The man who designed the stage set for U2’s current 360° Tour, which stops Sunday at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, knows that the size of his creation is cause for attention.
“How many miles of cable, how many trucks — it’s all very easy to pick up on,” said Willie Williams, who has been working with the Irish rock band since 1982.
Still, Williams insists that the scale of it is “absolutely the least interesting thing about it,” he said. “Even though it’s very tall and very wide, the magic trick is that when you stand onstage the whole thing disappears. The reason it’s so big is to make it invisible.”
How, exactly, does that work? By removing the hulking backdrop that usually defines a stadium show and relocating all those tons of gear above the band’s playing area, the designer said he’s been able to create the illusion that the gear isn’t there at all.
According to U2 manager Paul McGuinness, the structure has practical advantages: It allowed the band to expand the seating capacity at most venues by about 20 percent.
“We’ve broken a lot of attendance records,” McGuinness said, “usually ones we’ve set ourselves.”
“Where U2 came from conceptually was this culture that was about everyone having access to the stage,” said the group’s bassist, Adam Clayton. “Scoot forward to 2009 and that’s what we’ve created here, just bigger.”
The tour incorporates three separate rigs to allow for construction and disassembly time along the way.
“We’d love the thought of finding appropriate homes for these things as festival stages in different locations around the world,” McGuinness said, looking to the tour’s conclusion late next year. “That’s real recycling.”
U2 rocked Glendale
GLENDALE, Ariz. — U2 brought its 360 Tour to the Valley Tuesday night playing at University of Phoenix Stadium.
While U2’s latest tour has sold out in many cities — and added extra shows — that is not the case in Phoenix. Tickets were still available at the stadium and some were for sale on e-Bay.
The band performed on a stage that cost $40 million to build. Five-hundred people worked four days to set it up at University of Phoenix Stadium.
The stage looks like a massive alien spaceship, 90 feet tall, complete with lights, the sound system and a wrap-around video screen that weighs 55 tons. Four claw-like legs extend outward into the crowd to make the stage seem as big as the stadium itself.
Black Eyed Peas performed the opening act for the Irish band.
There was no tailgating in Glendale Tuesday. Although tailgating was allowed at previous concerts, Glendale has changed its policy. Alcohol was sold inside the stadium.
U2 came to the Valley from a concert Sunday night at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. A highlight there was Bono singing a bit of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” at the end of “Beautiful Day.”
The band will be at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif., on Sunday. That show is sold out, with an audience of 96,000 expected, and will be streamed live on the YouTube video sharing site. It will be the first time for such a large show to be streamed live.
“The band has been wanting to do something like this for a log time,” said manager Paul McGuinness. Fans often travel long distances to come see U2 — this time U2 can go to them, globally.”
U2’s sound has transformed over the years from power ballad to techno. But the band has managed to keep its heart amid the dance groove, and it’s managed to keep its soul in the midst of the rock machine that’s lifted U2 about as high as a band can go.
U2 AT THE ROSE BOWL
U2 AT THE ROSE BOWL - OCTOBER 25 Vital Parking Information Notice
Area U2 fans: you need to plan your trip to the Rose Bowl in advance. Attendance for this event will be over 96,000 people, the largest concert crowd in the venue’s history. The roads in and around Pasadena will have significant traffic and will be heavily congested.
The Rose Bowl has limited parking available on-site. To meet this extraordinary demand, and for your convenience, there are adjacent off-site parking options as well as shuttle rides to and from the stadium. We strongly urge you to consider taking advantage of these shuttles and to carpool when possible.
