September 16, 2009 · Print This Article
Opening the North American leg of the 360 tour with a two-night stand at Soldier Field, U2 unveiled its visually opulent and sonically stimulating spectacle with two impassioned performances.
A gift to the people of Chicago and those who had traveled from all over the world, the current transcontinental crusade reclaims stadiums as an appropriate venue for a rock and roll show. Drowning out the dispatches of detractors banging ‘puter keyboards and blasting out blogs with their smug disses and dismissals, our chorus cascaded across a canyon of steel and cement, an uncynical kiss to the future, to the resilience of “love and community.”
Throughout both shows, Bono shared the sentiments of Snow Patrol lead singer Gary Lightbody in his Chicago Bears tee-shirts, showering the hometown crowd with specific local references to the elements, to the lake, to various street names, and the public elevated train system also known as the CTA. On Saturday, Bono bragged about being the wind in the windy city (no one can argue that brother Hewson is long-winded), and on Sunday, he even said he wanted to kiss Chicago’s collective ass. Despite his usual self-aggrandizing and grandstanding that makes him the rockstar equivalent of the mega-preacher he once mocked, Bono still has both the balls and biblical background to mean it and make it work for all of us.
With “Beautiful Day” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” early in the set, the choir director set the tone where the secular, sacred, and spectacular might converge. Unafraid of his own churchy sentiments, Bono gleefully greeted and guided his congregation, often leaving the mic to look at us, to let us take the chorus, the sound of our own combined voices giving everyone the chills. Whether it’s outstretched arms or bended knees, Bono’s never shied away from spiritual symbols and messianic moments, and at the shores of Lake Michigan, he fed more than 60,000 with loaves of loose electricity and cosmic fish of a millennial fever.
While some fans decry keeping “Elevation” in the set, tracks like that and “Vertigo” rocket fans on a non-stop flight with an engine that sounds like Edge, Adam, and Larry on the loud clouds of funk-punk gymnastics. What angels and demons other than the sound of God’s voice inside your guitar would possess a 50-year-old millionaire and soundscaping zen guru to pogo around the stage like a righteously naïve adolescent on the Vans Warped tour? Of course, it’s exactly that still boyish commitment to studying craft that makes Edge Evans so important to not just this band but to the history of rock and roll.
From climbing the rigging at the Us Festival in 1983 to diving into the arms of a girl and a worldwide television audience at Live Aid in 1985, frontman Bono as medicine man has always grabbed for ginormous gestures. And the other three have mostly condoned and cooperated, although sometimes reluctantly, in a career filled with an evangelical dedication to intimacy and inspiration and an artistic fascination with musical trends and cultural tremors. From building a tricked out and tripped out spaceship of a stage to sharing a carefully choreographed selection of hits and hymns, sleepers and surprises, this tour—because of and in spite of its inherent arrogance—marks a culminating crescendo in a distinguished career.
When the “born to sing for you” business of “Magnificent” entered the ears beneath the graying locks of Generation Xers in attendance, this mostly middle-aged and mostly modestly-dressed mass realized that we are the “you”that Bono’s wrapped his operatic poems around for almost 30 years, and once again, we are mentally transported back to our suburban bedrooms where we first ripped the cellophane off our vinyl copies of Boy, October, and War.
The tracks from the new and risky record all blended beautifully into an auspiciously ambitious setlist, one that changed significantly between Saturday and Sunday. Some of Horizon’s subtler, more ambient tracks like “Unknown Caller” and “Moment of Surrender” really shine live thanks to Edge’s ability to create a healing tonic through the Tai Chi moves of modern electronics.
Neither over the top like Zoo TV nor stripped down like Elevation and Vertigo, the current tour attempts to make stadium rock relevant again (with perhaps only Madonna or the Rolling Stones as peers), while striking a balance between U2-specific strands of cheese and sleaze. For those who long for yesteryears of either earnest religiosity or of culture jamming frivolity, we get tastes of both and then some.
We get the tribal remix of “Crazy”–replete with MC Bono testifyin’ on behalf of our communal sanity within a world of commonplace insanity and Larry Mullen paradin’ the promenade and poppin’ the djembe. We get truly rare tracks thrown in for the hardcore fans: in Europe, they got “Electrical Storm”; in Chicago, we got “Your Blue Room.” The second night in Chicago also included rarely-played-this-tour-tracks like “Until The End of the World” and “Stay.” Without losing the coherent unity of the core songs, this tour has included sufficient shifts to please the out-of-town, long-time traveling fans and setlist-statistic crunchers alike.
