oliveu2cm
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
Typed this out.. Enjoy!
"10 Tours That Changed Music.. Q salutes the tours that really mattered"
-Q Magazine, March 2002
Beatles: 1966 World Tour
LL Cool Jay: DefJame Tour
Nirvana: SUb Pop tour
Madonna: Blond Ambition
Family Values Tour featuring Korn, LImp Bizkit,
Rammstein, Ice Cube, Orgy
The Rolling Stones: 1972 North American Tour
Rollercoaster Tour featuring THe Jesus and Mary Chain,
Blur, Dinosaur Jr, My Blood Valentine
Sex Pistols: Anarchy Tour
Bob Dylan: The Rolling Thunder Revue
U2: Elevation
On the evening of 24 March 2001, a bunch of nondescript guys ambled onto the stage of the National Car Rental Center, near Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. The house lights were still on, as the rock'n'roll ceremony was effectively knocked out of kilter. This wasn't, as it first seemed, four members of the road crew walking onstage for some extra adjustments before show time. It was U2 at the start of an epochal tour, messing with decorum, starting the job at a workaday pitch.
The band had actually rehearsed this move ahead of their Elevation Tour debut. There was humility in the gesture, but also a deal of arrogance. Big rock bands were a rarity, and the surviving ones weren't full of confidence. But U2 had signaled their fresh intent on the album aTYCLB. Their music and their media encounters were perpetually on-message. In the face of cynicism, torpor and confusion, these people were exceedingly high on hope.
The mission statement, articulated by show designer Willie Williams, was Forward To Basics. In part, it was a reaction to the PopMart Tour which had copped so much bad publicity in 1997. That had been under-rehearsed and over conceptualized, hurled onto the stadium circuit off the back of an album that hadn't been finished to the band's satisfaction. In contrast, Elevation was a controlled process, flagged up by a series of wham-bam club shows in Paris, NY, and London, while U2 were being lauded at the Brits and the Grammys.
Irony was largely absent, as Bono explained just ahead of the tour: "Now the real challenge is to turn up without a mask. And I must tell you, it's not as easy to take the shades off as I thought it would be." Interestingly, The Fly, a one-time tour de force, didn't initially function in this new regime, though there was some compensation from Stay, which reinvented itself as a lovely acoustic ballad.
The first third of the Elevation show was monochrome. As an encore, the band developed a routine around BTBS, beaming film of Charlton Heston, making his case for the gun lobby, onto a backdrop. This lead to somescattershot images of arms abuse around the world as Bono acted out the aprt of Mark Chapman, outside the Dakota Building, fixing to finish John Lennon.
The heart-shaped ramp at the front of the stage was hollowed out at Adam Clayton's suggestion, allowing the keenest
of fans a special vantage point. This encouraged a community of fervent followers to take up residency at every show-
the Zootopians, who maintained a surreal discourse with Bono, second-guessing his actions and forcing him to keep his
style loose and varied.
However, the new U2 songs demanded to be sung straight. Stuck was for Michael Hutchence and, belatedly, Paula
Yates. IALW, once a hangover lyric, became an adieu to JR - the last song that the singer had heard before he died.
POE name-checked victims of the Omagh bombing. Most importantly, Kite grew into a deeply affecting conversation between Bono, his ailing dad and his own children. The blackest of jokes in the U2 camp was that maybe they should start a new movement, Drop The Death.
As the tour progressed, the celebrity guest list became increasingly diverse. Michael Stipe and Robbie Williams were spotted checking out the competition in Atlanta and Anaheim respectively. But it was Dennis Hoper, Meg Ryan, Neil Diamond and Queen Noor of Jordan that boosted the celeb count on the last three nights at the Pond in Anaheim. Meanwhile, in NY, Tiger Woods and Christy Turlington were among those rubbing shoulders for the second show at MSG.
Taking a break in August, the band embarked on a whirlwind party: flying from Barcelona to Ibiza at 1am to celebrate Edge's 40th birthday, before traveling to the UK the following day.
On a more serious note, Bono was still busily plugging Third World debt relief on behalf of Jubilee 2000 He met with frustrating circumstances at the G8 Summit in Genoa and genned up on the Global AIDS Alliance.
Bob, Bono's father, died on 21 August. That night's Earl's Court show went ahead, as Bono grieved before his public. Then he brought it home to Slane castle in Ireland four days later- out doors with 80,000 empathetic souls. During One, Bob Hewson's image was beamed onto the screens, while his son mused over the words to When Will I see You Again. At the same venue the following week, U2 celebrated the Republic of Ireland's football victory over Holland. This remarkable change of tone marked the end of Elevation's European leg.
