U2 tour larger than life
DARRYL STERDAN, QMI Agency
First posted: Monday, May 30, 2011
Bono (l) and Adam Clayton of U2 perform during their 360 World Tour in Winnipeg May 29, 2011.(BRIAN DONOGH/QMI AGENCY)
WINNIPEG – Sometimes, bigger is better.
And concerts don’t come any bigger — or better — than U2′s 360° Tour stop at Canad Inns Stadium on Sunday.
The band’s first trip to Winnipeg in 14 years was historically humongous on several fronts: Contemporary rock’s biggest band were playing to a record crowd of 50,000 frenzied fans on the world’s largest stage during the biggest-selling, best-attended concert tour in history (and easily the most feverishly anticipated show in this town for years, with fans flying in from as far away as Japan and camping outside the Stadium for good spots).
But all those superlatives, and all that spectacle — the 50-metre-high four-legged alien-spider rig dubbed The Claw, the eyepopping light show, the intimate circular stage with its outer ring and moving bridges, the wraparound video screen that rose and fell and stretched and contracted, displaying closeups of the band, the pre-concert fighter-jet flyovers — would have meant little without songs and showmanship to back it up.
Luckily, U2 were larger than life in that regard too. From the moment they took the stage around 9 p.m. to the strains of David Bowie’s Space Oddity — and opened, ironically enough, with Even Better Than the Real Thing — the Irish rockers proved that pound for pound and night for night (including this Sunday, chilly Sunday), they may be the greatest live act on the planet.
Bono certainly earned his share of that accolade. Sauntering around his $35 million playground, the black leather-clad frontman held the crowd enraptured with every rock-star gesture and soaring note — and even dismissed the cool conditions.
“We don’t feel the cold in Winnipeg,” he assured the audience.”You’re Canadian, we’re Irish.”
While Bono was the obvious focal point, the rest of the band weren’t exactly slouches.
White-haired (and white-panted) Adam Clayton, like all great bassists, was a study in understated cool, casually strolling and posing.
Guitarist The Edge — sporting his trademark skullcap and goatee — was only slightly more animated, focusing most of his concentration on unspooling his chiming guitar lines and manipulating them with his vast array of effects.
Drummer Larry Mullen Jr., was more Ringo or Charlie than Neil Peart, but efficiently effective at his role: Holding down the centre (literally) so Bono and Edge can roam where they want and still find their way back.
But that was due to come later. The front part of the set was heavy on hits: Their rousing 1980 breakthrough I Will Follow; the groovy Get on Your Boots, from their most recent outing No Line on the Horizon; the soothing Magnificent; the hypnotic Mysterious Ways; the fuzzy Elevation, with its “who-hoo” singalong refrain; and a clanging version of Until the End of the World, with Bono and Edge joining hands across the gap of two moving walkways.
At press time, the band were barely a third of the way into their anticipated two-hour-plus show, with classics like Sunday Bloody Sunday, Walk On and Where the Streets Have No Name still to come.
But even at that stage, it was obvious that barring an unexpected visit from The Stones, Paul McCartney or Bruce Springsteen, this was going down as the concert of the year — or better still, the decade.
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