MASTERS OF THE ROCK SHOW
Five unforgettable U2 concerts
In a previous millennium, I remember someone asking a friend what the new U2 album was about — doesn’t matter which one. “It’s about God.” And he hadn’t heard it yet. Great gag. But if recording an album is, in Bono’s words, “waiting for God to walk through the room,” then God is busy. In 2015, Rock-as-Church has long since been discredited as Church. Or, for that matter, Rock. The medium is altered beyond any resemblance to when U2 mattered on the charts and “radio,” haha. Self-Actualization and Ass are the pop messages of the moment, and those who misread them are doomed. Witness the Apple debacle, when U2 invited its new album into everyone’s iTunes and took a PR pasting.
But there is one place where U2 remains You, Too, where Bono can play Jesus to the lepers in your head: onstage. This is the last band that still explicitly insists live performance must be significant beyond just entertainment.
Which brings us to the Innocence and Experience Tour. There have been conflicting reports of either sluggish or strong ticket sales in some markets, and some tickets remain for their Bell Centre shows and their Madison Square Garden shows — but they’re playing four and eight nights, respectively. The only other bands about whom we might even jokingly suggest that kind of itinerary are either retired or mostly dead.
I’ve seen every tour since The Unforgettable Fire. Along the way, there have been interesting personal moments, like bouncing off Bono decades apart in ’85 and ’01; the phone call with DJ and U2 consigliere BP Fallon in 1992 to discuss Wanda’s strip bar and the fan who won concert tickets by swallowing 106 goldfish (don’t ask); the concert a month after 9/11, when Bono kissed his pregnant dance partner’s belly on the night I learned I was going to be a father.
More globally, the U2 narrative features two naturally occurring poles, cast in typically extravagant profile: Aspiration and Compromise. Because when you want to Mean Something, you need to stay big enough, against the tide of Time and Age and Trend.
And staying big when the songs no longer own the conversation requires making deals with the ... well, Bono knows the word. At every stage of this struggle, you’re negotiating between your talent, the angel on your shoulder and the Great Satan. How have they done? Here are the five most memorable (for good or ill) U2 shows this writer has seen.
2. THE JOSHUA TREE — OLYMPIC STADIUM, 1987
THE CONFIRMATION
Is it possible, one wonders, for a kid in this post-rock era to imagine the gaudy, global reach of a rock band with messianism on its mind? In just two years, U2 had almost quadrupled its drawing power, packing 65,000 into the Big O, where the singer in cowboy hat and arm sling would commandeer the massive stage and its desert-scrim backdrop without looking like a farcical Irish pretender. Yes, U2 was that big and meaningful.
Show opener Where the Streets Have No Name thenceforward would be their automatic show-saver. The Edge would later cite that Big O show as the crystallizing moment when ambition and ability met the scale of the venue. “That’s when I thought, ‘Hey, this can work,’ ” he told Rolling Stone. Judge that for good or ill. Ultimately, the band itself would burn all that desert IMAX down and go home in one of the more impressive mid-career reinventions in history.