My U2 360 Experience

Mark Peterson 2011 / U2 360 Tour Chicago Eric Shivvers: Four songs into U2’s Chicago set list last month, I had to leave the pit area. The heat and the closeness of bodies were a little too much for me. I decided to gravitate towards the back of the stage, taking in the show on the huge monitor floating above the stage. Without seeing the actual band members, the energy coming across the “Big TV” was infectious. U2 was filling the arena with exactly what they had promised – 360 degrees of fun.

In order to offset the heat, I drank $30 worth of bottled water. I knew I would have to take a natural break and so I did. I slowly made my way to the concourse and onto the bathroom. Normally, I would never do this because I would be so into the show that missing an Edge lick or a Bono rant would not be missed but this night, the hot weather was playing a crucial role. 

When I exited the bathroom, I was able to walk the venue and take the show in via my 360 experience. I ambled through the crowd of the young, the old and the staggering. Along the way, I witnessed The band singing their classic  I Still haven’t Found What I’m Looking For from all aspects of the venue. What made my excursion interesting is that I never saw the band. The glow from the lights of the stage reflected off the arena walls silhouetted the crowd flanking my left as I walked ht concourse. Even at the far reaches of the arena, Bono had them in his hand, taking them on a journey as they sung in unison with him. 

One would say this was a waste of time and not a way to experience a U2 show, but I disagree. After seeing them from the pit twice on this tour in 2009, I had reason to take my own journey through the crowd. I wanted to feel the passion from the furthest reaches because that is where I started my U2 live experience, fives rows from the back of the arena at Carver-Hawkeye arena in 1987. On this night, I needed to get back to my roots as I wandered through the sweating flesh. It was something I needed to do.

Upon my return to the rail at the back of the stage area, I looked up as Gabby Gifford’s husband was introducing Beautiful Day. My Bedouin lifestyle within the arena for those fifteen odd minutes told me that no matter where you sat, no matter what your favorite album was or song you wanted to hear, we were at church with four Irishmen in the pulpit spilling out their heartfelt emotions for us no matter the weather.

One On One with Craig Evans

By Eric Shivvers: There he stood. Tall, handsome and well dressed. If I looked up quickly from my sheet of questions that I printed out in the morning, I swear I was looking at Pierce Brosnan of James Bond 007 fame. It wasn’t. The man I’m speaking of, facing a small crowd of Chicago media just a few steps below me, was Mr. Craig Evans, U2’s tour manager. I, along with sprinkling of other Chicago media, were sitting in a corporate suite, overlooking a sunbathed Soldier Field, ready to listen to Mr. Evans elevator pitch about U2’s 360 stage, which was just in its naissance of being built over his right shoulder. 

I was calm as the press conference commenced. I started my audio recorder, which would capture every moment of this event. Sadly, we were competing with the overhead noise of the air conditioner system, filling the suite with cool air. Mr. Evan’s soft-spoken, yet business demeanor was being drowned out. I wanted to make sure I caught every word of Mr. Evans’ presentation so I ever so slowly increased the recording levels. I learned from previous press events that there are no second chances, no make-ups nor time-outs for technical difficulties. We were here on Craig’s time not ours. 

With my camera in hand, I ripped twenty quick shutter snaps, catching Craig’s opening sermon about the 360 tour set-up. He was polished in his speech and why wouldn’t he be. I’m sure he’d done this sort of press conference on at least every other tour stop of this massive global concert tour. After all, it may have been Bono’s idea to play with forks in order to get the stage to concept but it was Craig’s responsibility to oversee the movement of the three Claw stages across the globe. His broad shoulders had to carry off this delicate dance of immensity without a hitch. We were glued, hearing the story about how his team streamlined the set-up and tear down, shaving off twenty four hours on the front end and about ten hours on the back end since the tour’s opening night two years prior. 

