Student at Missouri joins rockers U2 show

ST. LOUIS -- Andy Kimmel wasn't the only fan with a paperboard sign asking for a shot to play guitar for a song or two with U2 during the Irish rockers' stop at the Savvis Center.

But he is the one frontman Bono picked.

"You're wearing the right colors, man," Bono said, pointing to Kimmel and his green-and-orange jersey -- the national colors of Ireland.

And just like that, a security guard plucked the University of Missouri junior out of the crowd and deposited him onstage Wednesday night alongside his "idols."

"Bono was just so relaxed," Kimmel said Thursday. "He was just like, 'So, what can you play?' in his Irish accent."

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U2's heart-shaped stage on the Savvis Center floor wasn't too far from the Chesterfield churches and talent shows that Kimmel played in high school. But the political science major who expects to end up a history teacher or law student probably won't ever again find himself at the center of an event like U2's Elevation 2001 tour, one of the year's most anticipated and successful.

Kimmel isn't the first fan asked by the band to come up on stage and sit in for a song -- it's been a regular feature of the tour's second U.S. leg. But still ...

"When we left, I must have had 300 people stop and congratulate me," Kimmel said. "Some girl was trying to give me a hickey. Other girls were hugging me, saying 'Oh my God, you touched Bono.'"

"If this is what I get for being some schmo out of the audience, I wonder what rock-star life is really like," he said.

Kimmel has seen the band play three times on their current tour, which wraps up this weekend in Miami. But the St. Louis show was the first where he's managed to score the general admission floor tickets he needed to get close to the stage and draw attention.

He also did his homework, researching the signs other fans had used to earn their place on stage and practicing the songs U2 had asked those lucky few to play.

"I knew there are certain songs that they always have people play -- easy, four-chord songs," Kimmel said. "I actually practiced some of their older songs, thinking that If I ever got up there, I could maybe play those."

Kimmel's orange sign -- "Achtung Bono: I play the guitar"-- was one of several advertising guitar-playing ability at Wednesday night's show. But it was Kimmel's custom-made shirt, prepared by a sporting-goods store in Ireland's national colors that drew Bono's eye.

The first words from Bono?

"He asked me if I could really play," Kimmel said.

After a brief discussion, Kimmel said Bono asked if he knew the chords to Bob Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door." Kimmel thought so but got corrected while demonstrating the finger positions.

"Bono said, 'Well, The Edge will help you out,"' Kimmel said. "So The Edge came over and he made sure I knew in what order the chords went. I remembered as soon as he showed me and was ready to go."

But before he played a note, Kimmel pulled a knit-stocking cap out of his pocket and onto his head, matching the trademark of The Edge, U2's "regular" guitar player, and drawing laughs from the crowd of 16,000.

"You've got the hat, you've got the shoes, your on stage with The Edge, Adam and Larry but haven't paid your dues," Bono later ad-libbed into the song, referring to band mates Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr.