One more great review!
The Arts & Entertainment Section of The Daily Californian
U2, Older But Wiser
By KIM JOHNSON
Friday, November 16, 2001
You have to admire Gwen Stefani. She's such a capable frontman for No
Doubt, gamely writhing in her trademark Skate-Rat Barbie wardrobe, playing
the room as if it were a grungy little club, as if there weren't 15,000 pairs of
eyes on her. As if they were there to watch No Doubt. Stefani and
company, opening for U2 on the current leg of their American tour, play loud
and fast and with a healthy measure of flippancy, tearing through tunes like
"Just a Girl" with plenty of spunk. But, it must be said, when U2 hit the
stage, intentionally or not, they're schooling the young-'uns.
During the first of two sold out shows at the Oakland Arena on Thursday
night, U2 reasserted themselves as rock and roll contenders, and proved
that, in their third decade, they remain a Band That Matters.
U2's performance on Thursday night opened with "Elevation," an engine of a
song in studio that became hyperpowered under the Adam Clayton's
pumping bass. Making full use of their stage set, singer Bono ranged around
the massive heart-shaped walkways extending 100 feet out into the
audience, moving with that odd, arrhythmical, ape-like lurch he's developed.
(Twenty-four years in the business and still no rhythm?) His posturing began
to fade with the start of "Beautiful Day," a truly transcendent piece from
their current release All That You Can't Leave Behind, and that just opened
up the floodgates of emotion.
Bono's great strength as U2's vanguard is the rapport he develops with an
audience. Thursday night found him going beyond the handshakes and
high-fives as he crowd-walked and then plucked a little girl of five or six
from the fans to ride on his shoulders as he sang "New Year's Day" from
1985's War.
The set found the band reaching farther back into their catalogue, playing
"Out of Control," which delighted the rapt crowd?who were, surprisingly,
mostly middle-aged. Memo to the recording industry: your target
demographic can't afford current concert tickets.
Though the band revisited songs from early recordings, the bulk of the
performance was drawn from All That You Can't Leave Behind. Bono, in
another moment erasing the line between performer and crowd, introduced
"Kite" as a song he'd written for his son. Tearing up as he revealed that his
father had recently passed away, the singer admitted that he considered
the song to be a parting gift from father to son.
In what has come to be standard procedure during U2 shows, The Edge and
Bono wandered out to the front of the stage extensions to perform a couple
of songs acoustically, without the inexorable bashing of workhorse drummer
Larry Mullen Jr. The Edge, who can somehow get more sound out of a guitar
than seems possible, strummed "Wild Honey" into a manifesto of sorts, his
delicate harmony filling in the high notes for Bono, who wryly disclosed that
his habit is affecting his job: "You may have notice that there's something
missing from the top of my voice," he joked. "It's a pack of Marlboro Lights."
As Mullen and Clayton rejoined their bandmates, the chiming opening to
"Bad" jumpstarted the crowd into screams, but it was the following number
that brought the house down. The elegant opening chords to "Where the
Streets Have No Name" manage to sound solemn and radiant even after
countless listens, and as Mullen's drums began to race and the lights came
up on 30,000 upraised hands, it was, in a word, thrilling.
It wouldn't be a U2 concert without a dose of political commentary. The
events of the last two months have provided plenty of material. Bono
introduced "Please" as a song written against religious fundamentalists, who
"remake God in their own image: small, pathetic." His gestures of patriotic
solidarity drew cheers from the throng. Applause erupted when, in the
middle of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," he substituted for his usual political rant
a long silence during which he cradled an American flag offered up by an
audience member. The band reworked lyrics of "New York" to acknowledge
the tragedy. But the most stirring, and genuine, moment of the evening
came with the second encore. Over the strains of "One," as Bono sang
pointedly, "We're one, but we're not the same/ We've got to carry each
other, carry each other," the names of the dead from Sept. 11 scrolled up a
large screen and across the audience. "One" was absolutely transformed
from a breakup song to an anthem of peace and unity, and despite the
cavernous Arena and it's less than intimate sound system, the sentiment
felt true.