Surprises in Oakland!

We love it here, Oakland, San Francisco, you’ve got a lot of everything. You guys invented  the C21st, didn’t you?'

A beautiful night, tailgating parties in the parking lot, fine warm-up with Lenny Kravitz and the  usual storming opening to the show with Real Thing, I Will Follow, 'Boots', Magnificent, Mysterious Ways.... before  Bono takes time out to reflect a little on the unique local vibes.

'I think I understand why you think, and why you act differently,' he says. 'It’s music: music shaped the Bay Area and the Bay Area shaped the world.'

An already top-of-the-range decibel reading now goes completely off the scale.   'And the music is still potent,' he continues. 'The ideas are still coming. Don't know if you noticed, but there was a major summit over the Bridge last night, they're calling it the G3 Summit - U2, Greenday and Metallica. In bars.'


Adam and Bono, he reports, were not among the high-ranking delegates at the Summit but Edge is able to report back on the salient agenda items: 'We dealt with the important issues of the day, new touring concepts, we discussed the possibility of the three bands creating their own festival and touring... some great ideas discussed.'
But after the first hour, he concedes, his memory 'gets fuzzy'. Eager for more information, Bono turns to Larry - whose response is characteristically robust.

'What went on at that summit... stays at that summit.'

This response is universally acclaimed and Bono turns to the subject of Lou Reed, who is in the house tonight, at which point Larry breaks into a chorus of 'Perfect Day'...  and Oakland goes ballistic.

'Lou, we love you man!' says Larry at the end of his moment on lead vocals, a moment no-one is going to forget.

Bono confirms that tonight  'the great man is walking amongst us' and soon we're into All I Want Is You. Later, during Vertigo, Lou is back in the set when Bono sings a  snatch of 'Dirty Boulevard'. And, as in Seattle the other night, Bono also drops into David Bowie's Space Oddity in the outro to Beautiful Day -  Commander Kelly brings greetings from space again.

'Imagine a man looking down on us from 200 miles up. Looking down at our beautiful crowded planet.  What would he say to us? Commander Kelly?'

As Miss Sarajevo arrives, Bono adds, 'America, you don't have to put another man on the moon... Just bring us back to earth...'



'Thank you,' says Bono. 'For your love, your support...thank you for giving us a great life...'

Setlist

Even Better Than The Real Thing

I Will Follow

Get On Your Boots

Magnificent

Mysterious Ways / Norwegian Wood

Elevation

Until The End Of The World / Anthem / Where Have All The Flowers Gone?

Perfect Day / Happy Birthday

All I Want Is You

Stay (Faraway, So Close!)

Beautiful Day / Space Oddity

Pride (In The Name Of Love)

Miss Sarajevo

Zooropa

City Of Blinding Lights

Vertigo

Crazy Tonight / Discothèque / Life During Wartime / Psycho Killer

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Scarlet

Walk On / You’ll Never Walk Alone

One

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow / Where The Streets Have No Name

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

With Or Without You

www.u2.com

U2 brings 'Beautiful Day' to Qwest

By Charles R. Cross

Special to The Seattle Times

If there was anything the 65,000 U2 fans at Seattle's Qwest Field could have found fault with in the band's show Saturday night, it might have been the choice of opening song. A magnificent night of music, on the best day of weather in nine months, might have kicked off with the one song in U2's catalog that would have best summed up this outdoor concert: "Beautiful Day."

As it was, "Beautiful Day" showed up 10 songs into the set, and Bono did acknowledge the weather: "The whole city looked like it had come out of a washing machine," he said, standing in the middle of the "Claw," the 90-foot-tall scaffolding that covered the stage.

The "Claw" was the most extravagant and creative staging ever used in any live performance. With 500,000 video pixels, it sometimes dominated the show, and gave the proceedings an IMAX-in-the-making feel.

U2 has always been a band that loves a grand gesture, but they've also succeeded because their music conveys intimate emotion. That's why the highlights were the smaller moments, like an acoustic take on "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)," where Bono and leaned on guitarist the Edge. Larry Mullen Jr. and Adam Clayton were also spot-on all night.