In order to have a great experience:
- ARRIVE EARLY
- PURCHASE PARKING IN ADVANCE
- PARKING WILL SELL OUT FOR THIS SHOW
- TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PARK & RIDE SHUTTLE BUSES
- Due to record attendance some patrons will need to use this service
- PCC Shuttle
- Old Pasadena Shuttle
- CARPOOL
ARRIVE EARLY:
- Rose Bowl Parking Lots Open: 8 AM
- Picnic In The Park Begins: 12 Noon
- Park & Ride Shuttle Lots Open
& Buses Start Running: 12 Noon - Doors Open: 5 PM
- Show Starts: 7 PM
Not only will arriving early minimize your travel time, we have great pre-concert activities planned as well. Opening to the public at 12 noon, Picnic In The Park will give you the opportunity to relax and socialize with your friends in the comfortably shaded Rose Bowl grounds. Just bring a blanket, a picnic basket and enjoy!
In addition, many entertainment, dining and beverage options are available for purchase as well. Sports fans: you can enjoy all of the day’s NFL action on multiple TV screens. Within Picnic In The Park, we will have live entertainment featuring The Ruse and other enticing activities. Picnic In The Park is located directly in front of the Rose Bowl on Lot “H.”
Click Here for more information on Picnic In The Park.
Also, there are nearly 80 restaurants nearby in Old Pasadena, just a short walk from the Old Pasadena (Parsons) Park & Ride Shuttle area.
PURCHASE PARKING IN ADVANCE:
Several venue parking options are available for advance purchase through Music Today:
Parking is available now! Advance parking is limited to one spot per transaction. For General Parking: one car - one space. No oversized vehicles or limousines.
Following your purchase, a non-transferable parking pass will be sent to you via mail by Music Today. Be sure to bring your parking pass with you. You will need it for admittance to the Rose Bowl parking grounds.
Based upon your zip code, we will e-mail you specific directions with the best route to the Rose Bowl in order to avoid traffic & congestion. On show day, this will be the best route to the stadium. There are many entrances available to the Rose Bowl from nearby freeways. As you approach Pasadena do not follow your Map Quest or GPS device. Use the directions we provide.
PARKING WILL SELL OUT FOR THIS SHOW:
All venue parking will sell out prior to the concert date. Don’t miss out- be sure to buy your parking in advance!
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF PARK & RIDE SHUTTLE BUSES:
Due to limited parking at the Rose Bowl and the extremely high attendance for this event, it will be necessary for some of you to take advantage of the off-site lots adjacent to the venue. Park at either Pasadena City College or Old Pasadena (Parsons) and catch a shuttle bus to the stadium. These vehicles have private roads directly in and out of the venue, moving fans as quickly as possible.
Shuttle lots open and buses start running at 12 noon. They will operate throughout the show and then following the event.
Shuttle tickets are available now for advance purchase for $5 per shuttle seat (per passenger; round trip) via Music Today.
PCC Shuttle | Old Pasadena Shuttle
Purchasing a shuttle ticket before show day guarantees a seat on a bus. Shuttle tickets will be sent out via mail by Musictoday.
CARPOOL:
We encourage you have at least 4 persons in your vehicle (be green). This will improve the parking and traffic experience for all fans .
PickupPal is a great way for fans to connect and organize carpools, helping to ease traffic congestion and reduce carbon emissions at the same time. Check out their site for their U2 360 Tour offerings: http://U2.pickuppal.com
We recommend you plan for this concert as you would The Rose Bowl Game or the Super Bowl: plan to arrive early, enjoy Picnic In The Park as well as the other on-site amenities.
Thank you,
— The Rose Bowl Staff
Comfirmed Live Event
California, US U2 have confirmed via video blog that their sold-out concert at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California, this Sunday, 25th October, will be streamed free, in full and live on YouTube. It’s the first time a show of this size will be streamed live.
The Rose Bowl show is the penultimate U2 show this year - with more to come in 2010 - and already is set to host the venue’s biggest ever audience of over 96,000 fans. The 360° Tour, which has been critically acclaimed and ‘re-invents rock’n’roll’ (Rolling Stone Magazine), will now boast unique access for fans worldwide - as fans in territories yet to be visited by the tour, or not at all, will be able to enjoy the whole show online.
Managed in partnership with Live Nation, this sell-out tour has broken attendance records in most venues it has visited - its success due in part to increased capacity coupled with a lower ticket price and great sight lines afforded by the stunning in-the-round stage set.
