HelloAngel
ONE love, blood, life
By Dave Mance
2005.09
I shot the second Boston U2 show at the Fleet Center on May 26th as press, meaning that instead of nips of contraband whiskey and excited set list speculation with my U2-head friend Gendron, pre-show hours were spent in a white, windowless backstage room with members of the working media. This is not a complaint by any means, but is meant to point out the lack of magic and irresponsibility journalistic officialdom necessitates.
A few of the photographers, mainly the young ones from college newspapers, carried themselves with a sense of wonder and excitement, but the vast majority, including the stalwarts from the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and both AP's (apparently there's a local and a national branch of the Associated Press, both of which were compelled to send photographers—either that or some fan got creative), were marked in their ho-humness.
For those of you unfamiliar with the working press, I've found this is the rule rather than the exception. Like soldiers, members of the media are taught at an early age to become calloused and indifferent. They must, after all, never let their emotions get in the way of a story or a picture. You can decide for yourself whether this is good or bad.
But getting back to the show (and this story), me, the other photojournalists and the white windowless room; because what happened next was noteworthy and here it is:
A press liaison came down and told us exactly what was going to happen next. She detailed the first three songs of the show in remarkable clarity, telling us where the band would be standing, what color lights would be flashing, what sounds the musicians would be making and what poses Bono would be striking. She gave us approximate running lengths, told us where the security guards would be, where the good angles were, when the leaf blower man would come for the confetti, how, typically, the crowd would extend their hands in the fulfillment of proto-rock concert behavior and where one could find a gauntlet through which the hands would frame the shot. She told us when Bono would hug The Edge and when he would make eye contact with us. She promised us good whites during "Beautiful Day" and apologized for the reds in "Vertigo." She handed everyone earplugs. Then she said that we had three songs before we were out of there, no exceptions.
Sure enough, everything she predicted came true, including a firm hand on my elbow and a curt "let’s go" as I craned my neck and dragged my heels for "Gloria" (song number four). Needless to say, by "in-te-domine" I was in the elevator with the rest of the photographers and a stainless steel dining cart.
I tell you this because it is the reality behind an orchestrated performance. Every single one of us who saw a U2 show, regardless of the city it was in, saw the same posture for the first three songs. Hipsters with vague notions of "indie-cred" who love Death Cab for Cutie and the Decemberists may find the information distasteful but this isn't my intended point.
I'm interested, however, in what you and I as U2 fans should do with this information. Or I guess, more to the point, what this orchestration says about us. Rather than insinuate that the band shouldn't be so calculated (Why not? Careful image control has made them rich; plus, it's great spectacle!), I'd rather wonder why we desire it to be so. In a Living Colour moment (20-somethings will get the reference), I'm calling out the cult of personality and wondering how we're all blissfully a part of something so superficial (I mean this with genuine curiosity).
To begin, let's get beyond "cool" and "disaffected." If you're such a person, please stop reading and report immediately to your nearest media outlet where you and your ilk can get paid for joyless indifference.
But moving on to us: the converted worshiping at the spectacle of U2, throwing our hands in the air as we have observed is appropriate, singing with the off-key urgency of religious evangelicals at a Billy Graham show, all of us, every one, marching to the drum beat of manufactured images and cliché pomp—how do we correlate this with individuality? Or with age? (Maybe some of you have felt the same feeling of dread seeing Mick Jagger strut around lately looking less like a little red rooster and more like an enfeebled cock that needs to be put down; the dread coming not so much in relation to Mick, but rather, in the projection that someday U2 will be the Stones and we'll be, gasp, our parents paying to see this painful image.)
Can we just write it off as a fun thing to do, content with universal notions of commonality and a residual group-dynamic impulse left over from when we were packs of monkeys swinging through the trees? Or is there more to it?
Why do we put rock stars, or any "stars" for that matter, on a pedestal? Why, every tour, do we covet the image of Bono picking a svelte and (more often times than not) beautiful young woman out of the crowd and dancing, oblivious to the increasingly Nabokovian undercurrents of such an act? Why do we cheer loudest when Bono and Edge duel at the end of "Until the End of the World," even when we know it's coming? What separates us from the teenyboppers at a Jessica Simpson show who cheer when she and the mimbo she plucks from the crowd kiss (authorial postulate, I've actually never been to a Jessica Simpson show)?
The more I thought about this (while I'm veering here in the narrative these questions are by no means rhetorical, do write in with answers please), the more I began to reflect on the fact that what's paradoxical here is that through this very careful orchestration U2 has convinced us that we know them somehow even if we're intelligent enough to know that everything we see is an act. Somehow the band members have convinced us of soul through window dressing, that the mannequins are alive.
