Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

Miss Sarajevo 1993

 

 

They told me that they had helped to organise a beauty contest, “Miss Sarajevo, 1993”. Miss Sarajevo is a documentary about the beauty pageant. The winner was a 17-year-old blonde named Inela Nogić.

 

 

Bono later wrote a song about it, which you are probably familiar with.

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Is there a time for keeping your distance

A time to turn your eyes away

Is there a time for keeping your head down

For getting on with your day

 

Is there a time for kohl and lipstick

A time for curling hair

Is there a time for high street shopping

To find the right dress to wear

 

Here she comes

Heads turn around

Here she comes

To take her crown

 

Is there a time to run for cover

A time for kiss and tell

Is there a time for different colours

Different names you find it hard to spell

 

Is there a time for first communion

A time for East Seventeen

Is there a time to turn to Mecca

Is there time to be a beauty queen

 

Here she comes

Beauty plays the clown

Here she comes

Surreal in her crown

 

You say that the river

finds the way to the sea

and like the river

you will come to me

beyond the borders

and the dry lands

You say that like a river

like a river...

the love will come

the love...

And I don't know how to pray anymore

and in love I don't know how to hope anymore

and for that love I don't know how to wait anymore

 

Is there a time for tying ribbons

A time for Christmas trees

Is there a time for laying tables

And the night is set to freeze

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Bono posing with U.S. Army Sgt. John Kohne during a visit to an U.S. anti-artillery radar installation overlooking the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in 1995.

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Bill Carter travelled to Sarajevo in the winter of 1993 to offer humanitarian aid and quickly found himself in the heart of the conflict. He lived for six months in a burnt-out office building, subsisting on baby food and whatever water he could find in the rivers and sewers and delivering food and medicine to those in need.

 

Carter originally contacted U2 while they were on their Zoo TV Tour to show audiences the real people involved, feeling that the western media were ignoring the human aspect of the war. The band arranged for several satellite link-ups where Carter gave the locals—who had been cut off from communication with the rest of Europe for about a year and a half at this point—an opportunity to be heard before stadiums of thousands. The link-ups were brief and unedited.

 

"The idea was simple, instead of doing what the news does, which is entertain you, I wanted to do something that the news rarely does, make a person care about the issue...I wanted young people in Europe to see the people in the war, I didn't want them to see politicians or religious leaders or military spokesmen."

Bill Carter

 

[Flex Mentallo]

"Miss Sarajevo" was first performed 12 September 1995 at the annual Pavarotti And Friends concert in Modena, Italy. Bono, The Edge and Brian Eno joined Pavarotti on stage, with a complete orchestra, to premier the new Original Soundtracks 1 future single. All three dressed in black suits and white shirts and this was one of very few occasions where The Edge performed without his famous headgear, perhaps a symbol of respect for not only the great tenor but also for the song.

 

 

Miss Sarajevo:

 

[Flex Mentallo]

In addition to the "Pavarotti and Friends" performance, the song was played once on U2's 1997 PopMart Tour in Sarajevo with Brian Eno. U2 was the first band able to host a concert in the city since the end of the war, and the band was very pleased to be present there at the time. As per the Sarajevans' request, the show was not a benefit concert, and the band performed just as they did in any other city on the tour. Inela Nogic, was present at that show, and was escorted to the concert with the band themselves. Bono lost his voice during the concert, and unfortunately messed up during the performance of "Miss Sarajevo," and said afterwards, "Sarajevo, this song was written for you. I hope you like it, because we can't f****ing play it." In reference to the performance, Larry Mullen Jr. said, "That was an experience I will never forget for the rest of my life. And if I had to spend 20 years in the band just to play that show, and have done that, I think it would have been worthwhile."

 

Edited January 30, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

[Flex Mentallo]

Next:

 

Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden & the Serious Road Trip

 

[Flex Mentallo]

Incidentally, at the end of Miss Sarajevo, Bono says

 

 

O lěpa, o draga, o slatka slobodo

 

 

This is a line from Dubravka, a famous play by Ivan Gundulić, the greatest Croatian Baroque poet.

 

Here is the English translation:

 

Fair liberty, beloved liberty, liberty sweetly avowed,

thou are the treasured gift that God to us endowed,

all our glory is thy true creation,

to our Home thou are all the decoration,

no silver nor gold, not life itself could replace

the reward of thy pure and sublime grace.

 

[Weird Paper]

Wow... this is all so amazing. Thanks again for sharing it.

[Flex Mentallo]

Wow... this is all so amazing. Thanks again for sharing it.

 

Thanks Roger. It's vastly therapeutic for me. As long as I can convince myself that others are getting something out of it I wont feel that it is overly self indulgent.

[Flex Mentallo]

Heavy Metal

 

 

In the event, War Child never did open a trauma centre in Sarajevo. The focus of the war had shifted to Mostar, where they established a bakery. As Nigel put it "We thought, OK, we're baking bread. We're also distributing medicine. So what next? Why, music of course!"

 

"I got hooked," says Leeson. "I don't know why. I used to come back and try to talk about concentration camps and mass rape and women and kids getting shelled an hour away by plane, and no one gave a monkey's. It drove me nuts. But while there in Sarajevo, among the first things I noticed was that whenever the electricity came on, you heard music, everywhere. Of course, it's obvious."

 

 

Nigel is quoted as saying "Rock'n'roll is inherently democratic, whatever is done in its name. Against third-rate politics, in Bosnia and across Europe, we pitched first-rate music. If the local fascist politicians were going to have their speaker system in the John Major government and at the UN, then we were going to have our speaker system too."

