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My wonderful
Bono story…
Let me tell you, it doesn’t get much better than this!
Let’s start by the beginning…
This took place in Montreal, on a wet and cold 28th
of May. Me and my friend Julie, she
will be shown below, went to the first show on the 27th… we struggled all day to get into the heart,
there were so many problems with the GA lines…
so much frustration, especially when you didn’t sleep all night!
But anyway… the first night was incredible, we got
inside the heart despite all the problems, but nothing… and I mean NOTHING can beat what happened at
the second show!!!
Julie and I were completely burnt out after the first
show, but nothing was going to stop us!
Right after the first show we went to take our baths and change then we
picked up 2 other of our friends and headed out to the GA line! Mind you…
we are talking about going back to the Molson Center when we’ve been
there just 2 hours ago…
Believe it or not, at 3 am, there were about 5 people
in front of us, but I didn’t care… all I wanted was SLEEP! So we got cuddled up under a couple covers
and tried to sleep the best we could… ciment is oh so confortable…
Convinced I was asleep for many, many hours I woke up
to the blistering cold completely disoriented (I ate half a sandwich in over 30
hours), I look at my watch and I was completely astonished to find out that it
was only 6 am! But I just couldn’t
sleep anymore! Too much anticipation I
guess.
All were left were only 12 hours of waiting in line…
no biggy…
I’m
(Melissa) in the orange GAP sweater (which I slept in, thank God Julie lent me
this), Catherine has a black coat, orange shoes… and white socks that she wasn’t
proud of wearing, another Melissa (great name) was in the black and white
striped sweater and my best friend Julie has the yellow t-shirt.
So we spent hours just blasting out U2 music for the line… it was pretty cool, everyone was singing around us or just kind of lipsynching.
The day grew a little sunnier and out of boredom some
people decided to take a little nap…
Catherine
didn’t sleep all night… I’m sure I’ll be killed for showing this online…
In the afternoon, we were starting to get nervous… I was started to make somekind of plan to get onstage with Bono (I’ve been dreaming about that moment for about 8 years). So I started making out this sign out of a sheet a kind wireling named Dawn gave me that read “Won’t you wrap the night around me?”. In the end Bono didn’t even notice it… I think… my mind is a blank…
So after making this huge sign and suffering from
severe marker inhalation (not a good thing when you’ve barely eaten in 2 days)
I decided… and this is the most brilliant thing I’ve ever thought of… I decided to go buy a rose for Bono. Little did I know, it would change the
course of my life forever J.
It was raining…
freezing cold… many of the fans
were wearing garbage bags not to get soaked, luckily enough, we had the roof of
the Molson Center over our heads… but still, I was determined to buy that rose.
Coming back from buying the rose with Julie who had
brought her camera because she was somehow convinced that she would bump into
U2… the worst part is that she was
right!
We noticed a pack of people just next to the Molson
Center and we were wondering what it is all about. We were surprised to find that in fact U2 was going to pass
by! We were completely stunned that we would see U2 pass right in
front of us. The U2 security were
telling us that if we would stay calm, they would come out for a couple of
minutes. We then realized that if they
did, we had absolutely nothing to get autographs on. So, Julie the courageous, ran off to get our tour programs that
were about 2 km away in our parked car.
Meanwhile, I was just standing there in a daze sipping on some tea not
realizing what was going to happen… I
was also taking care of Julie’s coffee…
but it mysteriously disappeared afterwards. Julie arrived just in time to see them come in. 2 black cars (I don’t know the make) went in
the Molson Center… everyone, except me, was hysterical. Julie saw Bono in the car… I guess I was too concentrate on drinking my
tea. A couple of minutes later, The
Edge came out for at least 30 seconds…
all this because some “fans” rushed over to him screaming and yelling “I
love you”… he obviously was terrified and ran back in. That’s too bad because we could of seen him
for a much longer time… and yes… during
this time… I was still sipping on my
tea… still in a daze. Julie managed to get a “photo” of him… I’m astonished that we even see on him on
that picture… you can tell we are just over 5 feet.
Even
though everyone thinks this pictures sucks… we are both very proud of it.
So, we went back to the GA line completely hyped. I thought this would be the highlight of the evening… so wrong… so wrong.
6h30, the hour of truth, was approaching quickly. The tension was rising in the GA line… people were tending to get closer and closer
to the door… like if it was somekind of
fan magnet.
Here we are in that moment of high tension:
You
can tell how clean the line was… this
is after Catherine decided to do our hair.
I know… It’s a very girly thing to do… but we had time to waste! I really don’t know why I had just a tank
top on… I remember it being freezing… it must be because of the rush of seeing The
Edge… or the tea.
Melissa
and Catherine, our smiling (Miss Crest 2001) hairdresser dwelling in
anticipation.
So 6h30 came… the doors finally opened… it was everyone for themselves, the mission: get a bracelet, run like hell and get into the heart. The bracelet people were calmer than us… they were taking all their precious time putting the bracelets on… everyone was screaming “hurry!”… the worst part is that we were about tenth in line, which is kind of pathetic.
So we ran down a flight of stairs and U2’s security
were demanding us to walk… but we really didn’t. We just ran by showing our bracelets and they had no choice but
to let us run.
And yes! We
got into the heart! (I know… I know… we
were tenth in line…) We got close to
the tip of the heart, exactly were we wanted to be.
Happy
happy Catherine, happy happy me with the magic rose, and happy happy Julie who
hates this picture.