Once Mr. Evans opened the field for questions, a couple attendees, unfamiliar with U2’s stage, let alone year and a half old tour, asked pretty general questions. I could tell, from their inquiry, we weren’t going to get any more insight than what was in the press packet, which lay at my feet, unopened. My query was going to have to dig deeper because I wasn’t here as a fan, I was here on assignment, representing the fans and getting insight that couldn’t be gotten anywhere else. I wasn’t nervous. I was poised. I wanted to know what was the one thing the band had to have backstage on this tour. I also wanted to pry and see if I could find out if local talent would join U2 onstage for Tuesday night’s show. You do know Bono likes the Smashing Pumpkins and this is the hometown of Billy Corgan? Craig stayed to script and didn’t garner us any insight on either. 

As others asked about the four cranes and the footprint of the claw forming behind us, I readied myself for an appropriate bigger question, “What venue caused the most issues with the Claw?” I got my answer in a long winded story about problems with venues not having close enough parking for the trucks to unload and another tour stop where they had to repave an entry because the brick paved road was too bumpy for production, assuming he was speaking of the giant but fragile LED screen that hung above the stage. Craig said those were the small issues compared to what just happened to them in East Lansing where they had to take out sections of the concrete stadium in order to fit the four footings of the base of the stage. I was now on a roll with my questions and wanted to have fun with him. I wanted to know about the underworld and the hammocks we saw on the web, cradling sleeping crew. Craig laughed and went back to his script about how the underworld houses all of the monitors and crew during the show.

Silence filled the room, except for the errant burst of air from the air conditioning system above us. Mr. Evans asked for last questions. My sheet was taxed. A few more came to mind, but I didn’t want to hog the news conference. Craig mentioned earlier in the press conference that they were discussions about the Claw being sold as venue structures. I wanted to know if the money from these sales would go to charity. Later on in the afternoon, after the press conference, other questions came to me as Dave, my friend and fellow guest at this event, and I rode our bikes up Sheridan Road, getting in a few pedal strokes of a workout. Dave was still overwhelmed with excitement as he too was a fan of the band and saw the show in Dublin. Dave wanted to know why Blackberry’s logo was no longer prominent in the stadium? There were others too that came up in conversation between long climbs and interval sprints. As we wound down our workout, we agreed on one thing, we did what were we asked. We made sure Mr. Evans was aware that we were asking questions you fans wanted answered.

Review Chicago Sunday

Bono singing ’Chicago’ in the introduction to Magnificent, with the audience, unsurprisingly, in seventh heaven. ’One for the money, two for the show, where are we in the world… Union Street.’

The second show a chance to win over the Chicago news. The band was rehearsing “Your Blue Room” earlier in the day and they did not disapoint. For Your Blue Room, widely agreed to be among the most beautiful tracks the band have ever written, released on the 1995 album Original Soundtracks when the band recorded as Passengers with Brian Eno

It debuted live during the main set, 14 years later.

Fact: This was the only second Passengers song that U2 has ever played live. Adam did not have his spoken verse rather it as done by te astronauts (International Space Station) pre-recorded from the first show.

Couple of points

• During “One” a few of the vocals, missing
• Elevation was mixed into a couple of songs
• Unknown Caller was incomplete, mixed in a some of Breathe

The band had some other changes, most of the tweeter comments said while the flow was different it fe

lt little like a start and stop. This joint was jumping for Elevation, while Until The End of the World and Stay, another couple of songs which have been played sparingly to date, also had 65,000 people lost in the music. ’Green light, Seven Eleven/ You stop in for a pack of cigarettes/ You don’t smoke, don’t even want to/ Hey now, check your change….’ And if the suit of lights for Ultraviolet is making a name for itself, welcome to the steering wheel microphone swinging low from high up in space station - now with added LED’s.

Most will agree its an amazing show. Song selection is key we wonder what you thought ?

Videos posted on U2TOURFANS channel - Credits to twitter followers, and wide news release.

First Review In U2 at Soldier Field

U2TOURFANS NOTE: Before you start sending hate mail to us about this review please consider that we only report the news, we don’t make the news. Those of you that attend the show. Please post your comments below. Share your videos, photos and speak up ! We all know how reviews go. Let your voice be heard ! Dre

Jim DeRogatis on September 12, 2009 10:47 PM 

(http://blogs.suntimes.com/derogatis/2009/09/u2_at_soldier_field.html)

Touring in support of its first two albums in the new millennium, the unadventurous U2-by-the-numbers “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” (2000) and “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” (2004), Bono and the boys were in danger of becoming their generation’s Rolling Stones—a rote if occasionally rousing arena act more devoted to selling tickets than to breaking new musical ground.

