"C'mon East Lansing - go green… go white… go orange… where you going to take the Irish tonight?'
We had our own festival at Michigan State University's Spartan Stadium with an exuberant audience singing along at every note, the joint rocking from 'Real Thing' to Moment of Surrender'.
Let's shrink this place down to a little club, Bono told a 65,000-strong crowd, before adding, ' or a pub like Dooleys'.
'I Will Follow' went down just as well tonight as it did when they played it in that very pub Dooleys, in East Lansing, nearly thirty years ago in December 1981. 'Where is Mr. Dooley?' Bono asked. 'I believe he's still around.'
According to The Detroit News, if it wasn't quite that small pub tonight, it was certainly as cosy as a stadium can become. 'A smaller band would have buckled under the sheer enormity of it. But U2 stepped up to the plate with an ease and confidence that matches its ambitions, and somehow made the stadium setting feel intimate.'
'We're very glad to be here in MSU right now, ' said Bono. 'What makes this country so beautiful is not just landscape, your country is a beautiful idea...'
Special mention for people here and across the state who've worked for the ONE campaign, and for 'another great American idea - the Peace Corps.' This is not a band that made it to university - Edge managed six weeks, Bono two - but they were always learning.
'U2 became our university, Rolling Stone our textbook...
'We're still students, wouldn't you agree ?
'I still haven't found what I'm looking for...'
After 'Still', Bono was in reflective mood again, recalling an album which marks its twentieth birthday this year - and the long journey they took to find it. In Berlin, a wall coming down and one going up in the studio, the risks they took and the ones they'll continue to take. Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone gets special mention, along with all 'the people cheering us on when we were making some of our most experimental music... And we appreciate that.'
The night races past, carried on a wave of noise from a rockin' audience, and soon it's a Moment to Surrender, dedicated again to Clarence Clemons.
'Not just a man, more a force of nature - music just spilling out of him.
But you could hold anyone in your heart or mind right now...'
No comments:
Post a Comment