Bold, brave, inspirational: an Experience you can’t miss
SO here I am standing in the dead heat of Tulsa, Oklahoma outside the BOK Arena waiting to meet U2 ahead of their new tour.
Tulsa is the sort of one horse town where the horse realised he was on his own and bolted out of boredom years ago. It is Bible belt Middle America where you’re more likely to see posters for churches and bail bondsmen than music or theatre.
There is a McDonald’s or a waffle house on every corner and the locals are sceptical of outsiders.
One cop we meet outside the venue baulks when he hears I am from the media and immediately warns against making up ‘any of that fake news’, during our stay.
Make no mistake, this is Trump Town. He cleaned up here in the election and for that reason alone it seems to be a strange place for U2 to kick off their tour. But this is not any old group and these guys have been pushing boundaries for decades.
At 4pm the band’s management bring me into the BOK arena for a tour. This home of ice hockey has been transformed into a slick set with a giant screen stretching from the top to the bottom of the arena that becomes the fulcrum for the show.
As the production is in the round, it equally divides the audience in two and is a representation of the north/south divide of Dublin. There is the main stage at one end and the Experience stage at the other. Bono is sound-checking End Of The world and stops to speak to me from the stage.
‘We play a lot of tracks we haven’t done in a while and we have forgotten how to play some of the original stuff,’ he reveals. ‘This is End Of The World (a song about the moment U2 almost broke up while writing Achtung Baby and the conflict between Bono and Edge) this is where it all goes to the head of the singer and it all starts annoying the guitar player until the end of the world.
‘We have quite complex lighting and camera work to get this gesture to work.’
SONGS Of Experience is a defiant conclusion to the band’s two album Odyssey and tour. The easy option would have been to mirror the previous show and crank out the hits but this is U2 and innovation and bravery are hard-wired into their DNA.
The easiest way of describing this journey is by listing the songs they didn’t play — New Year’s Day, Bad, Zoo Station, Ultra Violet, With or Without You, Where the Streets Have No Name.
Speaking to The Edge he said there was a conscious decision to leave out The Joshua Tree.
‘So far, and I couldn’t say this for the whole tour, there hasn’t been a single song from the Joshua Tree,’ he told me. ‘It can change but it is sort of 50 /50 between the last couple of records and previous albums. The last two records make up about half the set. There are a couple of songs that are really unusual for us to play from the back catalogue.’
While some in the crowd may have felt irked by the lack of the big hits, the inclusion of some of their lesser spotted songs made for a bold and refreshing change.
Opening the show a haunting version of Love Is All You Have Left, where Bono emerges from the belly of the 200-tonne screen.
At this point the phones are whipped out and thanks to the new augmented reality app a giant Bono hologram jumps out in 3D from the stage. This is cool, fun, innovative and shows why the band always place innovation on a par with creativity. This kicks off the Experience set with the tub-thumping Blackout which generated a pacy opening to a three-hour set. Next comes the familiar journey to Dublin as part of Bono’s journey from innocence to experience. Speaking to me before the show he tells me about some of the teething problems that had hampered rehearsals. ‘It is sort of like doing a big marvel movie,’ he says. ‘Except you are taking it to a different city every few days and it is a bit mad.
And worse than that, for me it is like a Marvel film where you have to method act. So that’s not right. It was going really s***e on the dress rehearsal but I think now we have put some things in place that will make it a little less indulgent.
‘It is a very personal story and even though it is my story, it could be Larry, Edge or Adam’s story.
‘Cedarwood is this beautiful street from the past but of course it’s what’s in your head that counts. So I am walking down the road thinking it is a warzone.
‘It is a personal story trying to take the solipsistic aspect out of it is impossible. But you don’t want to be too self-indulgent because it is a rock ‘n’ roll band in the end.’
At the start of the concert, band members are in the belly of the beast before the video screen is elevated to reveal them. Rather than just being used as a projector, it provided a canvas for powerful visual effects and images which allowed U2 to take on issues without Bono sermonising.
He does, however, resurrect his alter ego MacPhisto, a top hat-wearing devil from 1992/93’s Zoo TV tour and uses him to great effect to highlight some of the hateful issues choking America today.
‘I haven’t seen this guy in quite a while,’ Bono says. ‘I’ve been a busy little devil. But you’ve made it all so much easier for me these days.
‘The truth is dead and the KKK are on the streets of Charlottesville without their silly costumes. Who would have thought? When you don’t believe that I exist, that’s when I do my best work.’
While images of real-life hate from nearby Charlottesville are shown on the video screen there are more than a few uncomfortable looks in the crowd.
Some people leave, whether that is due to their political stance or that they want to get ahead of the traffic, I can only speculate. But by the time they reach the top of the stairs the opening chords of Pride ring out and the swastikas are replaced by images of Martin Luther King Jr.
This is bold, brave and inspirational and proves once and again that U2 are so much more than a heritage act playing the hits.
As if to prove that, they perform an acoustic version of Staring At The Sun, not played since 2001 and one of the rare times a Pop track gets an outing.
While Trump is never mentioned by name, the message is clear; love will always win out over hate. Bono and Co play for almost three hours and cram in a staggering 27 songs. And while some may have left the stadium grumbling at the absence of some of their hits, I feel they simply missed the point.
This is an immersive concert experience with a clear narrative and a set list with rare gems that might challenge even the diehard fans. Roll on Dublin in November.