"What Has 4 Legs, in the Round?"asks The New York Times about the stage of U2 360 ° Tour set up at Camp Nou, Barcelona. Willie Williams,U2´s stage designer, answers:
“Everyone who sees it says that it looks like something different.Tintin’s rocket. The War of the Worlds. Cactus. Octopus. Claw. Whenever it started to look like something, Mark and I would push it in another direction. But it does look as though it has escaped from a giant space aquarium.”
Playing in the round appealed. It is the best way of creating an illusion of intimacy in a crowd of up to 90,000 people, and will release some 20,000 extra seats in the space usually occupied by the stage. But it hadn’t seemed feasible for U2 before. The audience will also see live footage of the show on the conical screen. From ZooTV onward, screens have been the phallic symbols of rock tours. U2’s new screen consists of 500,000 pixels mounted on interlocking panels. It will sit still for most of the show, then stretch downward, distorting the images as the panels fragment.
It will take a day to install the screen, stage and kit at each stadium. As the steel structure requires four days, three versions have been commissioned. While one is in use, another will be under construction at the next venue and the third in transit, to squeeze as many shows as possible into the tour.
Spanish journalist Manuel Fuentes was escorted yesterday by Bono and Adam to visit the stage.
Bono confessed that when the dream of the stage for the new tour started, two years ago, he envisioned the "Sacred Family" by Gaudi. "The result is amazing," says the reporter. "Looking at the Claw from a close up makes the football stadium, Camp Nou, look small."
"If by the end of the gig, the people are still looking at the stage, something has gone wrong," confessed Bono and told the interviewer that they will play songs that they have never played live before.
The front man assured that every single detail has been cared for, especially the sound: "every tower has four times the habitual power."
"Why have you chosen Barcelona?" was the one million dollar question.
Adam Clayton answers:"Barcelona is a sea city, and we like that!" When he was asked about football, he says that " he´s not interested in any sport that has guys in shorts ". "and if there are girls?" Bono asked him. Adam´s face was self telling.
But while Bono, Edge and Adam have chosen to stay in their respective homes in the South of France during the first leg of the tour, Larry Mullen who is the member of U2 that has most minded his private life stays in Howth,Dublin and will commute.
"It is more stressed from a job point of view but it is less arduous from a family point of view," he explains. "There won't be as much pressure on the kids, which is a huge consideration."
Mullen has never encouraged his children to engage with the world of U2. "It's hard enough to come from Artane and see my children grow up in Howth -- it is a privileged and charmed life they lead," he says. "The idea that you would have them engaged with what goes on around the band, I just don't think it would be good for them. I like to keep it separate for them. I am interested in music, I like making music. But I want to be able to get on and have a relatively normal existence, not for myself, but for my kids. I am not normal, of course I am not. I live in this bubble. And I accept that about myself and I accept the idea that I may have to get photographed or get written about. But kids don't deserve that, they need to be protected.
Mullen says that for him, the music is the main element in the relationship between the four band members now. "I mean, when you bring children into the equation and when people are moving around, you know, we don't all live here all the time now because of the way the touring schedule is. You know, Edge is married to an American lady so he spends time in America with her family so it's not like the gang that it used to be."
Mullen, like the others, is nervous about the new tour. The 360 tour employs a revolutionary stage concept never before seen in stadia. It basically means that U2 will play on a round stage, in the middle of the stadium, with fans all around them. There is, as Bono will say more than once, "jeopardy". Or, as Mullen puts it: "The first night can be amazing, but it can be a washout ... that's the way the shit goes."
sources:www.nytimes.com//www.elperiodico.com/www.independent.ie
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