U2 manager Paul McGuinness said, ‘The band has wanted to do something like this for a long time. As we’re filming the LA show, it’s the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans often travel long distances to come to see U2 - this time U2 can go to them, globally.’
YouTube will be streaming live across five continents. The show will be available in the usual You Tube way, as video-on-demand, following two full replays - after the live stream - on both U2.com and You Tube.
‘YouTube is thrilled to be able to provide our global audience with a live streaming performance from one of the world’s greatest bands,’ said Chris Maxcy, Director of YouTube Partner Development. ‘We are always looking for new ways to connect fans around the world with their favourite artists, and this is the perfect opportunity to do just that.’
For more information stay tuned or visit You Tube .
DVD to be released (Rose Bowl Show)
U2.com has just sent out an e-mail informing fans that this Sunday U2’s 360° Show at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena will be filmed for DVD release. The show will also be streamed live on YouTube.
Live from The Rose bowl !
DENVER (Billboard) - U2 and YouTube have teamed up to broadcast a live stream of the band’s Los Angeles-area concert this weekend via its YouTube channel.
The Sunday, October 25 show will take place at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Any fan wishing to tune in from the 16 countries supported will be able to do so for free.
This is YouTube’s second effort at live-streaming concerts. In August, it aired portions of the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco. The U2 show will be the first start-to-finish live stream.
Like other live concert streams, portions will be archived and available for streaming after the event.
(Editing by SheriLinden at Reuters)
U2 makes it a night to remember for 60,000 fans in Norman
U2 fans will be talking about “the claw” for years, and how the Irish band brought a gigantic stage set to Norman that almost made Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium feel like an intimate venue — well, maybe a basketball arena. But even with that imposing, “in the round” superstructure towering over Owen Field, the emphasis Sunday night was on U2’s performance — all the visual flash was in service to the band, which performed a lengthy set spanning 26 years — or, as Bono said early in the set, the length of time since the group’s last stop in Norman.
Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Okla. Photo by Sarah Phipps
“It took us 26 years to travel one mile,” Bono said, referring to the band’s performance at Lloyd Noble Center in 1983. And throughout the concert, Bono, guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. took huge leaps through U2’s musical history, opening with three songs from this year’s “No Line on the Horizon” — “Breathe,” “Get On Your Boots” and “Magnificent,” before hurdling backward to 1991’s “Mysterious Ways.” While the group was highlighting its new songs whenever possible, U2 kept the crowd of 60,000 fans happy to the point of mass, ecstatic dancing when the group deployed its acknowledged classics such as “Beautiful Day” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.”
This was an audience ready to play along: toward the end of “Still Haven’t Found,” Bono sang two lines of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me,” and the stadium finished the first verse and chorus for him. Perhaps because the mood was right and the crowd was primed, U2 added two songs it had not played in previous shows on the tour, 2000’s “In a LIttle While” and the new “Unknown Caller,” a dramatic, half-chanted song partially constructed from computer commands. But after that deep plunge into the new disc, the band came roaring back to familiar territory with two of its most haunting songs, the Biblical melodrama “Until the End of the World” and a mesmerizing version of “The Unforgettable Fire.”
Spotlighting new material can be challenging to a band with a three-decade history, but the new songs from “No Line” intensified in the live setting, particularly a discofied “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” and the show’s closer, “Moment of Surrender.” But U2 also brought an uncommon intensity to some older material, especially during a fiery version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” that was performed against images from this year’s election protests in Iran. The Edge’s guitar work on “Bloody Sunday” was possibly his most energized of the evening, with Clayton and Mullen barreling through the song’s martial rhythm. And the band closed out the main set by devoting “MLK” and “Walk On” to jailed Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, with Amnesty International volunteers walking the massive circular runway carrying masks bearing the imprisoned politician’s face.
