“I was Neil McCormick’s fan in school. He was much cooler than me, a much better writer and I thought he’d make a much better rock star. I was wrong on one count.” - Bono

 

Neil McCormick is one of the UK’s best known music critics. His weekly column in the Daily Telegraph is syndicated around the world and he is a regular guest on BBC Television and radio. He started working for Hot Press music magazine in Dublin as a 17-year-old punk rock art school drop out in 1978.

Neil was a school friend and confidante of U2, witnessing their first ever gig in the Mount Temple Gymnasium in 1976. Neil misspent most of his youth as singer in a succession of obscure bands, including Frankie Corpse and the Undertakers, The Modulators, Yeah! Yeah! and Shook Up! His musical misadventures are laid out in painful detail in the acclaimed 2003 memoir Killing Bono (published in the UK as I Was Bono’s Doppelganger) which Bono described as “Very funny, very moving.’ Indeed, Bono was so impressed with Neil’s autobiography, he asked him to collaborate on U2’s U2 By U2, the best selling music book in the world in 2006.

Despite the discouragement of some of his fellow critics, Neil continues to make music on the sidelines under the alias “The Ghost Who Walks.”  Bono sang snatches of Neil’s song  “People I Don’t Know Are Trying To Kill Me” as part of “Electric Co.” during U2’s Vertigo tour.