by Deena Dietrich @OnTheRoadWithU2
My passion, some say obsession, for U2 began 28 years ago in 1987 when I was a freshman in high school. A classmate showed me a picture of U2. I noticed right away that one of four guys was very good looking, drummer Larry Mullen Jr.
I was hooked. Since that time, I have seen U2 75 times in concert from the ZooTV tour to the 360 tour, and I started a blog, http://OnTheRoadWithU2.com, to share my stories with other U2 fans. This month just in time for U2’s iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE tour, I published my book about the 75 U2 concerts I’ve seen and my adventures along the way.
One of my greatest adventures was the first time I met Bono on August 12, 1992 at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It was the day of the Zoo TV Outside Broadcast Tour Opener. This is what happened,
When Bono came to me, he noticed the shirt I had made with “One” on it, which looked very similar to the “One” on the video. I handed Bono my “Outside It’s America” book for him to autograph. I noticed he was taking a while, so I looked at what he was doing and saw he was misspelling my name. I said, “No, Deena is spelled with two e’s.” He kind of gave me this sly smile as if to say ‘are you correcting me? I’m bono?’ In my book, Bono wrote, “A nice t-shirt Din…Deena Bono 92” As soon as he was finished, I threw my camera to Mike, so he could take a picture of me and Bono, both with our big sunglasses. Almost knocking me down, Bono hugged me putting his arms around my waist and resting his head on my shoulder. After the photo, I asked Bono if U2 would ever play “Heartland” in concert because it was one of my favorites. He said, “Yeah that’s a great song. We’re thinking of putting out an album of b-sides soon.” Huh? That’s not what I asked. That was my first encounter with Bono, and what a great encounter it was.