How U2 finally found what they were looking for ... to pay less tax

Opinion

Eamonn McCAnn, Belfast Telegraph

Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Beatles followed the Maharishi to India to escape the material world. U2 followed him to Holland to avoid paying taxes. Thus has idealism soured. The dismaying thought occurred as I ducked to avoid the neck of Adam Clayton's bass poking me in the eye. From which you might gather that the three dimensional shtick of the imminent U2 movie is only awesome. U2 3D is released tomorrow.

But back to the Maharishi, who faded from mortal life at his Dutch estate a fortnight ago. At his passing, the empire he'd built on a promise of serenity was worth more than a man who scorned money could be bothered to count. He'd moved to Holland for tax purposes. Or, rather, no-tax purposes.

The Maharishi had been born Mahesh Prasad Varma, but changed his name after becoming a devotee of the 'divine teacher' Swami Brahmananda Saraswati, aka Guru Dev. (At the time, the fact that the Beatles had become disciples of a devotee of Guru Dev prompted considerable excitement in Fianna Fail circles. But then came the Common Market and big cheques for small farmers, and the mantra man from Uttar Pradesh was quickly forgotten.)

Elsewhere, however, by the late '60s, his movement boasted a million members and the Maharishi boasted a fleet of limos.

There was an obvious element of manipulation in all this. But the Maharishi did succeed in turning many onto meditation, which seemed to have a beneficial effect on the acutely anxious: say, half the population of the western world.

The Beatles' pilgrimage to India - the phrase they used - arose, they said, from a felt need to put spiritual distance between themselves and the grubbiness of the greasy till. It was easy to be cynical about this, and I was. And yet ... maybe the Fab Four were befuddled, naïve, silly, self-indulgent. But at some level, for some period, in some measure, they believed that a better world was possible and looked for a way to attain it.

Times change. Holland is now the EU's number one tax haven. Corporations which have established headquarters there to avoid paying tax in their home countries include Coca Cola, Ikea, U2, Nike and Gucci.

Company chief Bono occasionally takes time off from counting the cash he has squirreled away to berate the Irish authorities for refusing to give more of the money they have collected from tax-compliant citizens towards alleviating world hunger. Big-hearted or what?

In the movie, he poses heroically before a giant screen to intone the text of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as it scrolls down. Not a hint of irony, much less embarrassment, at his relationship with politicians like George Bush who are, after all, the architects of Guantanamo and the advocates of the waterboarding of prisoners.

Glassy-eyed from his own goodness, he tells a Buenos Aires audience that Ireland and Argentina have a lot in common. For one mad moment I thought he was going to shout, "Yeah, we both hate the Brits," but no. It was that in each of our divided societies, people have put the past behind them and come together. "Left and Right together!" he shrieks in wonderment.

In Buenos Aires, where the distraught search for the Disappeared drags on and DNA testing is only now beginning to reveal the identities of hundreds of babies stolen from their murdered parents and given away to be brought up by military families - the very people who had orphaned them - there can be few more inappropriate cities on earth for euphoric pleas to Left and Right to 'come together'. But thoughts like that wouldn't impinge on The World's Biggest Band and a front-man so puffed up with his own importance he's come to believe his every pronouncement has the weight of a Papal Encyclical, or even of a Gail Walker column in the Tele.

The best response ever to a breathless Bono entreaty came at a Glasgow gig when he hushed the audience to reverent silence before starting slowly to clap. "Every time I clap my hands," he whispered into the mesmerised microphone, "a child in Africa dies ... "

A voice responded loudly in broad Glasgow accent: "Well, f*****g stop doin' it then!" But he hasn't. The brilliance of the technology deployed in U2 3D emphasises the emptiness of the band's music, trade-mark swirl of jangly guitar enclosing a fog of undefined feeling.

No grit, no danger, nothing jagged or ragged to disturb the tranquillity of an audience contented with its lot.

This band hasn't made a challenging album since Unforgettable Fire.

It provides the soundtrack for the terminally self-satisfied. How long must they sing these songs?

In the day of the Beatles, it was peace and harmony to the tune of All You Need Is Love.

Now, it is Get It While You Can to the tune of a billion dollars or something like that.

Never thought I'd long for the days of the giggling guru.