I like PJ Harvey…
but let’s just say that I was there for U2 and I was really anxious to
see if my plan would work.
A fan just before the show, saw me with the rose and
said:”We are going to help this girl get onstage with Bono” and he did help me
a lot.
So PJ Harvey was over… I think she played some songs…
but I was just so tired… I
barely could stay standing.
The lights came back on and the next thing we would
see was U2.
We were guarding our places with our lives… things have been known to be kind of rough
in the heart sometimes. People stealing
places, tripping each other… hitting each other… it’s a pretty wild place to be.
All of a sudden we hear that pre-recorded “woohoo”
from Elevation. Everybody started
yelling hysterically! Including us
(mostly Julie)! Larry’s drum technician came out about 1
minute before and Catherine was convienced that it was Larry (her favorite guy
in whole world). I told her it was just a technician, but Catherine just looked
at me and said:”It doesn’t matter… I’ll just yell anyway”.
Then the real thing started… it’s such an incredible feeling to see them come out with the
arena lights on…
The concert was quite incredible… even if I really don’t remember it. I know Bono had a soar throat and I felt bad
for him because he looked like he was hurting…
Bono past right in front of us about one million
times, never even laying eyes on us eventhough we were about 2 feet away.
The concert was almost finished I was starting to get
sad because he didn’t see me. I was
just waiting to get his attention before With Or Without You because he tends
to bring girls up onstage in that song.
So I had absolutely no idea that he would pull me up
onstage during The Fly, seeing as he’s never done this before.
This is the story of what happened:
He came really
close to me but he wasn't facing me... so I took my rose, used it as an
extention of my arm to touch him. I ran my rose down his right leg. He laughed,
smiled than turned around. He looked straight at me with the bluest of eyes.
Bono continually started into my eyes, I
was melting… Julie has done a better
job capturing Bono than The Edge. You
can see my rose on the right… I was in
heaven.
Then he took
my rose with his teeth than put it aside.
At this point the crowd was going wild, everyone was pushed up against
the heart trying to touch Bono. I
thought he only wanted to touch my hand, but no! Once he grasped my hand he
started pulling me to go onstage. He
didn’t even give me time to get up… he
pulled me right over him… he was already lying down. I was quite stunned! After
he turned me around and I was lying down on him! Then his press me against his
body... so I was just lying down on him!!!
I put my head on his shoulder and I just started kissing his neck... he
actually stretched his neck, like if he wanted me to continue... which I
obviously did!!! I also played in his wet hair... he was so beautiful! He was moaning as I was doing this! Quite
incredible... he was whispering things, but I didn't hear what he was saying to
me (some other fans told me about this).
This was a pretty interesting moment for
me…
Pretty much the same… too bad I don’t
have better pictures of this…
At this point you can see Bono was going
to climb over me… and I was gonna let
him!
This one has been taken from the video…
God bless Frédéric Pellerin who filmed this… thank you soo much!
So after this... he layed me on the ground
again and he stood up right over me... then the final words of The Fly
"I've gotta go, I'm running out of change"... I looked at him shaking
my head meaning "Please don't go". He smiled once more than ran off!
I didn’t realize what just happened… all I was thinking was:”Wow… these muscles are really strong”.
I was completely hysterical! Before Walk
On... Bono said:"Excuse me Father!" while looking up at the ceiling,
like if he had sinned :)… then he said this again at the end of Walk On. Then,
still in Walk On, he was looking at me and I started laughing then he did
too. I really felt like I had something
special with Bono... it's a night I will never forget... and my hair still smells
like his cologne (he wears Dune by Christian Dior if anyone is wondering!).
I took a picture of myself seconds after
this all happened… this is pure joy!
If
you want to see the video of this event just click here!!! Then press on “Me and Bono in Montreal” (you should do a “save as” or “save
target as”… it’s in Windows Media format, it’s about 6 megs… nice video quality!).
So after the show… we just ran out of the Molson Center yelling like seriously deranged human beings. But we didn’t care… I just went on stage with Bono!
People I didn’t even know were coming up to me to give me hugs and kisses because they were happy for me… that really surprised me! I had never been as high in all my life. I later realized that it was really cold outside and I was once again, I was just in a tank top. No wonder I still have a cold almost one month after this wonderful event.
After a while of running, we (me and Julie) realized that we had lost Catherine and Melissa. So we decided to run to the car… and there they were ready to go!
The first thing we did when we got into the car was scream from the top of our lungs… and then blast Beautiful Day loud enough for the whole world to hear out of the car speakers. I then started calling people because I just had to talk to someone about this. I called my good friend Dave (the guitar player in band) and left a somewhat clear message of what happened. I then called my mom (who said I was crazy to think I would get onstage with Bono) to tell her to good news and all she could say was:”Melissa please calm down now”… like if that was gonna happen…
So, we wanted to celebrate this moment… but we really didn’t know where to go… actually we just didn’t care. So we went to a Tim Horton’s (wow) and we rushed in still hopping from what happened and the cashier probably thought we were high on crack or something. There were 2 people in line that just came back from the U2 show as well… and Julie told them in a highly hysterical fashion (while jumping up and down of course):”She’s the one who got onstage with Bono!”. They just said:”Oh yeah we saw you! That was pretty cool!”…
This is us at the Tim Hortons… bright tired eyes of joy. First time we’ve ever taken a photo in a Tim Horton’s… probably the last.
So that’s my story… it doesn’t get any better than this…