Close encounters of the 360 kind
(A very late tale of the Barcelona concert last week.)
It sometimes seemed over the years that U2 gigs were never a close enough encounter for Bono. He was famous for climbing out into the crowd in early shows, falling back into his fans mid-song at Red Rocks for example, or leaping from the stage to slow dance with a girl at Live Aid. As U2 grew to sell out huge stadiums on the Joshua Tree tour, so did the distance from their audience. They have been looking to reduce this distance since. They introduced a B-stage out in the middle of the audience in their Zoo TV tour, and have used different variations of this extended stage walkway on the PopMart, Elevation and Vertigo tours, to get themselves closer and to reach more of their audience.
U2 kicked off their 360º world tour in Barcelona last Tuesday with yet another radical and daring new stage production, from which they could launch themselves into the orbit of their fans - and apparently now also of the planet. When the old stages were always confined to one end of the stadium, some fans could be up to a full football pitch distance away from the band. The new round 360º stage is plopped proudly right out on the pitch, with a walkway circling it that reaches the halfway line, so a mere half a football pitch is now the furthest distance that anyone in the audience is from Bono at most points in the show. And of course the audience is now all-encompassing, all around the stage, engulfing U2 in their fervour from all angles. It must be quite flattering to have 20,000 people cheer your arse every five minutes.
However what’s on the ground isn’t what the new stage is all about. It’s what is towering in the sky over it. Whilst old U2 stages would reach out, they would also reach up. This one certainly does. U2’s 360º stage (affectionately called ‘the Claw’ on fan forums) is a mammoth, hulking, three-dimensional beast, searing upwards on four angular legs, creating a high-tech cathedral vault for the band to perform in.
My seat for the concert was on the fifth tier of the sky-scraping Nou Camp stadium. I got a fleeting glimpse of the stage beast through one of the arena entrances on my arduous climb to the top of the stadium.
“Oh my God, it’s Cloverfield!” was my first reaction, as it was like one of those all-too-quick snatches which should terrify but only intrigues, making me quicken my steps up the stairs for a proper look.
The alien invader theme continued when I finally entered the arena. It turned out it wasn’t Cloverfield, it was War Of The Worlds! The stage is vast, monstrous and utterly alien-looking, appearing as if it could rise up at any moment and start stomping over or zapping the lucky souls inside the circular walkway that encompasses the central stage.
I entered the stadium around 9:30 pm when the sun was mercifully setting behind some mountains on my right, so I could avoid having to sit in the scorchio Spanish sun. The sights below, above and around me were breath-taking. The Nou Camp is a very, very large stadium. It was packed. And it was kicking. Although the sky was darkening, the temperature appeared to be rising. An atomic atmosphere was pulsing through the air, all around the arena, like there was a fusion reactor hidden somewhere inside the Claw leaking intense bursts of radio-friendly radiation, except neither Tom Hanks nor Ewan McGregor were on-hand to dismantle the atomic bomb and save us from the imminent explosion. What song would cause detonation to the night…?
Ok, enough hyperbole, breathe man, breathe, what about the concert? Well, it was a night of many surprises, both in the music and in the production.
The gig started with the lights falling, a fine dry-ice mist forming, and Larry walking onto the stage, taking his seat behind his drums and hammering out a tribal rhythm. He was followed by Adam and then Edge who donned their guitars and revealed the song was Breathe.
Ah! Breathe. But not many people did. After four long years, U2 were back!
It was a surprising choice of opening track (my money had been on No Line On The Horizon) and, whilst it is a great song, it didn’t quite have the oompf to raise the entire stadium from the start. My favourite for first actually came in second, allowing Bono to show off his vocal range, and to lead the first of many mass choir-athons, and garnering a huge cheer from the people in the seats “behind” the stage when he went to sing to them.
Get On Your Boots, showing it is a better song live, and the suitably named Magnificent completed the introductory quartet to the concert based on the new album.
After Magnificent, Bono was at the very furthest point on the walkway in the middle of the stadium. He got down on his knees, and offered his thanks to the crowd who had travelled from all over Spain, from all over the world, to come to see U2 in such difficult economic times, and for continually coming back to U2 again and again down the years. It may seem galling to some people to see a rock star put on such a show of gratitude, but I believe it’s sincere.