While the Black Eyed Peas performed an energetic set of recent hits including “Boom Boom Pow,” “I Gotta Feeling” and “Meet Me Halfway,” the opener was the equivalent to a slick, Auto-Tuned pep rally for U2 — this is a group that has dominated the singles charts for most of 2009, but while the Peas had much of the crowd moving throughout their 45-minute segment, even a seemingly unstoppable dance-pop machine was merely a prologue for the stars of the evening. All in all, U2 played a long main set — 19 songs — and came back to play some of the most popular songs of its career, including “One,” “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “With or Without You,” with Bono singing into and swinging from a glowing circular microphone that dangled from the center of “the claw.” Sure, it looked like an alien landing, but U2 cleverly used the dimensions of its enormous stage to bring a human focus to the band and its performances.
Too Big For Texas: U2's 'Claw' Vs. Cowboy Stadium
By John McAlley
What happens when the biggest stage show in rock and roll history — U2’s 360-Degree Tour — sets up in the biggest domed stadium in the world — the new $1.2 billion Cowboy Stadium?
The answer is obvious: big problems.
Although they’ve scorched crowds with some of the most incendiary concerts of the past decade, the Irish rock band has not attempted a run of stadium shows since 1997’s much lambasted and remote-feeling PopMart tour. The 360-Degree outing, with its massive in-the-round stage set known affectionately as “The Claw,” is intended to solve the intimacy problems of playing to crowds upwards of 80,000. The thinking: if the stage is almost as big as the stadium itself, no fan will be left behind.
Did it work in Dallas? Find out after the jump.
First, the numbers: with an operating budget of $750,000 a day, U2’s tour employs nearly 400 people and 200 trucks to move three separate versions of the same 170-ton set from venue to venue. While U2 performs on one set at, say, Cowboy Stadium, another is being assembled at the next tour stop in Houston while a third is being transported for an upcoming gig in Oklahoma. The $40 million tangle of steel requires as much as 8 days of set-up and breakdown — for a two-hour show.
Cowboy Stadium accommodates over 100,000 fans. Its high-definition video screen — again, the biggest in the world — weighs the same as a 747, runs 60-yards in length and is suspended so ostentatiously at midfield that the showplace venue suffered a national embarrassment before it formally opened. In a preseason game against the Dallas Cowboys, Tennessee Titans punter A.J. Trapasso sent a kick right into the low-hanging guts of the thing.
The Claw — slightly off center — illuminates Cowboy Stadium. The 170-ton stage set requires as much as 8 days to set up and break down. (John McAlley for NPR)
Whether the Claw helps U2 hit its fans in the gut is something we’ll never know in Texas. Taken separately, the Claw and Cowboy Stadium are epic feats of engineering, but throwing them together was like trying to wedge the Guggenheim Museum into the foyer of the Met. As soaring as Cowboy Stadium is, it couldn’t accommodate the Claw. The structure, which is designed to play at dead center of the field, had to be shunted into an end zone because of the looming GinormoTron, leaving tens of thousands of fans, well, a football field away from their favorite rock and roll band.
It caused the whole show to feel a little off, too — almost as if Bono and his mates sensed the loss of the centripetal, focusing force of their spectacular set.
But as anyone who has tracked his numerous global initiatives knows, Bono loves a challenge. And despite the need to enthrall the masses — over 70,000 attended the Dallas show and larger crowds have made dates in New York and Los Angeles sell-outs — the U2 song list doesn’t pander. The band fearlessly pushed forward material from its new No Line On The Horizon album and paraded — through the use of video images and Bono’s impassioned preachifying — noble causes ranging from the staunching of AIDS in Africa to the pursuit of justice for the persecuted Burmese-goverment opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
“Just sing!” protested some of the Big D crowd. That is, until Bono thanked local icon George W. Bush for his contribution to the fight against AIDS. The mention was met with an ear-shattering roar, proof that even in an age of garishly outsized sports palaces and over-the-top entertainments, the oldest trick in the book — name-checking a good ol’ cowboy — can bring down the house.