Learning from experience
Eoin Murphy hits the road with U2 ahead of their shows in Dublin and Belfast
WHEN I was 13 I was chaperoned into Zhivago’s in Galway where my parents allowed me to buy two tickets to U2’s Zooropa tour. This was to be my first live concert and I had a ticket for my best friend Matt.
The elation was through the roof. Apart from Santa bringing me a Spectrum Sinclair for Christmas (the thinking man’s Commodore 64) — this was the happiest I had ever been.
In a fit of exhilaration I landed home, jumped on my bike, and hit the road — a courier of great news for my best friend. Halfway there I was hit by a car and spent the next two weeks in hospital.
It was quite the comedown and I don’t just mean hitting the pavement after falling from the car bonnet. I got through the next two months of rehab by wearing out my cassette of Achtung Baby, and thankfully made it to the RDS show in the pink.
The concert did not disappoint — an orgy of technology and giant TV screens providing a mesmerising backdrop to the stage, patrolled by Bono clad in leather and wraparound black glasses.
I still get goose bumps when I hear the opening bars to Zoo Station, the first track on the night. Twenty seven years later I flew to Tulsa in Oklahoma to preview the band’s Songs of Experience Tour and the passion hasn’t waned.
It says a lot about the quartet that despite being critically acclaimed multimillionaires, they still care about the ‘local media’ and invite select members of the Irish press to their first show.
I arrive with the band’s long term PR manager Lindsey Holmes and am immediately escorted backstage through a maze of concrete tunnels, emerging at the centre of the BOK arena in Tulsa.
Normally an ice skating fortress for the local team, the band’s trademark innovative stage has been set up and Bono is rehearsing a lesser known track from Achtung Baby.
ON the giant screen an oversized image of Bono is playfully mocking Edge who has joined the stage, taunting the guitarist before spraying water into a camera capturing the at the side of 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 tells me.
‘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.’
Bono goes back to work, pin pointing the exact camera spot where he can spit out bottled water over a pint-sized Edge on the ramp. Speaking before the show he says: ‘It is a very personal story and even though it is my story, we use me, the singer, to tell the story. It could be Larry, Edge or Adam’s story.
‘Cedarwood is this beautiful street from the past but of course it is what is in your head that counts. So I am walking down the road thinking it is a warzone — it was a warzone in my teens.
‘It probably wasn’t but it was in my head. 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 and roll band in the end.’
BACKSTAGE I get to spend time with Adam and Edge who are both looking forward to the new tour. And the first thing Edge reveals is the new set brings in the latest in HD TV technology.
‘We are using quite a lot of technology, particularly hardware and finding the creative uses for the production have been the most fun and challenging aspect,’ he says.
‘It is such a nuanced thing, to find that blend of letting the songs speak for themselves and doing stuff with the production that gives the songs more potency and the power to connect.
‘We have had production ideas and song ideas that have just ended up in the bin. We literally try them out and realise that it is really not good and we forget it and move on.
‘That part is the exciting part where you see it all come together, but also frustrating and a little unpredictable. Until you really see it in the room do you get a sense of how it is working and that is why it is last minute dot com right now, even right up to 24 hours before the first show.’
One of the most innovative aspects of the show that fans will get to experience either in Belfast or the 3Arena is the new U2 app. When you download the mobile product and open it during the first two songs you can physically interact with the floor to ceiling screen and play with a 3D version of Bono on your phone. Sounds complicated? Well it is.
Edge says: ‘It would seem a bit mad for us to ban phones and to go the other direction. At times it can be a bit strange. I don’t really mind the phones. Holding up cameras and small items are fine. It is when it is a laptop or a giant iPad you go “what? that’s a bit mad”.
‘Our attitude is that it is happening anyway and we may as well incorporate it into the show. Someone experiencing the moment by filming it so that they are not in the moment, they can only experience it after the show.
‘With the app you really do experience it in the moment. You are experiencing something that is happening live that you can only see in your smart phone. I have seen it working and everyone will have the same experience. It is just at the start of the show it doesn’t run for the whole event.’
The easiest way of describing the journey you will go on during this show is by listing the songs not on the set list — New Year’s Day, Bad, Zoo Station, Ultra Violet, With or Without You or the ultimate gospel crowd pleaser Where the Streets Have No Name. Leaving out such U2 classics though is surely a dangerous thing to do?
‘Yes,’ Adam says. ‘There will be some familiar things as well because it is not a completely new show. It is
still part of the Innocence and Experience two album series. The shows relate to each other and there is some common stuff to both.
‘There is a lot of new stuff and the new album features heavily. It is still a big thrill and adrenaline rush and it will never be any other way for us. It is something we just love to do. The jeopardy level goes up depending what part of the tour you are on.
‘The early part of the tour there is a lot of jeopardy. Coming home though is just something that bit more special and you never tire of that feeling.’
They open the show to rapturous applause and go head first into the Songs of Innocence end of the show. This is closely followed by the Songs of Experience leg and this proves a big hit with the audience as the big screen bursts into life. The screen isn’t just used as a projection screen to duplicate what is occurring on stage. It provides a canvas for powerful visual effects and images which allowed U2 to take on issues without Bono sermonising from the pulpit.
He does however resurrect his alter Ego MacPhisto, a top hat wearing devil from 1992/93 Zoo TV tour and uses it 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 out 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.’
Before long the opening chords to Pride ring through the arena and the KKK members and swastikas are replaced by images of Martin Luther King, Jr. The show is a technological triumph and the fact that the entire set list stands up to scrutiny without the Joshua Tree hits is a testament to the band’s breadth of material.
As the show ends Bono turns the light in a miniature version of his boyhood Cedarwood home, the lead singer, flanked on both sides by minders and heads out through the crowd.
He joins his bandmates in a team of blacked-out cars and goes straight to the airport.
For those who are lucky enough to have a ticket for upcoming Belfast or Dublin dates you are in for a real treat. The show is as intimate a venue as you will ever get to see the world’s best ever rock band. Because of the layout of the 3Arena, the stage will be modified and cut in half which will make the show even more of an up-close and personal experience.
There are points in the performance where Edge and Adam play from podiums that are raised from the middle of the audience and are in touching distance.
But behind all the technology and smoke and mirrors what you are getting is three decades of classic rock and roll songs performed with exuberance.
It’s probably not worth getting run over for — but it is definitely going to be a night you will treasure forever.
U2 play Belfast’s SSE Arena on Oct 27 and 28 and the 3Arena in Dublin on Nov 5, 6, 9 and 10.