From the back catalog, we still get singles like “One” or “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” but we also get the regular inclusion of tracks like “Unforgettable Fire” and “Ultraviolet (Light My Way),” tracks where the layers of sound get overlaid by the overall presentation, by polychromatically pleasing tweaks of color from the creative palette of show designers Catherine Owens and Willie Williams. In the encore as Bono lit our way, his laser lit jacket designed by the technician of fashion Moritz Waldemeyer sent rays of red into the crowd and out to the sky At the same time, he cradled a strange,circular mic, perchance the steering wheel of the spaceclaw. Some of my concert companions found these touches too gimmicky; me, who sadly missed Popmart and didn’t appreciate Zoo TV for what it was when I saw it, I loved them.
While he certainly framed himself as more of liberal, radical Christian peacenik back in the day, Bono’s middle-age, millions of dollars, and meetings with people like Bush, Blair, and Bill Frist have turned the shaded crusader into a bit of a political moderate. Outside of U2’s fan community, Bono’s activism is mocked from left and right as the penultimate rich white man’s pandering hypocrisy. Inside the fan community, Bono’s activism gets mocked for its earnest employment of grand gestures that often slow the show with speeches, videos, and altar calls to the One campaign.
Despite these critiques from all sides, a U2 concert would be utterly incomplete without its peace, unity, freedom, and social justice message, and the 360 tour keeps the tradition alive. Outside the shows, fans could visit booths for One and Amnesty International and the Burma campaign. At the Burma table, fans could get the paper mask of Aung Sang Suu Kyi that they could wear or hold up during “Walk On.” The tour program promotes these and other organizations such as Greenpeace, perhaps the latter being more important than ever as a counterweight to the purportedly wasteful nature of this massive caravan.
During the concert, potent videos re-frame “Sunday Bloody Sunday” as a song supporting democracy in Iran. “City of Blinding Lights” is an important politico-spiritual part of the show, not only because Bono dedicated it to Obama in Chicago or because he brought a boy out of the crowd on the second night, but because of the way he emphasizes the closing line: “Blessings not just for the ones who kneel, luckily.” This sense of generous universalism could outrage some who are more pious or partisan about politics and spirituality, but humble and open others to a unity that supersedes difference. I must admit I find myself in the latter category.
In further amplifying this theme, before the song “One,” we witness a moving sermon by Bishop Desmond Tutu whose cosmic Christianity suggests that we are all “the same beautiful people,” concluding “we are the same person.” As idealistic as it is heavy, this notion unites the thousands and throws this show into the transcendent realms whether we like it or not. It’s hard not to feel inspired, to simultaneously feel the wind from the lake on your face and feel moved in your heart when the right reverend says that “God will put a mighty wind at our back.”
For me, the most transcendent moment came Saturday night with the inclusion of “Bad,” still, after all these years, my favorite U2 song to hear live. On all my Vertigo shows, I missed hearing this piece and almost fainted when the familiar opening strains began to echo into Soldier Field. According to those near the stage, the song was not on the setlist, and Bono called for this one like a quarterback uttering an audible. I can’t help thinking that my praying hard for this all day might have had something to do with such a lovely twist for this fandom’s fate.
Despite what others have suggested, I find “Moment of Surrender” the perfect coda to this concert. Sung by Bono in a reverent soul-gospel mode while Edge expertly works both the keyboard and guitar, this song is one of the defining moments on the excellent No Line On The Horizon and expands a spiritually pivotal theme that U2 have addressed in one fashion or another since the early 1980s.
Even at over two hours, this is a show that I dreaded seeing end on both Saturday and Sunday. While emotionally and physically exhausted and completely satisfied by the experience, its ending still came too soon. With two shows left on this autumn’s U2 itinerary, I imagine I’ll begin pining for the rumored summer 2010 shows as soon as this leg is over.
–Andrew William Smith, Editor
Photos from fans on the Interference forums by INSTCUWSUMVC, trevgreg, suzanneb
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