a series of masks and capes, repeatedly transforming himself into Batman and back again...

Wikipedia states that the battle between Bono's two alter-egos "was intended to parallel the conflict between Bruce Wayne's ordinary playboy persona and his crime-fighting Batman persona". In the directors' commentary on the Best Of 1990-2000 DVD, both Godley and Linnane express their appreciation of MacPhisto. At one point the former remarks: "Thinking back on it, alter-egos aside, MacPhisto ranks alongside The Riddler and The Penguin as a perfect Batman character, doesn't he?" Linnane replies "Absolutely".

The video can be seen on YouTube here or here.

PopMart

The 1997 PopMart Tour was another multimedia extravaganza intended to rival ZooTV. Whilst Bono's stage personas no longer made explicit onstage appearances, it was clear that the band had not forgotten about Mr MacPhisto - his presence could still be felt during certain moments of the show, most notably when Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me was performed live. As the audience waited for the final encore in a dark and (relatively) quiet stadium, they were suddenly greeted with loud sirens - similar to the intro of some Lemon remixes - and MacPhisto's version of the Bat-Signal lighting up each of the screens. This affectionate reference to an old friend was invariably met with screams of delight from the crowd. As the music kicked in, Bono would emerge cackling evilly before descending into a violent coughing fit.

The song's lyrics about the pressures and contradictions of stardom are redolent of Bono's ZooTV characters, and the screens would display a number of images from the promo video in which they starred. In some performances, such as that on the PopMart Live From Mexico City video, Bono pauses during the bridge to mime a pair of devil horns with his fingers (before also miming a halo, as if to ask the audience which look suits him better!). MacPhisto's spirit seems to pervade the rest of the performance, especially the doleful tone in which Bono sings "Star...", and the devilish smirk on his face after he stares deeply into - then kisses! - one of the cameras.

The song then closes with a rapid-fire montage of tragic celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Kurt Cobain and Ziggy Stardust. And alongside these, none other than MacPhisto himself - the ultimate symbol of fame's corruptive influence, of rock 'n' roll excess taken to its most extreme. The gigantic PopMart screens display a clip of MacPhisto preening in the mirror with an arrogant smile, as well as including a cartoon image of him in the mix of famous faces. (The Mexico City clip can be seen on YouTube here.)

Thanks to one fan, MacPhisto even made a physical appearance at one show on the third leg of the PopMart Tour. At the concert in St Louis, Missouri on 8th November 1997, halfway through Bullet The Blue Sky, Bono picked out a fan in the crowd who'd come along in full MacPhisto costume. To everyone's surprise he pulled this lookalike up on stage (prompting huge cheers!), and as Bono recited the "So this guy comes up to me..." section, the two stared each other down as if preparing for a fight - 'MacPhisto' backing slowly along the walkway as Bono continued to approach him. The singer's body language was aggressive, defending his territory against this intruder and rival, while MacPhisto postured defiantly, challenging him to do his worst.

The pair circled one another as Bono intoned "And he's peeling off those dollar bills...", with MacPhisto miming the "Slapping 'em down" motion. Indeed, the fan was getting into the routine so brilliantly that Bono allowed him to perform the traditional dramatics as he cried "One hundred! ...Two hundred! ...Three hundred!" Knowing this was always followed by Bono's golf swing joke ("FOUR...!"), MacPhisto automatically adopted the pose, leaving Bono looking slightly taken aback - he briefly assumed the same position with his stars-and-stripes umbrella, as if to huffily imply "That's MY punchline!", then changed his mind and handed the umbrella to his demonic guest. MacPhisto did the honours with perfect timing, swinging it round delightedly before handing it back to Bono.

As Bono continued with "I can see those fighter planes...", they began to circle each other once more, MacPhisto cautiously twirling away from him. Clearly very familiar with the song's usual choreography, the fan even started confidently acting out the lyrics ("Turn the key, unlock the door... A man breathes into a saxophone... And through the walls, we hear the city groan"). Bono and his alter-ego stared into each other's eyes throughout this sequence, before standing so close together that when Bono said "Outside, it's...", he only had to stretch out his headset for MacPhisto to respond "America!" The second time, he gleefully yelled "AMERICAAA!" whilst holding his arms up to the crowd. Totally in character, he bowed and blew kisses to them while Bono looked on incredulously.

