The Fire and the Flame

A decade or so later I'm at a newsstand when an article called "The Miranda Obsession" in the December '99 issue of Vanity Fair stops me cold. It's a complicated yarn about a woman, supposedly named Miranda Grosvenor, who for about 15 years starting in the late '70s managed to charm and fascinate some of the pop and film world's heaviest hitters. Names like Billy Joel. Quincy Jones. Peter Wolf. Bob Dylan. Art Garfunkel. Robert De Niro. Director Paul Schrader. Writer Buck Henry. Super-producer Richard Perry (who fell hard for Miranda). There's a twist: The woman never actually met her would-be paramours, instead engaging them in protracted games of phone seduction, somehow keeping them at bay with a mixture of sophistication and intrigue -- and the tantalizing suggestion that she was a very rich, very gorgeous young model-student attending Tulane University in New Orleans. Oh, and before she finally dropped out of, um, earshot, "Miranda" (her actual name was Whitney Walton) would also entertain her own friends with tapes of the male voices that crowded her answering machine -- long, passionate, often pleading for a face-to-face rendezvous that would never come.

While the U2 vocalist is never mentioned in the Vanity Fair article, I have to wonder: Did I cross paths myself with "Miranda" back during U2/USA days, a girl who dedicated herself to blurring the lines between "fan" and "fantasy" and was able to pluck her own personal "bits of Bono" from the telephone lines? And did I, at the service of some vague code of integrity, unwittingly deep-six a career in celebrity journalism (scandal-sheet division)?

Kevin Westenberg

U2: Pitching its tent again and drawing audiences inside.

Anton Curbjin

Rattle and Hum: U2 portrayed as "regular people."

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• Bono (Musician)
• U2
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Of course, had I done the "journalistic" thing back then, I probably wouldn't be sitting here writing about rock 'n' soul salvation, about crises of faith, and about what it means to be a fan. Upon reflection, I'm pretty happy just to be back under the tent again with U2. Welcome home, guys -- Bono, Edge, Larry, Adam. Look outside, it's America.