Through carefully constructed words and carefully constructed images, they've portrayed themselves as people we can relate to. But we know them only through stories, through videos, abstractly through causes, from snippets of interviews. The orchestration of the show's first three songs was only the tip of the iceberg—the manufactured identity is omnipresent, it's the only reason (unless you're originally from 1970s Dublin) that we know them at all. I do not doubt the image they construct as much as I'm curious as to why it makes us feel so good to deify, in a way, their spectacle.
You can't write it off as simply the music or else you and I would be content to hear "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" in all its digitized glory from the comfort of our homes. Scalpers wouldn't be scamming folks for $2,000 a ticket on eBay. Why them? Would it work if they looked differently? Why do you only love them the best?
I'm enough of journalist, or a storyteller anyway, to feel that I've cheated those of you looking for resolution out a proper story by ending things with a pile of questions. So I will go on to say this. The next day, after the pictures had been taken, long after the show had stopped ringing in my ears, I was walking around Boston when, puff, out of a dream, there were Bono and Edge. They were leaving their hotel and had stopped briefly to sign some autographs for the handful of fans waiting outside. I approached them. Where the photo-pit experience had presented me with a staged reality right off of a video screen, this was a different ball game altogether. I stared.
I have heard that the first impression one often absorbs when confronted with his or her idols is of that figure's smallness, my experience was no different. Without the lights, makeup, stage and Bono Boots, these two giants in my mind seemed humanely small, almost fragile. I was just as close to them at the show and yet I hadn't noticed this amidst the lights and confetti.
Somebody in the back said, "Bono, there's a child here who wants to say hello . . ." and Bono quipped, "I hate children." To wit, everyone laughed.
By then I had made my way to the front of the pack and was effectively standing in a line of autograph seekers; this dawned on me only when Edge was there, his eyes looking into mine, placid and calm, with a professional "Can I help you?" implication.
And then it was a little uncomfortable because I realized I didn't want anything. I tried to think of something to say but I realized that there, too, I was vacant. The problem was that I only knew these people through the spectacle—they're not real to me, nor am I to them. So I smiled at him and he returned it—a flicker of humanity (both ways)—before he moved on to a Sharpie and a scrap of notebook paper and I walked away, letting the small group adjust to consume my vacant space.
And the funny thing was that as I walked away, I felt guilty of all emotions, guilty for wasting the moment, his and mine, on something so intangible. And then I went home to write about the U2 shows and how breathtaking they were.
2005.09
I shot the second Boston U2 show at the Fleet Center on May 26th as press, meaning that instead of nips of contraband whiskey and excited set list speculation with my U2-head friend Gendron, pre-show hours were spent in a white, windowless backstage room with members of the working media. This is not a complaint by any means, but is meant to point out the lack of magic and irresponsibility journalistic officialdom necessitates.
A few of the photographers, mainly the young ones from college newspapers, carried themselves with a sense of wonder and excitement, but the vast majority, including the stalwarts from the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and both AP's (apparently there's a local and a national branch of the Associated Press, both of which were compelled to send photographers—either that or some fan got creative), were marked in their ho-humness.
For those of you unfamiliar with the working press, I've found this is the rule rather than the exception. Like soldiers, members of the media are taught at an early age to become calloused and indifferent. They must, after all, never let their emotions get in the way of a story or a picture. You can decide for yourself whether this is good or bad.
But getting back to the show (and this story), me, the other photojournalists and the white windowless room; because what happened next was noteworthy and here it is:
A press liaison came down and told us exactly what was going to happen next. She detailed the first three songs of the show in remarkable clarity, telling us where the band would be standing, what color lights would be flashing, what sounds the musicians would be making and what poses Bono would be striking. She gave us approximate running lengths, told us where the security guards would be, where the good angles were, when the leaf blower man would come for the confetti, how, typically, the crowd would extend their hands in the fulfillment of proto-rock concert behavior and where one could find a gauntlet through which the hands would frame the shot. She told us when Bono would hug The Edge and when he would make eye contact with us. She promised us good whites during "Beautiful Day" and apologized for the reds in "Vertigo." She handed everyone earplugs. Then she said that we had three songs before we were out of there, no exceptions.
Sure enough, everything she predicted came true, including a firm hand on my elbow and a curt "let’s go" as I craned my neck and dragged my heels for "Gloria" (song number four). Needless to say, by "in-te-domine" I was in the elevator with the rest of the photographers and a stainless steel dining cart.
I tell you this because it is the reality behind an orchestrated performance. Every single one of us who saw a U2 show, regardless of the city it was in, saw the same posture for the first three songs. Hipsters with vague notions of "indie-cred" who love Death Cab for Cutie and the Decemberists may find the information distasteful but this isn't my intended point.