The 360 Degree tour is the single biggest moneymaking tour in rock history because the circuslike spectacle of it is without peer. But the tour also has drawn fans because U2 reworked many of their songs with fresh arrangements. Bono alluded to this: "If there is one idea that underpins our band, it's the idea that you can start again."

The show was a personal renewal for the singer — it had been postponed for a year after he had back surgery. He seemed healthy, and effusive, and added lines from David Bowie, Carole King, R.E.M. and the Beatles into songs.

Even "You'll Never Walk Alone," made famous by Frank Sinatra, was worked into "Walk On." Amnesty International logo lights were paraded around the stage, and Bono talked about the detention and freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi — her son was at the show.

U2 songs are most inspiring when they are political (footage of Arab-world uprisings played during "Sunday Bloody Sunday"), but even with the 54-ton "Claw," it was a moment of personal intimacy during "Beautiful Day," that most moved. Astronaut Mark Kelly sent a video message from space to tell his wife (U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, injured in an Arizona shooting) he loved her, adding, "she knows." Bono worked the line into "Beautiful Day," making the sweet refrain of "she knows," part of the song. It was that kind of small moment that made a giant show something to remember.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com

Seattle Concert: 4th June 2011

'Emerald City, shining in the sun, where are you gonna take us?'

It was the question Bono asked as the show opened in Seattle tonight  and we had the answer during Beautiful Day, when NASA Commander Mark Kelly brought us a message from the final space mission of the shuttle Endeavour. (more on this coming up).

On a glorious evening at the home of The Seahawks, U2360  took Seattle into orbit tonight ...  and safely back to earth again. From the opening chords of Even Better Than The Real Thing to the closing benediction of Moment of Surrender this was a night to remember - with an audience who'll never forget it: 'You're incredible people!'

Thanking everyone for their patience in waiting for these postponed dates, and to Lenny Kravitz for 'giving us lift-off',  Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, members of Heart and  Peter Buck of R.E.M. were seen around.There was  a nod to  REM ('It's the end of the world as we know it...') in 'Until The End of the World' before Bono described meeting two year old  Sophia earlier in the day -  playing the guitar. Sophia got him thinking about the band.

'I was watching her play and I know, for a fact, that I can behave and feel  like that.
'You know, if there is any single idea that underpins our band,  it's that you can start again. 
'Pretend you don't know us!  We've been on the road for a while, but this is the day we start again...
'You think of him as a tough guy.  But I tell you, he is very thoughtful.  On the drums -  Larry Mullen Jr.
'On my left, you think of him as a ladies man.  Well he is.  But he is a perfect gentleman. On bass -  Adam Clayton.
'Edge, you think he is a techie zen master guitar genius but I see him as one of Lady Gaga's dancers. A funky dude on the dancefloor, just get out of his way.
'And as for me, despite what you’ve heard, I’m a man of simple needs. Just get me 70,000 people, 200 articulated lorries and a spaceship, and I feel good about myself...'

And just get us All I Want is You, Stay, Beautiful Day, Zooropa, City of Blinding Lights.... and we feel good about ourselves too.

'Neon heart dayglo eyes 
A city lit by fireflies
They're advertising in the skies
For people like us
And I miss you when you're not around
I'm getting ready to leave the ground...'

Special mention tonight for Alexander, the son of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was with us and to Bill and Melinda Gates, in their home city. 

Moment of Surrender is a chance to 'think of our little planet spinning round the sun -  this is for all the people who are trying not to fall off …'

SET LIST

Even Better Than The Real Thing

I Will Follow

Get On Your Boots

Magnificent

Mysterious Ways

Elevation

Until The End Of The World

All I Want Is You

Stay (Faraway, So Close!)

