The man who made sure U2 did the business

There are two Paul McGuinnesses listed in The Irish Times library. One is described in a 1981 interview with this newspaper as a guitarist with Tokyo Olympics, "the promising Dublin band who tonight play support to Moving Hearts in the Stadium".

The McGuinness in question describes Tokyo Olympics' transformation from its previous incarnation as DC Nein, explaining that while DC Nein's "era of music" (punk) had ended, the group was staying together in another identity because "you would never build up that working relationship with another band starting from scratch".

Of the subsequent careers of that Paul McGuinness and his band, The Irish Times library has nothing more to say. But in its own way, the entry serves as a reminder of the achievement of the Paul McGuinness who brings U2 to Dublin this weekend in the middle of their latest mega world tour.

Dublin has thrown up hundreds of rock groups in the last 20 years, most of them long sunk without trace. The assembly line was never more active than in the late 1978, when suburban garages throbbed with the sounds of angry and ambitious young men hoping to thrive in the low-budget, high-energy music environment of the time.

That U2 has thrived for two decades since, with their working relationship still completely intact, has a lot to do with the manager who took them on 19 years ago. U2, and especially their lead singer, were gifted with a naturally high self-esteem - not an unusual quality in the music industry. But without the business alliance they forged with the highly-driven Trinity graduate, they would very likely have gone to the crowded graveyard of Dublin bands who "could have been big".

The man who introduced McGuinness to the band, the late Bill Graham, thought so: "Without Paul, Bono and the Edge might have left the other two behind or Bono might have gone solo and the Edge gone back to college. The talent was always there . . . and there certainly would have been success, but whether this would have been for all four of them is arguable."

Born in Germany in 1951, the son of an RAF pilot from Liverpool and a Kerry school teacher, McGuinness lived in Malta and England before arriving in Ireland aged 10 to continue his education at a famous school in Kildare; where, in words of a later university colleague, economist Paul Tansey, he acquired "the natural arrogance that is inculcated into students of Clongowes Wood". The arrogance survived his period in Trinity, where he met Kathy Gilfillan, whom he married in 1977. And the characteristic was often to surface in his dealings with press and public in the career that began a year later.

In 1989 the group was forced to drop ticket prices for concerts at the Point from £20 and £25 to £16 and £18. A stung McGuinness issued a statement saying the band thought the original figures reasonable for the relatively intimate setting, compared with £65 to hear Frank Sinatra "in a football stadium" (Lansdowne) and £20.50 to see Bruce Springsteen "in a field" (Slane).

"It seems we have made a mistake," the statement said, before acidly continuing: "It must now be asked whether this peculiar coalition of priests and other commentators will be bringing their enormous influence to bear on the more essential pricing issues of the day. Petrol? The cost of travel?"

That tirade has some of the flavour of McGuinness's politics. Although he broadly shares the social liberalism that inspired Bono's brief flirtation with Garret FitzGerald's Fine Gael in the early 1980s, McGuinness tends towards support for Fianna Fail. The party's "bullish pragmatism" is very much to McGuinness's taste, according to one acquaintance, and the feeling is clearly mutual. The U2 man is one of the few people who have served consecutive terms on the Arts Council, and looks well-placed to make it a hat-trick under the new Government.

As well as accusations of arrogance, McGuinness has earned a reputation for being hypersensitive to criticism of his band, especially from the press. This probably dates from a 1979 writ he served on an obscure Dublin magazine which had incurred his wrath.

When Dermot Morgan's Scrap Saturday lampooned him in 1991, therefore, some observers expected writs to fly. The satirical programme had him telling Bibi Baskin that U2 were geniuses who needed "the creative freedom to behave in any way I like".

But Scrap Saturday was safe enough. Those who know McGuinness insist he has a sense of humour and that he takes criticism of the band well from those he respects. One suggests his dislike of the media is an "urban myth" which has grown from a few isolated incidents because, as Michael Colgan once put it in an interview: "Paul is not the most subtle of people. You are never left in any doubt about what he thinks."

His attitude to journalists given access to the band is anything but prickly. "He's very into creating a feel-good atmosphere around the band," says one. "He tends to be very warm, likes to play host, driving you around in his car, showing you into the tent, making you feel you're part of a privileged inner circle."

Equally, however, guests are often left suspecting that there is method in all the apparent spontaneity. The same journalist adds: "I suspect there is a great deal of calculation in everything. But there's maybe a 10 per cent margin left for spontaneity, because he believes that's necessary for the rest of it to work."