U2’s really big show flies into Foxboro
Filed under: News, Tour, U2, U2 360 Tour North America, U2 360° Tour
On Sunday and Monday, Gillette Stadium will host about 140,000 fans for the Irish icons’ 360 Tour’s New England stop.
By Jed Gottlieb
Friday, September 18, 2009 -
Achtung babies! U2’s first stateside stadium tour in a decade is on the horizon.
The songs: A big chunk of the set doesn’t change from night to night, including U2 opening with a quartet of new songs “Breathe,” “No Line On The Horizon,” “Get On Your Boots” and “Magnificent.” But among the new tunes and expected hits (“Beautiful Day,” “Vertigo,” “One,” “Bad,” “With Or Without You”) are some surprises. Last week, the band debuted “Your Blue Room,” a song from the “Original Soundtracks 1” album recorded under the pseudonym Passengers. Also, the band has been tucking in snippets of covers, including “All You Need Is Love,” “Blackbird,” “King of Pain,” “Stand By Me” and “Amazing Grace.”
What you likely won’t hear are former concert staples “I Will Follow” and “Bullet the Blue Sky,” which didn’t show up once on the European leg of the tour.
The structure: After a few nightcaps at 3 a.m., Bono revealed to a British journalist that he sees the show as a two-act performance. The first act is about the personal, the soul-searching of a young man, expressed by “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of,” “Unknown Caller,” etc.
The second half focuses on the political and global with “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “Pride (In the Name of Love),” “Walk On,” etc. Bono admitted that nobody but him would have likely figured out this micro/macro two-act structure.
The stage set: Nicknamed “the spaceship” by Bono, U2’s latest monstrosity is its most monstrous. Built for a reported cost of $40 million, the rotating stage features a 90-foot-tall canopy and a 54-ton, 360-degree video screen made up of a million pieces, including 500,000 pixels and 30,000 cables. Just when you thought Bono’s head couldn’t get any bigger, it’s about to be blown up by a million watts.
The opener: You know Snow Patrol if you know “Grey’s Anatomy.” The Scottish band’s “Chasing Cars” hit huge in 2006 after the song appeared on “Grey’s.” If you’re drawing a blank, you can think of the band as U2 lite – same basic idea, with less hooks and no grand ego. Hey, at least we’re not getting the Black Eyed Peas like some cities are.
The new album: Is better than you think. Really. And you’ll want to get to know these songs before the show: expect seven of them to get played.
The new old album: Hours after the band kicked off the U.S. leg of the tour, the band announced that “The Unforgettable Fire” is getting a deluxe 25th anniversary reissue. Out Oct. 27, it will be available on vinyl and in single and double CD formats and come with unreleased songs and B-sides.
The details: Snow Patrol should go on around 7. U2 will hit the stage, or should we say the spaceship, around 8:30. Parking lots open at 3 (early arrivals will be turned away), the same time fans with general admission seats can begin lining up.
U2 360 with Snow Patrol, Gillette Stadium, Foxboro, Sunday and Monday. Tickets: $32.50-$252.50; ticketmaster.com.
U2 blows roof off Rogers Centre
Filed under: Appearances, Review, Tour, U2, U2 360° Tour
U2 blows roof off Rogers Centre
Sep 17, 2009
VINCE TALOTTA/TORONTO STAR - U2 frontman Bono, left, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bass guitarist Adam Clayton in concert at the Rogers Centre, Sept. 16, 2009.
The weather has been a sore spot for Torontonians in recent months, but last night Mother Nature gave a boost to the year’s biggest concert.
A breezy, but clear evening allowed the Rogers Centre’s retractable roof to be open as U2 kicked off its two-night stand – a sellout concert for only the second time in the venue’s history. (The first was a Bruce Springsteen show in the SkyDome six years ago.)
With the CN Tower beckoning like a lighthouse, it was the ideal setting for the four-legged, 30-metre-high, teal-and-orange spaceship contraption hovering over the quartet’s circular stage. It gave the appearance that they had really dropped in from another galaxy.
It’s a generous piece of machinery that takes four days to build; as a result, the group’s been hanging about, allowing lead singer Bono to pick up the TTC and Yonge St. references he dropped into songs and patter last night.
Stuck as they were in the middle of a football field, the mammoth stage, which includes an expandable cylindrical video screen, worked to bring what some call the Biggest Band in the World a little closer to the 58,000 people who shelled out from $30 to $225 for the privilege.
The otherworldly theme was enhanced by a recording of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” that welcomed the veteran Irish rockers to the stage.
Not resting on any 30-year laurels, they kicked off with four songs from their current and 12th album No Line on the Horizon – the title track, “Breathe,” “Get on Your Boots” and “Magnificent.” The latter hit home with the hope and realism that defines their best work – “Only love can leave such a mark/But only love can heal such a scar.”
Then they delved into their bag of hits for “Beautiful Day” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” – for which the crowd sang the first two choruses as Bono mouthed words, resuming the singalong when he segued into Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me.”
“We got old songs, we got new songs, we got songs we can hardly play,” the frontman had joked. Never saw any signs of the latter.
This was the second city in the North American edition of the 360 Degree Tour that debuted in Europe this summer. (Live Nation reps say it’s on track to be the year’s top-grossing tour.)
It’s a satisfying spectacle, with enviable musicianship – Edge the most dominant, with his intense ringing sound on electric guitar (and a deft acoustic turn on “Stay (Faraway, So Close)” – fantastic sound and consistent energy and emotion. They made use of the stage, wandering its outer rim and running across the moving bridges. Even drummer Larry Mullen Jr. left his kit at one point to walk around playing portable congas.
Bono, as limber physically as he was vocally, was jumping, skipping, spinning with arms outstretched. And they made sure to hit the political marks – dedicating “Walk On” to Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi as fans walk the stage perimeter with paper masks, and running a video message of peace and unity from South Africa’s Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Yeah, they’re big, but still bold, brilliant and true to form.
U2 Concert Setlist: September 17, 2009 at Toronto ON, Canada
U2 360 Tour 2009: Leg 11: North America
U2 Concert Setlist: September 17, 2009 at Toronto ON, Canada
Venue: Rogers Centre
Opening Act(s): Snow Patrol
Main Set:
Breathe
No Line On The Horizon
Get On Your Boots
Magnificent
Mysterious Ways
Beautiful Day
Elevation
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For / Movin’ On Up (snippet)
Unknown Caller
New Year’s Day
Stuck In A Moment
The Unforgettable Fire
City Of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Crazy Tonight / Two Tribes (snippet)
Sunday Bloody Sunday / Rock The Casbah (snippet)
MLK
Walk On
One / Amazing Grace (snippet)
Where The Streets Have No Name
Encore(s):
Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
With Or Without You
Moment of Surrender