They returned to America after 11 Sept. and built towards a three-night residency at MSG, NY. The bands' most malleable song, One, was now accompanied by the names of the city's recent dead, projected on the walls and roof. Elevation's benidictory track, WO, took on a new import here, and a number of the city's firemen were invited to pace around the ramp. Dozens of big name acts were calling off tours, but U2 kept on, and will doubtless hold the long-term affections of many Americans as a result.
Sure, this was ammunition for the U2 detractors, who saw this sincere stuff as a return to earnest '80s mullethood and concluded that the band had merely been slumming in an ambivalent, arty world for a decade. Bono countered that they'd actually grown up, dealing with those doubts and hesitations en route, and were therefore more defined because of the trip.
"This tour," he argued, "feels like the completion of what we are as a group. The band has a mannish quality that you wouldn't fuck with, you know?"
It was their most successful campaign since the The Joshua Tree tour. Back in 1987, U2 were experiencing the G-force of intense fame and, consequently, their recollections were blurred. Hence the extra sweetness of the Elevation revue, with those same old schoolfriends locking into a fine, compassionate groove, clearing savoring the details.
"It's much more interesting when rock-n-roll breaks out of the box, its head filled with big ideas," bono mused during the European leg. "Some of them are nonsense and some are fun, and some are powerful, world-changing ideas like, say, Jubilee 2000. I just felt, right now, we're *it*. I dunno about last week, maybe not the week before, but right now, we're it."
It was the highest-grossing tour of 2001, taking almost 100 million (pounds) in business. The critics mostly liked it, while many of the band's peers watched with envy. Before Elevation, there was a sense that the big rock tour was an exhausted art form. But U2 came through with a revival show that worked in spite of all those received forebodings.
At the time of writing, there is a suggestion that the tour will continue, possibly back into Europe. In the throes of such uncommon times, nobody wants to hit the descend button just yet.
------------------
Eyes in a moon of blindness
* U2 Take Me Higher *
The Macphisto Society
[This message has been edited by oliveu2cm (edited 03-17-2002).]
"10 Tours That Changed Music.. Q salutes the tours that really mattered"
-Q Magazine, March 2002
Beatles: 1966 World Tour
LL Cool Jay: DefJame Tour
Nirvana: SUb Pop tour
Madonna: Blond Ambition
Family Values Tour featuring Korn, LImp Bizkit,
Rammstein, Ice Cube, Orgy
The Rolling Stones: 1972 North American Tour
Rollercoaster Tour featuring THe Jesus and Mary Chain,
Blur, Dinosaur Jr, My Blood Valentine
Sex Pistols: Anarchy Tour
Bob Dylan: The Rolling Thunder Revue
U2: Elevation
On the evening of 24 March 2001, a bunch of nondescript guys ambled onto the stage of the National Car Rental Center, near Ft. Lauderdale, Fl. The house lights were still on, as the rock'n'roll ceremony was effectively knocked out of kilter. This wasn't, as it first seemed, four members of the road crew walking onstage for some extra adjustments before show time. It was U2 at the start of an epochal tour, messing with decorum, starting the job at a workaday pitch.
The band had actually rehearsed this move ahead of their Elevation Tour debut. There was humility in the gesture, but also a deal of arrogance. Big rock bands were a rarity, and the surviving ones weren't full of confidence. But U2 had signaled their fresh intent on the album aTYCLB. Their music and their media encounters were perpetually on-message. In the face of cynicism, torpor and confusion, these people were exceedingly high on hope.
The mission statement, articulated by show designer Willie Williams, was Forward To Basics. In part, it was a reaction to the PopMart Tour which had copped so much bad publicity in 1997. That had been under-rehearsed and over conceptualized, hurled onto the stadium circuit off the back of an album that hadn't been finished to the band's satisfaction. In contrast, Elevation was a controlled process, flagged up by a series of wham-bam club shows in Paris, NY, and London, while U2 were being lauded at the Brits and the Grammys.
Irony was largely absent, as Bono explained just ahead of the tour: "Now the real challenge is to turn up without a mask. And I must tell you, it's not as easy to take the shades off as I thought it would be." Interestingly, The Fly, a one-time tour de force, didn't initially function in this new regime, though there was some compensation from Stay, which reinvented itself as a lovely acoustic ballad.
