lazarus
Blue Crack Supplier
Songs of Spherender
Songs of Career-ender
Songs of Spherender
Excellent point about the hold up on the release. We did think it was supposed to be out around the time of the book release in November, so yea - maybe they've just delayed everything a bit to let Larry heal up.Yeah, that sounds like a solid guess, @headache
There's also the chance that this year was meant to be generally way busier - at one point the timeline was supposedly SoS in November '22, new album March '23, stadium tour summer '23. It could be that they realised new album promotion and a stadium tour were unfeasible with Larry's injuries, so they pushed SoS to the new album's march slot, and the stadium tour back a full year to '24, whilst feeling confident that Vegas was still workable given it was set for later in the year anyway.
I still wouldn't be surprised if SoS' connection to Vegas is primarily focused on promotion. I could see maybe a 'mini set' like the E-stage on the I&E tour, 2 or 3 old war horses that they perhaps feel are getting a little tired in their current form or can afford to drop from the proper set (Pride, WoWY) getting the SoS treatment, whilst the vast majority of the show has the standard full band, stadium rock sound. I also bet they'll play the lead single from the next proper album at the Vegas shows, but that the album itself won't be out until November at the earliest.
so i have a hypothesis - which is, of course, an educated guess. but i guess if i get this wrong you can also discount any other hypothesis i might ever have. anyways...
perhaps the band wanted to do a quick little spin around the globe (i.e. US and Europe) in support of Songs of Surrender... nothing serious, a couple of quick stops in the major markets.
but Larry? the band may have plans, but he's not touring this year.
so, welp, that's out then isn't it?
so what do they do? bono adds a few more stops on his reading rainbow tour and news comes out that they might want to add some SOS stuff to the Vegas shows.
so perhaps we misread larry's quotes right from the start. maybe there was something else being bandied around, related specifically to Songs of Surrender, that larry's medical issues put the kybosh on?
just a hunch.
From the Smartless interview:
Edge showed Sean Hayes venue renderings for Vegas, Bono is officially non-committal but bullish. “You are a news network now, ‘cause that’s breaking news.
We haven’t signed off on it but if we do, if we do sign off on this I will say that if we can pull off what we’re talking about, it’s not like anything we’ve done before. It’s not like anything Las Vegas has ever seen before.
If this happens it will be really extraordinary. And again, I don’t want to… I shouldn’t be…
Blame it on Edge…”
i mean... is, like, 1 dozen dates really a tour
Definitely not a tour, though it won't surprise me if/when U2 calls it one.
It'd be fun(ny) if they leaned into Popmart's shaky launch and positioned the run of shows as a redemption arc to "get Vegas right" or some Bonoism.
also they should play Discotheque with the Sphere video walls as the inside of the ball
also they should play Discotheque with the Sphere video walls as the inside of the ball
the outside of the venue is covered in screens as well, so, uh, yea - if they don't turn the place into a fucking lemon at some point i'm gonna ask to speak to U2's manager.
Do they even have one right now?