And then it happened. "Lights... camera..." Bono called ominously, handing his umbrella back to MacPhisto. The crowd cheered in amazement as Bono swapped his hat for the fan's devil horns, and the two exchanged jackets. "Action!" he concluded as he slipped into that old familiar gold lamé - and the true original MacPhisto was back on stage for the first time since the end of ZooTV nearly four years earlier. As a fan from the U2 Wire mailing list remarked: "The Last Popstar is back, and as big as the PopMart screen." He raised his arms triumphantly, leading the crowd in a clapping rhythm. And with his doppelgänger still there as well, there was double the fun - the fan helped him to work the crowd, whilst still carrying the umbrella. (The eyewitness account describes how he "twirls it royally over his shoulder - he knows it's inside out and he doesn't care. In fact, he likes it that way".) Bono gave his old friend a final wave as he headed back toward the main stage and they went their separate ways.

This incident is mentioned as a highlight of the show by many fans who attended, with everyone praising the male fan for playing along so wonderfully! You can now watch the whole impressive performance on his YouTube channel. (I'm sure I once came across his own writeup of the experience, but I've never been able to track it down again since. Please email me if you can help!)

Thus far, MacPhisto has largely remained out of the limelight on subsequent tours - though it's pleasing to note that what happened in St Louis was not a total one-off. In 2001 the band embarked on the Elevation Tour, a stripped-down affair which could hardly have been more unlike their hi-tech '90s outings. Gone were the massive screens, outrageous wardrobe and tongue-in-cheek political humour... but despite this radical change of direction, they still took a moment to acknowledge Mr MacPhisto by welcoming another costumed fan onto the stage. This time it was Hungarian fan 'LeMon' who hoped to catch Bono's attention with his homemade outfit ("the power of the Devil"!) at the concert in Berlin's Waldbühne amphitheatre on 29th July 2001. He certainly got himself noticed before the show, even reportedly getting a mention on the radio ("there's a bloke in a golden suit running around"!) - and the dream came true when Bono pulled him onstage for the start of The Fly. LeMon describes the amazing sight of "Bono's half kingdom at my feet", and took the opportunity to give them all a MacPhisto-esque wave. ;)  Bono stared into his eyes and the two danced in circles through the song's soothing intro, face to face, even singing into the same microphone - you can read the full story, along with pictures and audio, at his website (make sure popups are enabled). LeMon has also uploaded a video presentation to YouTube. Sadly on this occasion, Bono didn't try the horns on himself... maybe next time!

(On the U2 360° Tour in 2009, Bono did borrow a fan's devil horns during Vertigo at the second Foxborough show, but made no direct references to MacPhisto. There's a photograph of the incident here and video footage here. After his recent experiments with eyeliner and talk of developing a new character, perhaps he is itching to get on those sexy platform boots once again... come on Bono, you know you want to!)

InTO The Heart

The most unexpected appearance of all came on Saturday 6th November 2004. Just when MacPhisto fans had resigned themselves to the unlikelihood of any more "official" sightings (just the occasional lookalike invited onstage), an MP3 surfaced on the Internet which took everyone by surprise - it was nothing less than a brand new, genuine MacPhisto phone call! Yes, eleven years down the line from ZooTV, it seems that everyone's favourite showbiz devil was still unable to resist the lure of an answering machine.

This gem of a recording was made available by Kim (aka m0pha), a member of the Greater Toronto Area U2 Fan Club and co-founder of the InTO The Heart annual U2 Fan Festival. Bono had apparently promised to call and leave a message for all the U2 fans gathered at the event - but overslept and forgot! A very dozy-sounding frontman left the following message on Kim's voicemail at 8:04pm EST:

"Kim, it's Bono. Um... I got a message to call you, I think. You've got something on this evening. And I've just been asleep in bed, and I woke up and I thought, there's something I meant to do today... and I think it was you. InTO The Heart. So, um... guess it must be too late." [yawns] "Oh, boy!  I am talking in my sleep here. Um... but what I will do is I'll call tomorrow, I think it's Saturday and Sunday everybody's getting together, so... maybe we can set up something for tomorrow. Um... I'll call around lunchtime tomorrow."

[singing] "Into the heart of a child, I can stay a while..."
"Ohhh yes… ohhh yes. Bono... can stay a while, my arse!
Hello boys... hello girls. MacPhisto here.
Innocence has turned to experience...
And you? Decadence?
Oh, no. You wouldn't know the meaning of the word.
I, on the other hand, know rather a lot about this subject.
Which I do believe has something to do with the sweet aroma of spoiled opportunity.
That's where I am right now. I'm just about to taste a bit."