The band immediately launched into Beautiful Day, the first of U2’s great stadium blockbusters of the night, and the Nou Camp responded with raucous Latin zeal. I was surprised to see Bono proudly wear a Irish tricolour, which was thrown by the audience, around his neck. I’d always suspected, and previously written, that he probably wouldn’t be seen doing this for its potentially awkward republican connotations, but I’m happy to have that assumption smashed.
The sing-along continued when Bono dedicated Angel Of Harlem to Michael Jackson, including singing snippets of Man In The Mirror and Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough. He introduced I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For by thanking the people in Barcelona, the capital of surrealism, for letting U2 take over the neighbourhood around the Nou Camp for two weeks to build their Gaudi-inspired space station there.
The second musical surprise of the night was the gorgeous In A Little While, which Bono dedicated to the girlfriend of someone I didn’t quite catch the name of. I didn’t quite catch it partly because of the crowd cheering but also because the sound quality up on the fifth tier was quite poor at times. Edge’s guitar could barely be heard at all during the first four songs, and Adam’s bass was only slightly more discernible. As tall as the Claw is, my seat was still above it. Some of the speakers on the stage point upwards but the volume of the sound wasn’t quite loud enough, and the vocals would occasionally be blown away by the light breeze.
The most ill-fitting sequence of the show was when Bono introduced a video link-up with the crew of the International Space Station. For five minutes I could only occasionally pick out snatches of what was said, partly because the crowd cheered at every mention of Barcelona, partly because of the poor sound quality, and partly because of the irritating eejit sitting beside me who was making a phone call. I did however have a quick glance skywards into a slightly cloudy sky when one of the astronauts said he could see Barcelona. “Really?” The entire sequence dragged on for over five minutes, and seemed quite pointless, imposing on the audience’s desire to enjoy U2’s music and deflating from the concert momentum considerably. And of course could lead to accusations of U2 considering themselves to be too big for the planet.
Unknown Caller was next. It clearly wasn’t the preferred choice of the man with the phone beside me, and his mate, as they both protested by leaving their seats, never to return. At the end of the song Bono tried to lead the crowd in a football chant by repeating a refrain with the closing lyrics “Bar-ce-lon-a, you know your name, so punch it in”, although it didn’t really catch on. Perhaps in an English speaking audience.
The third musical surprise was a glorious blast from the well-remembered U2 past with The Unforgettable Fire. Hopefully these two raids into their back catalogue mean U2 will be bringing back many of their older and less-known tunes for their dedicated long-time fans to enjoy alongside their must-play classics. One gripe some fans who travelled to see many shows had with the Vertigo tour was how static and predictable the set list was on some of the legs, with very few variations from night to night. Hopefully this new tour may see a bit more set list adventure.
One of the highlights of the show for me was enjoying the Spanish audience’s fun countdown for Vertigo “1, 2, 3 – 14!” City Of Blinding Lights followed to complete the set from the last album, and with a very blinding display of intense white lights swarming over the entire stadium.
The biggest highlight and biggest surprise of the show was the U2 disco. In 'Me And U2' I describe how the many dance remixes of U2 songs over the last twenty years haven’t quite hit the spot, and how U2 should do a collaboration with another one of my favourite bands, The Chemical Brothers, to rectify this, and to introduce some dance-floor groove into their songs – but I assumed it would be in the studio. I didn’t expect them to do it live. Well, they did. And it was fantastic fun.
A dance rhythm started, the lights all around the Claw went into disco hyperdrive, Larry got up from behind his drum kit and grabbed a bongo, slinging the strap over his shoulder, and a big fiesta started with a thoroughly unexpected but immensely enjoyable dance version of I Know I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight. All four members of the band were parading around the full length of the walkway, strutting their stuff (we know that they can’t dance, at least we know) and interacting with the audience below them. It was a glorious piece of kitsch disco cabaret which had everyone bopping along in delight.
Larry ended up at the end of the walkway behind the stage, showing off his bongo skills, and then had to run back to his drum kit towards the end of the song to pick up his sticks to hammer out the intro to Sunday Bloody Sunday, one of U2’s most overtly Irish songs, and with the stage bathed throughout in an Irish green. However, despite its connections to Derry, Sunday Bloody Sunday is one of the songs I wish U2 would play less frequently, as over-exposure diminishes the impact and meaning of what was a very important song. The same goes for Pride which came next. Two big, classic, crucially important U2 songs, which are guaranteed crowd pleasers, especially for the non-fanatics, but more play means less impact.