Beautiful Day

Pride (In The Name Of Love)

Miss Sarajevo

Zooropa

City Of Blinding Lights

Vertigo

I'll Go Crazy / Discotheque

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Scarlet

Walk On

ENCORE

One

Where The Streets Have No Name

ENCORE 2

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

With Or Without You

Moment Of Surrender

More pics here,

www.u2.com

U2 puts on concert of the decade

Being in one place at one time with 65,000 other people who are all focused on ANY single thing is amazing. It’s a miracle in itself.

It’s the sort of thing that separates us from the animals.
So U2 had a lot going for it even before the band showed up at Commonwealth Stadium on Wednesday night. Bonus that these guys are masters of the stadium spectacle. They’ve done this before, haven’t they?

The great thing about U2 is that they’re not ashamed to be rock stars, not afraid to make everything they do larger than life and in fact seem eager to turn every concert into “the concert of the decade.”

Wednesday night proved that point in Edmonton, as strong a show if not better than the band’s 1997 appearance in the same building – the concert of the last decade, and we seem to be missing a decade here. No matter. U2 is timeless.

The hit parade spanned 35 years and the myriad moods of U2, but the feel of this show was all in the moment.

With all the hype, massive production and electric stadium energy, the concert was surprisingly simple and intimate. Guitarist the Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. played in a relatively small space in the centre of the 50 metre “Space Station” that was topped by a humongous elasto-morphing, high definition video screen. With at least eight cameras catching every little detail of U2’s performance, every tic, grimace and smirk, you really felt like you were right there with the band. Best of all: you could see they were having fun. That has to count for a lot after
35 years.

Bono was a loose and gangly presence, striding around the enormous spiraling catwalks and moving bridges over a sea of lucky fans in the inner circle as he serenaded the audience. He urged us early, “Come on, City of Champions!” Nice he got Edmonton's nickname right this time. He talked about rugby, about “ice hockey,” which also seemed go over well with the crowd. He played with his melodies, pumped as much drama into his performance as he could – fully aware that all his flamboyant rock star moves could be taken as ironic. It doesn’t excuse excess, but it sure makes it a lot more fun.

Much appreciated was the various drips of Canadiana inserted into the show. At one point, Bono brought up a woman from the audience to recite the lyrics to Neil Young’s Heart of Gold as if they were poetry. Bono looked so relaxed he might as well be in his own living room. When he sang, his
power and passion were tremendous. This is the very definition of being “in the zone.”

Hearing 65,000 fans cheer their brains out is a thrill in itself. After an opening set from the Fray – the American band that everyone thinks is British and sounds like a cross between U2 and Coldplay (does every modern rock band with a piano have to get compared to Coldplay? Yes) – U2 band took
the stage around sunset to open with Even Better Than the Real Thing. Read into that what you want. The Edge’s distinctive chiming guitar led the way in I Will Follow, sounding as fresh as it did when it came out in 1980. Mysterious Ways brought the energy to an even higher level, something that would happen repeatedly throughout the night: Beautiful Day, Pride (In the Name of Love), Vertigo, each song much more than a mere song, but a stadium anthem that invites the mass singalongs that again are thrilling in themselves, just to be there. To elevate, as it were, rock songs into such grand and grandiose statements would seem absurd from anyone but U2.

Fourteen years since their last appearance in Edmonton, Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry have almost perfected the stadium rock experience. They’re not ashamed to make it as big as they possibly can – because that’s what we expect from these guys.

BY MIKE ROSS ,EDMONTON SUN

http://www.edmontonsun.com

Edmonton: Hitch-hiking and Concert

It was threatening to rain and once or twice it began to drizzle but in the end it held off right until the close of the show and, compared to Winnipeg, it even  felt quite warm. 
This being Canada, there was a serious sporting motif in the show tonight, references to ice hockey, rugby, American football and,  er,  hitchhiking...

'Edge and I used to play rugby,' remembered Bono. 'There's none of this dressing up as cars and crashing into people like in American Football. You play ice hockey...'

Judging by the reception to this innocent remark,  they don't just play it here, they live it. 'You won what? The first game, of course you did. One game up!'

