I've only read one negative review. Which is pretty good for UK magazines and U2.
Yeah - I haven't read a U2 specific review that's negative, they're all either positive or 'did the job', but in many of the general whole-Glastonbury-weekend reviews, you'll find it's generally more negative. The difference is probably that the people assigned to review U2 know U2, while the general reviewers maybe not so much. Some of the things they complain about give that away. Like saying Bono's snippeting was an example of how 'desperate' he was to win over the crowd. Obviously if you know U2, you know that was certainly no Glastonbury thing.
As for effects, fireworks and confetti is a little old in the 21st century. But I agree they had bigger lights and they certainly help with the crowd.
One thing they did well - and had people talking all weekend - was the projections/lighting up of the actual Pyramid. Could have worked for U2 with Streets (when I saw the setup for it, I just assumed that was what it was there for), or if they had done something 'party' like Mofo or Discotheque (or God forbid, even Crazy Tonight) it could have worked really well with those. But the lasers/fireworks/confetti, people like it, but it's not genius and has nothing to do with the quality of performance. Only way it might have helped U2 is in giving them reach and 'warmth' when their presentation was quite small and 'cold' on a wet, cold, awful night. If you're up the back, you're only casually interested to begin with, you can't hear a thing and you're getting drenched, maybe some of that might have helped. As it turned out, if you were one of those people, it sounds like you left about halfway through.
YouTube - Coldplay perform Every Teardrop is a Waterfall live at Glastonbury 2011
Personally I preferred Damien Hirst's graphics on EBTTRT (can they hire this guy for visuals on their next tour?)
You know who he is right? I don't think you 'hire' him, I think you commission him, and it costs you half your budget.
Damien Hirst sale breaks art auction record, raking in £70.5 million in its first day - Telegraph
Although he is a friend of the bands, has donated stuff to charity auctions Bono has run, and I read somewhere that Edge is a big collector of his stuff. I really liked those visuals too. BBC footage doesn't capture them well. The opening sequence of the fly larvae was a 'confronting' opening - the whole Even Better intro, from the end of Space Oddity to Larry kicking in, was what could have looked like maggots crawling over a carcass or something, but the rest of it was stunning (and the girl was cute as sin.)
Do agree thought that the crowd needed to see the band earlier.
The whole "we must have our own director" thing is something I think backfired a bit as well. A lot of the tight footage of the band early on might have been to avoid the protest (unnecessary - it was tiny), and later might have been because the rain was coming in sideways and thus covering camera lenses, but missing out on so many wider shots and crowd shots was a shame. Especially during The Fly. Not once catching that wide shot of all the screens flickering as per ZooTV was a real shame. I liked how in the interview afterwards, Zane Lowe says something sarcastic like "Great direction guys, lots of nice wide shots." I'm sure there were a few BBC noses out of joint with that demand.
No Line did tank...but I doubt even the greatest perfomance of all time at Glastonbury could change that*. Eavis said he'd been asking U2 to play for years.
Not 'change', no. But it's about combating an opinion. Like rushing the 80s Best Of out (and Sweetest Thing single) was in part to combat the mostly US-centric prevalent opinion of 'too weird' or whatever, I think in part getting up there at the great leveling stage of Glastonbury and putting the songs at the forefront was about combating the prevalent opinion of 'too bloated', and for a younger generation, 'completely irrelevant'.
I'm hoping for a different once-in-a-lifetime gig though. The London Olympics opening ceremony. How's that for a huge audience worldwide ?
Nah, huge audience, but we've seen that sort of thing before. It would be closest to the Super Bowl thing. Two or three highly staged, highly choreographed songs that everyone has heard a billion times before. Beautiful Day, Something Else, rent-a-crowd on the field waving flags from all nations and oh-so-sincere world coming together blah blah. Great opportunity to reach a ridiculously huge audience, but it wouldn't give anyone a new or different opinion of U2, wouldn't necessarily have any effect on them.
It's not the same as the opportunity Glastonbury offered - smaller audience, but targeted. A whole U2 set straight to the demographic that is least interested, or has the worst perception of them? Great opportunity. An 'Olympic' gig alongside, I dunno, Take That? Or a Glastonbury gig alongside contemporaries they have spawned like Coldplay, and contemporaries they are seen to be tracking well behind, like Radiohead? If you're talking about proving a point - the Glastonbury opportunity wins by some margin.
And it's kinda what the negative expectation is anyway. That these days U2 are more of a Choreographed Olympic Opening Ceremony Legends Band than a Working For It Current Glastonbury Band. Good to play against that.
*that said, I wonder what the setlist would be like previous year, had Bono's back not interferred. 2010 shows in Europe featured some brand new songs...
I said a page or so back, Willie said 2010 was going to be 'three acts'. Act 1: 80s Anthems (opening with Streets), Act 2: ZooTV Opening Run, Act 3: The Present. That would have given it a different feel (and almost certainly better pacing, IMO), but I think the only major difference song-wise would be in 'The Present.' I sincerely doubt they would have played any of those new songs, but 2010 might have seen a Crazy Tonight or something slip in there.
They needed the band on those screens at the start especially when you bear in mind most of the crowd can't see the stage whether it's because of distance or bloody flags
I don't think I saw a band member until Mysterious Ways and we were only by the mixing desk
