Hewson
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I once listened to members of U2 who said it would be out within 18 months of SOI's release...once.
U2's Longtime Stage Designer Talks 'Joshua Tree' Tour - Rolling Stone
Willie Williams talks about the upcoming The Joshua Tree tour and a little about I+E tour.
I spoke to the Edge a couple of weeks ago and he said he wasn't sure if they should start with "Streets" and go right into the record, or build to it later in the show. How do you think it would work best?
Yes, but I'm not going to tell you [laughs]. I can't, really, but all will be revealed on opening night. Clearly The Joshua Tree is about an hour long and the show needs to be almost twice that length. Part of the reason I can't say is we won't know until we hear them play it. I think we have a great strategy, a really solid way of doing it without it being a classic-album nostalgia show, but we just won't know until we hear them play it.
interesting... maybe they will look at the "play it backwards" idea.
I don't. I think they should just play it in order.I'm amazed several people are beating this drum. It's not. Going. To. Happen.
Do you really think the band would begin the centerpiece of the show with Mothers of the fucking Disappeared?
Please.
Do you think the next leg of the Innocence + Experience Tour will have the same basic staging as the last one, or could it change around a bit?
That was always the plan, of course. But it was going to follow within months originally, where now it will be two years later. There will be all sorts of compelling reasons to keep the same staging since I feel like we only scratched the surface of what we could do with that. But two years will have gone by and the world is an entirely different place. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
It's ironic, but if there's any complaints this is about nostalgia it's probably the same people who to go a show and insist on complaining that U2 are playing their new material. You're absolutely damned if you do and damned if you don't.
I hope that they don't play any SOE songs in this show because they'd be momentum killers, and playing brand new stuff before, after, or in the middle of playing songs that are among their best would be inviting comparisons that they may want to avoid.
Most interesting to me about the Willie interview was how firmly he said when the next leg of the i+e tour would resume. Wonder if that was a slip..
The last show was 12/07/15 so that would bring us to the i+e tour resuming Dec. 2017. Falls right in line with a Fall '17 SoE release after the conclusion of The Joshua Tree dates in August.
I didn't... Only made it to the stadium show (which was friggin epic, btw... 4 hours in length, his longest NA show ever... until he broke his own record a week later!)
I did see him do Born To Run from top to bottom, in a stadium setting even. Crowd was into every minute of it... It's such a well known album that even the casual fan knows every song; much like The Joshua Tree.
The River was a unique case in that it was a double album... so you're not going to get the same reaction to the lesser known tracks on a double album that you do on a regular LP. That's why he made the decision to stop doing every song once he hit stadiums.
If U2 were to play War in full, or Boy, yea... you'd lose a lot of casuals. If you're going to a Joshua Tree show, ya probably know every song.
Was thinking...
It's about time U2 got on board with making the audio of all their shows available for purchase. I simply don't have time to fart arse around with torrents thesedays and would be more than happy to pay $$$ to download official audio.
Oh and as for side two of JT, I cannot understand anyone thinking those songs would be a dead patch in the setlist. It's a mighty fine collection of songs, surely as ingrained in the minds of us who experienced the JT era as the main songs on side one. Those songs have been tragically ignored and their resurrection will be one good thing to come from this tour.
I am a huge Bruce fan but don't know his catalogue as well as I do U2's.
My friend is more familiar and the River and Darkness are his favorites. I got tickets for the arena show in Albany and immediately did my homework on the album...... I knew Hungry Heart, Out in the street, Independence day, the title track, etc but not much else. Luckily, it's a very accessible, high energy rock album for much of the affair. Then the contemplative pieces tell a riveting story.
That show was out of this world good. I loved the whole thing- I had worked the night before and then rolled right into a drive from Boston in a snow storm. So I fell asleep during the last few River tracks. Nothing against the album, I was physically past the point of exhaustion. What I was awake for, I enjoyed greatly- even the songs I didn't know- Ramrod, Crush on you, etc- they were highlights even.
Badlands woke me up and the last hour run through the rest of the catalog kept me up!
I also saw the stadium show in Foxboro in September. Unbelievable.
Anyways, JT is better known by casuals than the River. It's also much shorter. Every song will be played and get plenty good of a reception from all.
Agree with everything you said. When I bought a GA ticket to see The River show last year, I had a month to familiarize myself with the album. Before that, the only songs I knew from it were Hungry Heart, Out in the Street and to some extent the title track. After a few repeat listens and knowing more or less what to expect in the set, I went and was able to enjoy the show a heck of a lot more if I hadn't heard those songs before. Then when he went into the last 15 songs, I was back to knowing at least "half" of them again!
Fantastic album and show though. Sherry Darling and Cadillac Ranch stand out as being songs I wasn't familiar with which turned out to be some of the better live performances I've ever seen.
Just listened to Mercy for the first time in several years.
It really is a great song.
Omg the irony you fool
Omg the irony you fool