It doesn't take long to figure out which car in this little Dublin parking lot belongs to the rock star. There it stands, a tribute to all that's garish and excessive: a canary yellow 1973 Cortina with leopard-print interior and, of course, fuzzy dice hanging from the rearview mirror.

Bono grins sheepishly as the parking-lot attendant cruises over with the Cortina. "I suspect there was some drink involved when I chose this one," he says. "Now I have to live with the consequences." Not long ago, this car would have seemed a shocking accouterment for U2's singer, an indulgence completely out of keeping with the band's status as benefit headliner, champion of famine relief and Amnesty International, crusader for all that's good and righteous. But with U2's bestselling package deal — the stunning album Achtung Baby and the extravagant multimedia roadshow Zoo TV — the past year has seen Bono, guitarist Dave Evans A.k.a. the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. dive headfirst into the glitz and glamour of rock & roll.

Bono has led the charge, wrapping himself in an alter ego he's dubbed the Fly (complete with a skintight leather suit and bug-eyed sunglasses) and seldom breaking character throughout the Zoo TV tour. He's been strutting through hotel lobbies and dispensing attitude onstage and off like a lifelong master of hype, holding the pose through a year that included a U2 summit with Bill Clinton in a Chicago hotel room and carrying barrels of radioactive waste onto a British beach to protest the Sellafield nuclear power plant.

At first, it was hard to know how U2's impassioned fans would react to the visual transformation or to the churning rhythms and tense sexuality of Achtung Baby. But the band's virtual sweep of the 1992 ROLLING STONE Readers Poll — like its domination of the polls in 1987 and 1988 — reconfirms its status as the world's biggest rock band.

Back home in Dublin, though, preparing to take Zoo TV into European stadiums later this spring, Bono seems just a touch ashamed of the Cortina and all it represents; he's just too close to real life here for such shenanigans. The parking lot is in Temple Bar, the city's bohemian district, a short block away from the tiny club where the band played its first shows, in 1978. As Bono drives through these familiar streets, telling stories of his encounters with Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, he sheds his rock-star skin and settles back into the much less demanding role of a rock fan.

He still won't go more than a few minutes, though, without taking about plans for U2. He and the Edge are finishing two songs for the soul legend Al Green. The group is working on a half-dozen new U2 songs as well, with plans to release them as an EP in the next few months. For all his new-found fondness for glittery decadence, the character acting has also given Bono a new discipline, a genuine rock & roll work ethic.

"We've never worried before about what key a song is in," Bono explains later that evening over his third or fourth pint of Guinness in a pub down the street from the U2 business office. "I've never really worked on my singing. We're just starting to figure out what to do with Edge's guitar.

"We've been playing to our weaknesses for too long," he declares finally. "It's time to start playing to our strengths."