Review (to be posted in our webzine):
Take Off Your Boots: Wonder and Wander at the U2 Revival in Nashville
Tennessee summers get steamy hot, and when U2’s sort of homecoming finally came to Music City on the first Saturday in July, we knew we were in for a scorcher, with temperatures reaching and staying in the mid-90s. For the Irish quartet’s second gig ever in the fabled capitol city of the Volunteer state, fans were willing to sweat it out in close proximity to thousands of others as the unschooled rock and roll preacherman known as Bono once again turned Saturday night into Sunday morning.
As the show grew closer, I enjoyed and joined the feverish buzz around town as well as on Twitter and the fan forums, anticipating an “It Might Get Wow” kind of moment to get stuck in, to shake up the standard and beautifully scripted setlist. In my mind, a special-guest saturated superjam seemed in order, perhaps involving former tour-openers Kings of Leon or Edge’s fellow guitar god Jack White joining the band onstage for an It Might Get Loud-reunion rendition of “The Weight.” Of course, I knew Bono had a few other Nashville connections that might prompt extended shout-outs or other unusual alterations in the two-hour-and-fifteen-minute itinerary.
But rather than get treated to “The Weight,” we got to wait, as we found our cheap, sidestage endzone seats in full view of the setting sun. While Florence Welch is a brave and beautiful diva whose striking voice more than fills a stadium, the conditions made it challenging to fully appreciate her opening the show. Uncomfortable doesn’t quite describe the last couple of hours before U2’s set, awash in anxious perspiration and too amped for meditation on the deeper meaning of the night.
When U2 finally took the stage, we found an aisle place to stand closer to the action and were entirely ready for God’s mysterious ways to remind us why we were there and relieve any obsession with our creaturely discomfort. The opening Achtung attack of early-90s tracks surely stole our attention and prompted Bono’s first speechifying of the night, a righteous rant about peace, freedom, and democracy during “Until The End Of The World.”
Dipping back to the very back of the catalog, a ferocious “I Will Follow” was filled with lots of new lyrical twists I’d never noticed before and a punk-rock passion that made it only fitting for Bono to pull the inked and shirtless fan “Tattoo Dan” onstage to wail with him during the final “your eyes” refrain.
Having heard “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” at several stops on the 360 tour, I was ready for the stunning stretch early in the song where Bono goes silent and lets the entire stadium sing. While I’ve always both listened to and joined this choir with the open heart of my off-pitch participation, I was actually a little disappointed that I wasn’t moved to goosebumps or tears as I often am at this part of the concert. Faithful as we fans who follow this band to multiple dates are, we tend to raise the emotional bar of our expectations. Truth be told, I am not sure our perspectives are particularly fair—for us to constantly notice or even be too critical of the concert’s choreographed aspects—especially when we’re surrounded by folks experiencing this brand of communal joy for the first and possibly only time.
Perhaps the quick “our friend Cowboy Jack in-the-house” nod at about two minutes in (referencing the band’s Rattle and Hum period colleague who introduced U2 to the legendary Johnny Cash) could have served as my clue, but no Nashville rumors or high hopes could have prepared me for the extended snippet of 1993’s “The Wanderer” that concluded “I Still Haven’t Found.” Originally an epic Zooropa collaboration with the late Johnny Cash, and appearing live in a proper U2 concert for the first-time ever, Bono gave us the gravity of his best, deep-throated Cash growl as his rendering of the song’s apocalyptic and biblical narrative made time stand still for a few stanzas of music history in Music City.
After the deep valley of Cash-mimic slipped into a smoother, high-pitched Bono mountaintop for the last few seconds of the song, the frontman got emotional and raspy to talk a little story from the mic: “Wow, we had some special times with Johnny and June here in Nashville over the years. I feel like I should take my shoes off when in his company—beautiful, beautiful, beautiful spirit. Next time, we’re going out to Hendersonville, Tennessee to say goodbye.”
Nothing about the crazed consumeristic postmodernism of the band’s 1990s experiments or their current carnivalesque equivalent in the gaudy “Get On Your Boots” could let us in the rustic sound of the rugged song Bono once described as the “antidote” to all that. Based in part on the Old Testatment’s book of Ecclesiastes and narrated by a character called the Preacher whose trajectory of sin to salvation resembles the real-life Man in Black, Bono revealed to us all in Nashville that some songs are too sacred to sing every night and reminded us of the abiding spiritual truth that some places and people are so holy that they require us to take off our boots.