 

 

Here he is with Brian Eno in Mostar

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Osborne and Leeson then smuggled Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden into Sarajevo for a wartime concert called Rock Under Siege that Dickinson said years later, "was one of the most important of my life".

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here is Dickinson’s bassist Chris Dale’s account of that epic journey.

 

Edited January 31, 2013 by alanna

[Flex Mentallo]

‘Back when I was in Bruce Dickinson's band, I woke up way too early one day with the phone ringing. It was Bruce.

"Morning!" he said chirpily. I looked through the curtains. He was right.

 

"Yeah, morning!" I agreed.

 

"We've got another gig come in," he said.

 

"Great news," I replied. I love doing gigs.

 

"It's Sarajevo," he said. This was back in 1994 and even in my blurred mind alarms bells started ringing.

 

"Aren't they having a war?" I asked.

"Yeah, sort of... but it's all good. We're under UN protection and we might get a go in a tank!" he enthused. "Are you up for it?"

 

"Errr.... OK then," I tailed off. It was like interrogation under sleep depravation. I'd have said anything to go back to bed right then and besides, I had always wanted a go in a tank.

 

‘When I woke up properly a bit later I thought about the strange conversation. Apparently it wasn't a dream. We were going to do a gig in war-torn Bosnia.

 

‘But it hadn't been in the news for a while and surely Bruce wouldn't be going anywhere properly dangerous. He's far from stupid. Most likely the war must have quietened down since the UN peacekeeping force had arrived... or so I thought.

 

‘So a couple of weeks after the initial call, we're getting ready to fly to Sarajevo. There were no direct flights (that should have rung more alarm bells), so we were flying to Split in Croatia from Birmingham International. Regular flight from a regular airport, it's all fine so far...

 

‘Just when we got on the plane it occurred to us, perhaps for the first time, that this might not really be all right. The plane was full of British soldiers, there were no holiday makers there. We were the only longhaired civilians on board. Everyone else on this plane was going to a war.

 

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‘When we landed at Split airport we were met by Colonel Stuart Green, a British Army officer who was very friendly, full of smiles and lots of hand shaking.

 

"Thank you so much for coming out here, really so jolly good of you," he gushed. "But you've had a wasted journey, I'm very sorry to say. The show's off, it's all gone a bit hairy out there. We can't guarantee you safe passage into Sarajevo anymore so I'll get you on the next flight back. But really thank you so much for coming this far".

‘Bruce had met some folk from a charity group called The Serious Road Trip. They did amazing work. They were mostly foreigners (Brits, Aussies and Kiwis) and they drove truckloads of supplies into worn torn areas then performed circus routines for the local children.

 

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‘They painted all their trucks in bright yellow with cartoon characters on the sides at a time when every other vehicle on the road was in dark green camouflage. They were doing such a saintly task but worryingly for me, they were all quite clearly insane. They'd take us through, they said. After dinner we had a briefing from Squadron Leader Dave Tisdale, an RAF officer. He took us to a lecture room on camp with a big map of Bosnia on the wall. It had brightly coloured star stickers all over parts of it.

 

‘He gave us a background as to the war, showed us the route we'd be taking and told us that until recently they'd contained most of the small in-fighting. Did we have any questions?

 

‘I had quite a few actually.

 

 

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"What are the stars for?" I asked innocently.

 

"Yes, I thought someone might ask that. As I said until recently we were getting a bit quieter. The stars are firefights we've had reported today. There's been a quite a few as you can see..." He looked at the very starry map. So did we.

 

‘Now it was dark we could hear occasional small arms fire in the distance. This was the best time to set off they reckoned. We'd be less visible, that's what they said.

 

‘I don't think it was only me among us now that was doubting the wisdom of their bright yellow colour scheme. Our truck had Road Runner painted on it too.

 

‘Perhaps the beers we'd consumed made us temporarily think this was all going to be fine still, so we got in the ex-military truck. The night was freezing cold.

 

"Do you speak any Serbo-Croat?" Dave asked me.

 

"Da, ja govorim malo srpsko-hrvatski," I said slowly, pleased with my homework.

 

"When we stop at the local army checkpoints later, don't speak any Serbo-Croat to them. Ever. No eye contact. You don't want to get into conversation with them, you don't need to make friends. Most of them are constantly drunk too, on Slivovic. We just keep quiet and speak when we're spoken to."

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

‘We drove on through the night and just as day was breaking and I'd nodded off a little for the first time, we pulled up on the side of Mount Igman and saw Sarajevo lying in the valley below us.

 

‘Daylight revealed that many of the buildings we'd passed had been riddled with shell and bullet holes. We were now among a small grouping of partially demolished houses at a Bosnian Army checkpoint. Soldiers and civilians shuffled around in the mud looking exhausted. There had been fighting here last night.

 

‘An NBC television crew turned up to record our arrival but caused instant offence to the Bosnian army by filming at the checkpoint.

 

‘We were told that taking photographs in a war zone was not a good idea, especially if any of the subjects could be identifiable military targets.

 

 

 

[Flex Mentallo]

 

‘Andy and Bob got our guitars, drums and amps in one APC and we mostly squeezed in the back of the other for the journey into Sarajevo itself. This was quite exciting. Bruce was right. We were going in a tank after all!

 

‘Sponder had borrowed a Kevlar helmet and was looking out of the open top of the APC. I had a peek too but a soldier inside called me to sit down.

"I wouldn't poke my head out there without a helmet if I were you" he said earnestly. "They (the Serbs) sometimes snipe around here. They're watching us all the time. Never forget that."

 

‘Then we did our gig.

 

‘We were the only foreign rock band to play in Sarajevo during the siege. Joan Baez was the only other foreign artist to perform there in the four years.