I'm interested, however, in what you and I as U2 fans should do with this information. Or I guess, more to the point, what this orchestration says about us. Rather than insinuate that the band shouldn't be so calculated (Why not? Careful image control has made them rich; plus, it's great spectacle!), I'd rather wonder why we desire it to be so. In a Living Colour moment (20-somethings will get the reference), I'm calling out the cult of personality and wondering how we're all blissfully a part of something so superficial (I mean this with genuine curiosity).
To begin, let's get beyond "cool" and "disaffected." If you're such a person, please stop reading and report immediately to your nearest media outlet where you and your ilk can get paid for joyless indifference.
But moving on to us: the converted worshiping at the spectacle of U2, throwing our hands in the air as we have observed is appropriate, singing with the off-key urgency of religious evangelicals at a Billy Graham show, all of us, every one, marching to the drum beat of manufactured images and cliché pomp—how do we correlate this with individuality? Or with age? (Maybe some of you have felt the same feeling of dread seeing Mick Jagger strut around lately looking less like a little red rooster and more like an enfeebled cock that needs to be put down; the dread coming not so much in relation to Mick, but rather, in the projection that someday U2 will be the Stones and we'll be, gasp, our parents paying to see this painful image.)
Can we just write it off as a fun thing to do, content with universal notions of commonality and a residual group-dynamic impulse left over from when we were packs of monkeys swinging through the trees? Or is there more to it?
Why do we put rock stars, or any "stars" for that matter, on a pedestal? Why, every tour, do we covet the image of Bono picking a svelte and (more often times than not) beautiful young woman out of the crowd and dancing, oblivious to the increasingly Nabokovian undercurrents of such an act? Why do we cheer loudest when Bono and Edge duel at the end of "Until the End of the World," even when we know it's coming? What separates us from the teenyboppers at a Jessica Simpson show who cheer when she and the mimbo she plucks from the crowd kiss (authorial postulate, I've actually never been to a Jessica Simpson show)?
The more I thought about this (while I'm veering here in the narrative these questions are by no means rhetorical, do write in with answers please), the more I began to reflect on the fact that what's paradoxical here is that through this very careful orchestration U2 has convinced us that we know them somehow even if we're intelligent enough to know that everything we see is an act. Somehow the band members have convinced us of soul through window dressing, that the mannequins are alive.
Through carefully constructed words and carefully constructed images, they've portrayed themselves as people we can relate to. But we know them only through stories, through videos, abstractly through causes, from snippets of interviews. The orchestration of the show's first three songs was only the tip of the iceberg—the manufactured identity is omnipresent, it's the only reason (unless you're originally from 1970s Dublin) that we know them at all. I do not doubt the image they construct as much as I'm curious as to why it makes us feel so good to deify, in a way, their spectacle.
You can't write it off as simply the music or else you and I would be content to hear "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" in all its digitized glory from the comfort of our homes. Scalpers wouldn't be scamming folks for $2,000 a ticket on eBay. Why them? Would it work if they looked differently? Why do you only love them the best?
I'm enough of journalist, or a storyteller anyway, to feel that I've cheated those of you looking for resolution out a proper story by ending things with a pile of questions. So I will go on to say this. The next day, after the pictures had been taken, long after the show had stopped ringing in my ears, I was walking around Boston when, puff, out of a dream, there were Bono and Edge. They were leaving their hotel and had stopped briefly to sign some autographs for the handful of fans waiting outside. I approached them. Where the photo-pit experience had presented me with a staged reality right off of a video screen, this was a different ball game altogether. I stared.
I have heard that the first impression one often absorbs when confronted with his or her idols is of that figure's smallness, my experience was no different. Without the lights, makeup, stage and Bono Boots, these two giants in my mind seemed humanely small, almost fragile. I was just as close to them at the show and yet I hadn't noticed this amidst the lights and confetti.
Somebody in the back said, "Bono, there's a child here who wants to say hello . . ." and Bono quipped, "I hate children." To wit, everyone laughed.
By then I had made my way to the front of the pack and was effectively standing in a line of autograph seekers; this dawned on me only when Edge was there, his eyes looking into mine, placid and calm, with a professional "Can I help you?" implication.
And then it was a little uncomfortable because I realized I didn't want anything. I tried to think of something to say but I realized that there, too, I was vacant. The problem was that I only knew these people through the spectacle—they're not real to me, nor am I to them. So I smiled at him and he returned it—a flicker of humanity (both ways)—before he moved on to a Sharpie and a scrap of notebook paper and I walked away, letting the small group adjust to consume my vacant space.
And the funny thing was that as I walked away, I felt guilty of all emotions, guilty for wasting the moment, his and mine, on something so intangible. And then I went home to write about the U2 shows and how breathtaking they were.
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