To say that to be a part of that special moment (a mere seven songs into the show!) made my night would be an understatement. But the honest underside to this confession is that after this, the rest of show seemed to blaze by in a steamy and sober but foggy blur.
You couldn’t drink enough water to stay hydrated, and after one of too many trips to the bathroom, we ended up just standing in the concourse by a misting fan outside the First Aid station. We know some people had to leave the show on stretchers, passed out under duress from the cramped coziness of the stadium and punishing Bonnaroo-quality heat. As we watched dozens of exhausted fans head to the exits of their own accord during “One,” we pondered ditching and reluctantly made ourselves stay, still hoping for one more surprise.
Not even the always stratospheric strains of “Where The Streets Have No Name” could elevate my weary mood or soothe my suddenly gloomy mind, sad that my sixth and final show of the 2009-2011 run of the 360 tour was coming to a close. But things started to change when Bono started his concluding rap before “Moment of Surrender.” I’d been waiting for more Nashville-specific testimony since “The Wanderer,” and we really got it.
Bono began by namechecking folks from the contemporary Christian music scene—people like Michael W. Smith, Charlie Peacock, Amy Grant, and Jars of Clay—referencing the positive changes that came after what was dubbed the “Nashville Summit” during Bono’s visit here on his World AIDS Week Tour in 2002. Before that time, according to Bono, “There was no one on AIDS drugs on the continent of Africa. Now, because of the United States of America, four million lives have been saved and have been put on those anti-retroviral drugs.”
Then, what had been a tribute to the late Clarence Clemons for the last few shows, became a deeply cosmic and simultaneously Christological benediction hymn. “You’ve heard of the miracle of the loaves and fishes,” Bono preached. “Well, we’re going to make this space station disappear. We’re going to turn this place into the Milky Way. Would you take out your phones? Turn these lights off Willie. There’s our little planet in the corner—our little bluish planet spinning around the sun. Some people find it harder than others to hold on. This song belongs to them. It’s the theme of our whole show. This song is called ‘Moment of Surrender.’ Thank you, Lord.”
As we tied ourselves with wire to the final thread of the set, I hung on Bono’s every word. For too long in my 20s and 30s, I’d been falling into black holes and worshipping at altars of some very dark stars. In my early 40s, the band of my teens helped pull me back via the stations of the cross. Couple Bono’s poetry about addiction and redemption with Edge’s perfect keyboard and guitar, and we have the sonic salve to the scarier and seedier sides of life inside skin on this spinning globe. As Edge moaned the final “Whoa, oh, ohhhhs,” Bono started chanting rap-style, “Where were you when they crucified my Lord,” over and over and over again.
As the crowd roared and the band prepared for its final bow, Bono kept talking: “Thanks for your patience, unbelievable people. I don’t know what’s happening to this band. Thank you.” Then, with the other three heading to the ramps, Bono kneeled into the crowd. Apparently, a man had been holding a sign that said “Blind Guitar Player,” front row center, for the entire night, and now, Bono was talking to him.
Bono asked the man, “What do you want to play?” Then, “Get a guitar for this dude. Gents, we have a surprise guest. Give him my guitar, little acoustic guitar.” After Bono and crew helped the blind brother onstage, they fit him with Bono’s green “Irish Falcon” guitar, the one played during “The Fly” and that has the words “The Goal Is Soul” etched upon its body.
Putting “dude” in front of the mic, Bono asked, “What’s your wife’s name?” Then, speaking his only words, he replied, “My wife’s name is Andrea,” followed by a long pause, followed by “I’m real nervous man,” followed by the familiar opening of “All I Want Is You.” For a split-second, it was just Bono and blind “dude” tentatively treading water on top of the song, but then suddenly, they were joined by the rest of the band and the entire stadium screaming and singing along. And in my case, I was finally crying the tears that didn’t come on cue earlier, turning away from the stage to stare into the oh-so soft and also wet eyes of my sweetheart.
No, Bono didn’t go as far as laying-on-hands and restoring eyesight to our special guest. But at this point, I doubt any of us would have been surprised had that happened. But Bono did give his new friend a particular green guitar to take home to hopefully play many more love songs on.
There was a time when U2 really didn’t write romantic love songs and even resisted the idea. But in a town that’s got heart-soaked ballads dripping from the public fountains and infused into the drinking water, ending with such lyrical intimacy seemed more than fitting. Originally a love song to Bono’s wife Ali, “All I Want Is You” became a love song for lovers everywhere, performed that night by a group whose even larger love for the world could no longer be contained by a college football stadium. After such a show, we had to take that love with us back into the Nashville streets, where we could take off our boots and walk on holy ground.