The first third of the Elevation show was monochrome. As an encore, the band developed a routine around BTBS, beaming film of Charlton Heston, making his case for the gun lobby, onto a backdrop. This lead to somescattershot images of arms abuse around the world as Bono acted out the aprt of Mark Chapman, outside the Dakota Building, fixing to finish John Lennon.
The heart-shaped ramp at the front of the stage was hollowed out at Adam Clayton's suggestion, allowing the keenest
of fans a special vantage point. This encouraged a community of fervent followers to take up residency at every show-
the Zootopians, who maintained a surreal discourse with Bono, second-guessing his actions and forcing him to keep his
style loose and varied.
However, the new U2 songs demanded to be sung straight. Stuck was for Michael Hutchence and, belatedly, Paula
Yates. IALW, once a hangover lyric, became an adieu to JR - the last song that the singer had heard before he died.
POE name-checked victims of the Omagh bombing. Most importantly, Kite grew into a deeply affecting conversation between Bono, his ailing dad and his own children. The blackest of jokes in the U2 camp was that maybe they should start a new movement, Drop The Death.
As the tour progressed, the celebrity guest list became increasingly diverse. Michael Stipe and Robbie Williams were spotted checking out the competition in Atlanta and Anaheim respectively. But it was Dennis Hoper, Meg Ryan, Neil Diamond and Queen Noor of Jordan that boosted the celeb count on the last three nights at the Pond in Anaheim. Meanwhile, in NY, Tiger Woods and Christy Turlington were among those rubbing shoulders for the second show at MSG.
Taking a break in August, the band embarked on a whirlwind party: flying from Barcelona to Ibiza at 1am to celebrate Edge's 40th birthday, before traveling to the UK the following day.
On a more serious note, Bono was still busily plugging Third World debt relief on behalf of Jubilee 2000 He met with frustrating circumstances at the G8 Summit in Genoa and genned up on the Global AIDS Alliance.
Bob, Bono's father, died on 21 August. That night's Earl's Court show went ahead, as Bono grieved before his public. Then he brought it home to Slane castle in Ireland four days later- out doors with 80,000 empathetic souls. During One, Bob Hewson's image was beamed onto the screens, while his son mused over the words to When Will I see You Again. At the same venue the following week, U2 celebrated the Republic of Ireland's football victory over Holland. This remarkable change of tone marked the end of Elevation's European leg.
They returned to America after 11 Sept. and built towards a three-night residency at MSG, NY. The bands' most malleable song, One, was now accompanied by the names of the city's recent dead, projected on the walls and roof. Elevation's benidictory track, WO, took on a new import here, and a number of the city's firemen were invited to pace around the ramp. Dozens of big name acts were calling off tours, but U2 kept on, and will doubtless hold the long-term affections of many Americans as a result.
Sure, this was ammunition for the U2 detractors, who saw this sincere stuff as a return to earnest '80s mullethood and concluded that the band had merely been slumming in an ambivalent, arty world for a decade. Bono countered that they'd actually grown up, dealing with those doubts and hesitations en route, and were therefore more defined because of the trip.
"This tour," he argued, "feels like the completion of what we are as a group. The band has a mannish quality that you wouldn't fuck with, you know?"
It was their most successful campaign since the The Joshua Tree tour. Back in 1987, U2 were experiencing the G-force of intense fame and, consequently, their recollections were blurred. Hence the extra sweetness of the Elevation revue, with those same old schoolfriends locking into a fine, compassionate groove, clearing savoring the details.
"It's much more interesting when rock-n-roll breaks out of the box, its head filled with big ideas," bono mused during the European leg. "Some of them are nonsense and some are fun, and some are powerful, world-changing ideas like, say, Jubilee 2000. I just felt, right now, we're *it*. I dunno about last week, maybe not the week before, but right now, we're it."
It was the highest-grossing tour of 2001, taking almost 100 million (pounds) in business. The critics mostly liked it, while many of the band's peers watched with envy. Before Elevation, there was a sense that the big rock tour was an exhausted art form. But U2 came through with a revival show that worked in spite of all those received forebodings.
At the time of writing, there is a suggestion that the tour will continue, possibly back into Europe. In the throes of such uncommon times, nobody wants to hit the descend button just yet.
------------------
Eyes in a moon of blindness
* U2 Take Me Higher *
The Macphisto Society
[This message has been edited by oliveu2cm (edited 03-17-2002).]