MLK followed Pride with Bono again demonstrating the power and emotion of his voice.
Walk On was dedicated to Aung Sun Suu Kyi, although the band’s hope that fans would download and wear a face mask of her image during the song to demonstrate their support wasn’t widely realised. I suspect many fans didn’t know about this planned action, others like me may have known but didn’t download and print the image from the U2 website. It would make far more sense for fans to be given a mask on entering the stadium which they could either keep or return at the end, to avoid having hundreds of masks littering the ground and getting trampled into the dirt with cigarette butts. The band brought dozens of children holding the masks over their faces onto the walkway. Bono sang a snippet of You’ll Never Walk Alone at the end which appealed to the Celtic supporter in me. The band then left the stage for a speech by Bishop Desmond Tutu to be played on the video screens.
There have been a few discussions on some of the U2 fan sites over which song should be used to lead into Where The Streets Have No Name, which is far and away still the most popular song in a U2 concert. In previous tours it’s been Bad, All I Want Is You, Running To Stand Still or Pride. I posted that I’d like them to try it as an opener for the encore in a hark back to the dazzling version in Rattle And Hum when it was an extended concert opener (and also similar to the start of my first ever U2 concert in Dublin in 1989).
So when I heard the first subtle suggestion of synths towards the end of Bishop Tutu’s speech, I recognised it immediately. Excellent! Except it didn’t quite scale the heights that I’d expected or hoped. Edge cut back his jangling guitar intro and I think the song suffered from following on from the speech. Regardless, it’s the song which most of the audience look forward to sharing during the concert, and doesn’t seem to suffer from being overplayed. It was during Streets that I first noticed that there was a bunch of happy fans jumping around like loons in tennis court sized spaces behind and to the left and right of the stage. People inside the Claw can apparently either stand out front in the squash immediately below the stage or enjoy the wide open spaces behind it. Or alternate between the two.
The biggest talking point of the night though was the by now almost traditional U2 opening night feck up. Bono was out front on the walkway singing One (and now wearing a Barcelona FC football jersey given to him by Pep Guardiola, the team manager) when he seemed to lose his place in the song. He was fiddling with his earpieces and appeared to say something to one of his helpers in the pit below him. He called to the band to repeat a verse. He then told them all to stop playing entirely. “Edge, listen to me, Adam you may want to join us. I’ll count you in.” He ended up singing the verse three times, before he walked back to the stage to rejoin the band just as he was singing, “we’re one, but we’re not the same” which was a great live visual representation of the story of the song.
A short break before the band returned for the encore. And there was another very welcome surprise for the dedicated U2 fan. I recognised the opening line immediately but couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing. “Sometimes I feel like I don’t know, sometimes I feel like checking out.” The sumptuous Ultraviolet was back after a long break! Bono reappeared wearing a jacket which had dozens of short red laser lights emanating out of the sleeves that looked great in the smoky stage and on the large video screens. He was singing into a microphone which was like a small steering wheel and which was dangling from the roof of the Claw. I initially thought Bono was on a wire when he started swinging across part of the stage and thought, “No, Bono, noooooo”, before I realised it was the microphone itself that was strung up.
The last of the classics followed, With Or Without You, before the show ended well past midnight on a fairly subdued note with the sweeping Moment Of Surrender, which, whilst I think is the best song on the new album, isn’t in the same league as 40 or Love Is Blindness as a concert closer.
I loitered behind as the crowd dispersed to bask in the scene for just a little bit longer, after having been regaled so wondrously by U2’s latest live concoction. U2 360º is yet another creative and technological leap up from previous U2 tours, showing the band’s continual quest to bring their music, and themselves, out into their audience. The set list was a near perfect balance between the new album, forgotten oldies and classic hits. The production was dazzling, and the band were clearly enjoying themselves.
“Edge, look around look around! Adam Clayton, look around look around!” sang Bono gleefully during one song. U2 are now centre stage and centre stadium. It’s U2 360º, giving them the latitude to explore new territory, and the attitude to enjoy seeing everyone around it.