Released last February, “No Line on the Horizon,” the Dublin band’s 12th studio album, came as a welcome surprise: Though they didn’t always succeed, the musicians at least took chances again, veering from that familiar U2 bombast to deliver their most creative disc since “Achtung Baby” (1991). Unfortunately, the new album also has been the slowest selling of their career, with U.S. sales yet to reach platinum status of a million sold—a fact that can be attributed to no one buying CDs anymore, or to fans being turned off by the group’s experimentation.

Eighteen years ago, “Achtung Baby” inspired the Zoo TV Tour, a multi-media sensory assault that stands as the most inventive arena jaunt I’ve witnessed. The question looming over Soldier Field Saturday night as U2 launched the North American leg of its 360° Tour at the first of two concerts in Chicago was whether the band would uphold the creative spirit of the new album, matching or topping Zoo TV, or play it safe in an attempt to reconnect with conservative fans and please its new partner, giant national concert promoter Live Nation.

The answer, as is often the case with this band, was that it tried to do it all and please everyone. Though it avoided the most ambient and atmospheric of the new tracks crafted with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, the group did play a hefty chunk of “No Line on the Horizon,” including the strong show opener “Breathe,” the hypnotizing “Unknown Caller” and the soaring “Magnificent,” which really was.

But in place of the disorienting buzz of Zoo TV, U2 gave us the empty spectacle of the multi-million-dollar stage fans have come to call “the Claw,” a ludicrous, fog-belching, crab-like mega-structure that primarily succeeds in dwarfing the musicians onstage, recalling David Bowie’s equally silly Glass Spider Tour and making recent Stones stages seem modest in comparison. (U2 really ought to talk to the Flaming Lips, who’ve been building a more impressive UFO stage out of supplies found at Home Depot at a cost of a few thousand bucks.)

Zoo TV wasn’t the superior experience only because of technology, though. The early ’90s were the only period in U2’s three-decades-plus career when the band dared to laugh at itself, with Bono trading his messiah complex for irony and the Macphisto alter-ego, and the group suggesting that maybe, just maybe, its desire to save the world was a bit pompous and self-aggrandizing.

Alas, the crusaders were back Saturday, linking “Sunday Bloody Sunday” to Iranian pro-democracy demonstrators, turning “Walk On” into an act of solidarity with Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese politician under house arrest, and trotting out Archbishop Desmond Tutu on video to make a plea to end poverty and cure AIDS.

Um, Bono, old chum, many activists cite corporate globalization as the prime culprit responsible for some of the ills just cited. Care to explain how that jibes with you and the band wholeheartedly endorsing Live Nation’s controversial mega-merger with Ticketmaster? On second thought, maybe there was some irony on Saturday.

In between the bounty of new tunes, the band trotted out the expected crowd-pleasers—“Beautiful Day,” “Pride (In the Name of Love),” “Where the Streets Have No Name”—though some of these were truncated or delivered medley-style with awkward bits of covers (“Blackbird,” “Stand By Me,” “Oliver’s Army”), with choppy and unsatisfying results.

As always, the deft rhythm section of drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton did their best to keep things moving, and the Edge was a deceptively simple one-man orchestra. Meanwhile, Bono posed and preened, emoted and yowled, flogging every millimeter of charisma he possesses. But as someone who’s seen the group on nearly every tour since it first came to the U.S., I never found what I was looking for—that perfect mix of genuine passion and stadium-rock showmanship.

This band just may not be capable of it anymore—which means it may have become the Rolling Stones after all.

U2TOURFANS NOTE: Before you start sending hate mail to us about this review please consider that we only report the news, we don’t make the news. Those of you that attend the show. Please post your comments below. We all know how reviews go. So post your comments after the story and let your voice be heard ! Dre

Chicago (1) Wrap up

U2 360 Tour 2nd Leg: North Ameica Soldier Field Chicago, Illinois

Pretty much followed the EURO shows. Set list can be found here. If you followed the tweeters you know that have pretty much nailed the set.

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Next up Chicago 2 -

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