As luck would have it, on his day off, Bono picked up some firsthand experience of the local ice hockey team, The Edmonton Oilers.
'I like people who play ice hockey, they stop for hitchhikers, I know this from experience. I was hitchhiking in Vancouver yesterday, actually I was! And this guy and his girlfriend picked me up. He was cool, an ice hockey player, his name was Gilbert Brule as it happens, I'm so grateful I've decided I want to be Gilbert Brule.(click here for the hitch-hiking tale)
Brule, being an Oiler, this led Bono to compare the rest of the band to  Oilers.
'Larry is more like the Mark Messier of the band, the dude gave us our first and only job.
'On my left, the Grant Fuhr of this band, need I say more? On the bass Adam Clayton Jnr...
'On my right, now who might he be? He's kind of great, the Great One. Who am I talking about? The Wayne Gretzky of U2. On lead guitar - The Edge!
'What do you want to play The Edge?'

All I Want Is You gave way to Stay as 65,000 Canadian fans joined in word-for-word and ahead of Beautiful Day a girl arrived on stage to read lyrics from Heart of Gold by a Canadian rock'n'roll legend Neil Young and Bono ended the song by returning to it: 'Keep me searching for a heart of gold...'

Scarlet, Walk On and One were a celebration of Aung San Suu Kyi and the continuing campaign to free those imprisoned for their political views in Burma. Some of that light drizzle at the end of City of Blinding Lights  gave us a snatch of Singing in the Rain but with Vertigo ('are you ready for lift-off?) this space station took off again and Edmonton was kissing the future.
Did we mention that the band were on fine form again tonight?  Unusually the set list was pretty  similar to the one in Winnipeg  but tonight Moment of Surrender was back and with a special dedication to the survivors of the fire in the Alberta town of Slave Lake.

“I have some people here from Slave Lake I’d like to dedicate my song to . Whoever it is you want to hold in your hearts, hold them in your heart.”

 Setlist 

Even Better Than The Real Thing

I Will Follow

Get On Your Boots

Magnificent

Mysterious Ways

Elevation

Until The End Of The World

All I Want Is You

Stay (Faraway, So Close!)

Beautiful Day / Heart Of Gold

Pride (In The Name Of Love)

Miss Sarajevo

Zooropa

City Of Blinding Lights / Singing In The Rain

Vertigo

Crazy Tonight

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Scarlet

Walk On / You’ll Never Walk Alone

One

Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow / Where The Streets Have No Name

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me

With Or Without You

Moment of Surrender

Picture gallery

www.u2.com/www.u2fanlife

Fans, U2 share the love

50,000 pack city’s biggest concert ever

That garish four-legged thing: they call it the claw, or the spaceship, or -- less fantastically -- the structure.

No matter what the name, the claw is, at 50 metres tall, the largest piece of rock 'n' roll furniture ever built. It is a looming aberration of olive-green skin pulled taut over scaffold bones and pierced by a spear of light.

t serves a purpose: its four talons shelter the stage and up to 2,000 fans, diehards who camped out for up to four days for the honour of being wrapped by its lurid embrace.

"The band wanted to get that intimate feeling," tour producer Jake Berry told a crowd of press at the Canad Inns Stadium on Saturday, as more than 100 workers scurried about the claw's skeleton. "If we build a big structure, then we can get the stadium to feel small."

The claw is predatory like that. It is arachnid, poised to swallow whole stadiums. It is also audacious, a fever dream pulled from the imaginations of four teen boys from the rough end of Dublin who dreamed they could be the biggest rock band in the world. Thirty-five years later, the echo of that reverie drove more than 50,000 people into Canad Inns Stadium on Sunday night for what was to be the biggest concert Winnipeg has ever hosted.

U2 360. The two-year tour is on track to rake in $700 million by the time it wraps up in July -- the most lucrative rock 'n' roll tour the world has ever seen.

That dream wasn't always so robust. The band woke up once, in 1989. That was when Bono, a.k.a. Bono Vox, a.k.a. Paul Hewson, stood on a stage near Dublin and told a stunned crowd it was time for U2 to "go away, and dream it all up again."

