How Adam became the quiet member of U2. . .

Having kept the birth of his first child from public knowledge for a year, Joe O'Shea wonders how Adam Clayton keeps such a low profile 

How does Adam Clayton do it? How does he make a living as one-quarter of the biggest rock band on the planet and still remain so enigmatic and under the radar?
The revelation this week that the 50-year-old U2 bassist and his "mystery girlfriend" welcomed a baby boy into their lives almost a year ago surprised all but those closest to Clayton and the band.
As columnists scrambled to get more details on the mother (she is French, aristocratic, independently wealthy and a brunette) the U2 press-office issued a one-line confirmation that, yes, Adam has finally become a father.
And Clayton, the last of the U2 men to enter fatherhood, has decided, for the moment at least, to leave it at that.
While fellow rock royal Elton John was on the cover of US and UK celeb-mags with his partner and new son this week, we have yet to even learn the name of Adam's Eve.
U2's bassist is hardly in the same category as Elton John when it comes to fame.
But the musician who once said he was "pretty shy in school" and "played the class clown as my defence mechanism" has, since leaving his wild days behind him, achieved the kind of zero profile normally enjoyed by Trappist monks.
And this is a guy who stands next to Bono for a living.
Being in Bono's shadow obviously helps. U2 may be a democracy in terms of the music but Clayton, along with The Edge and Larry Mullen, has been mostly happy to let their frontman stand in the limelight.
We do know that the mother of Adam's child shares her famous partner's aversion to the public eye, taking great pains to shield her face from photographers as the couple left one of U2's Croke Park gigs in July 2009.
The couple have been seen in one or two Dublin hangouts, including the trendy Town Bar and Grill.
But Clayton, who only ever seems to pop up above the radar by accident, has benefited from the code of silence that surrounds U2.
For all of Bono's strutting on the world stage, the four members of the world's biggest rock group have been either brilliant or brilliantly lucky at keeping their private lives mostly out of the pubic arena.
We do know where they live, their interests outside of their music careers (world peace, hats, motorbikes) and the basic details of their family lives.
But it is only when they become tangled up in court cases, involving past employees trying to sell old stage outfits or various planning run-ins with the authorities and wealthy neighbours, that the veil is lifted.
The group have a very tight circle of friends, associates and employees, many of whom have known or worked with them for decades and feel a strong sense of loyalty.
The quartet do live like rock royalty, with holiday homes clustered together on the Côte d'Azur in the South of France (Clayton's Dublin residence is one of the capital's finest Georgian mansions, Danesmoate House in Rathfarnham, bought for €380,000 in 1984).
In both Dublin and the South of France, Clayton has chosen to live apart from "the other three".
Larry Mullen may live on the opposite side of the bay from Bono and The Edge (who are within a stone's throw of each other in Killiney).
But all three holiday close together in Éze on the French Riviera while Adam has a large villa some 50kms further down the coast at Grasse.
The bass player appears to be an enigma even to the three guys with whom he has toured the world with for almost three decades.
"You never know what he's going to say, but more importantly, you never know what he's going to play," Bono said of Clayton in 2005.
Of the four members, he has often been perceived as the outsider, right from the earliest days of the group when Bono, The Edge and Larry became involved in a Dublin-based Christian evangelical church and the non-religious Adam seriously questioned whether they could stay together.
When Clayton developed a serious taste for the wilder side of rock in the early '90s, it almost led to him making an undignified exit from U2.
Matters came to a head during the all-conquering Zoo TV tour in November 1993 when he missed a show in Sydney, Australia.
"We hought that was the end," Bono said later about the incident.
"We didn't want to go on if someone was that unhappy and not enjoying himself."
Clayton quit the drink in 1996 and has since developed a passion for fine arts, at one stage he was one of the world's most prominent collectors of antique Persian rugs.
Adam has been engaged twice -- to supermodel Naomi Campbell in the early '90s and then to long-term girlfriend Suzanne Smith, a former PA to U2 manager Paul McGuinness.
The couple announced their engagement in 2006 but broke up in early 2007.
Clayton, in the US with U2 as they prepare for the next leg of their current world tour, is now finally a father. Just don't expect to see a family photo spread in Hello! any time soon.

source : http://www.independent.ie/ by Joe O'Shea