Fans feared they were being given the news of U2's demise. But having survived a bruising couple of years touring on The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum, what U2 really meant was: You want to see rock stars? Fine. We'll show you some bloody rock stars.

What followed: the electro shockwave of Achtung Baby. Leather, sunglasses, the brazen satire of Zoo TV. Bono as the Fly, Bono as a salivating demon, Bono as a caricature of everything the band, back in their days jamming in drummer Larry Mullen Jr.'s family kitchen in Dublin, didn't want to be. And they brought tens of millions of fans in on the joke. They would pretend to be the most arrogant rock stars; and fans would pretend to believe it. But the truth was closer to the heart.

"U2 makes us feel as though they like us. Like we mean something," said one woman, No. 75 in the crush of fans who lined up as early as 5 a.m. for a chance to surround the circular stage for which the tour is named. "And people like to be liked."

The dream sharpened and gained shape outside the Burton Cummings Theatre over the weekend. But it finally became lucid at about 8:30 p.m. on Sunday, under the watchful talons of the claw.

Denver rockers The Fray had wrapped up their 30-minute set, the floor was an ocean of anxiously bobbing heads. A screen wrapped around the claw's heart broadcast global facts: the time in Tel Aviv, the number of babies born this year, the tallest building in "Winipeg" and another fact about the, um, "state" of Manitoba.

Critics on Twitter scoffed; fans seemed inclined to give producers a pass. After all, dreams are always marked by idiosyncracies. Those would not be the ones that woke the dreamers. "Hello Winnipeg, with two Ns," Bono quipped, after leaping onto the stage while Edge struck out the opening chords of Even Better Than The Real Thing.

The crowd roared its approval -- and tens of thousands of hands raised towards the stage.

The illusion that you might touch them: This is what U2 360 Tour set out to achieve, and Bono, his slight frame swathed in sleek leather, set out to build it. Strutting out along the circular outer stage that ringed 'round the claw, Bono played to the camera as much as the crowd -- recognizing that with the bandmates' every shake and shimmy broadcast over the giant video screen, those two things were one and the same. As he purred the verses to Elevation, he grabbed a camera and pressed his cheek close to the lens; his rakish stubble could be spotted from the nosebleeds.

In the first half of the concert, the rig stayed static while the band cavorted through some of their greatest hits, including the elegant Magnificent -- one of two songs in the first half of the set drawn from their 2009 No Line On The Horizon, the album to which the tour is attached.

And they had tricks up their sleeve, too: As dusk fell, Bono pulled a trembling fan from the floor on stage, wrapped an arm around her shoulder, and asked her to read a passage from a piece of paper. She did, and the words suddenly became familiar: "And she looked at me with her big brown eyes and said... you ain't seen nothin' yet."

But none of us had seen nothin' yet, not really. There were greater things in store -- including things for which a newspaper's press time came far too early to see. Just before 10 p.m., as the sun slipped below the horizon, the claw's real beauty rolled out. In the fresh darkness, the video screen stretched downwards like a flickering funnel cloud; beneath this veil, the band crashed into overdrive.

And the fans, those 50,000 fans who made this quite likely the biggest show Winnipeg has ever hosted, raved right along with them. They stamped their feet to the blazing beats of Vertigo, shaking the upper deck and giving a roaring backdrop to Bono's chorus cry; as Edge picked out the cutting opening riff to Sunday Bloody Sunday, the stadium exploded, hanging on a lyric that was not just a plea, but a promise: tonight, they could be as one.

After all, isn't that the goal to which all humanitarians aspire? At press time, the singer was paying tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi. "She lived for the last 20 years under house arrest in her native country of Burma... but she's out now," Bono said, before tilting back his head and shouting a gospel call into the microphone. "Rejoice."

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 30, 2011 D1

www.winnipegfreepress.com

All Set for South America

In only 16 days, U2 will be reaching South American shores. Their first concert will be in Estadio Nacional, Santiago de Chile.









www.u2.com