The Chris Moeller Archives

Elevating : U2 360 Tour - A-Train Concert Series - by Aaron Moeller

The biggest rock band in the world opened their 360 tour last weekend at Soldier Field in Chicago and the CM Blog was there for the second show on Sunday evening. The weather was ideal but - perhaps because it was a school night - reports put Sunday night's crowd at significantly less than Saturday's tour opener. We had general admission floor tickets and despite arriving only 20 or so minutes before the opening act - fellow Irish rockers, Snow Patrol - hit the stage, we still managed to get within 30 yards of the stage. (I measure in yards because it's a football field.)

The stage was ginormous. Built to resemble a spaceship launch pad, relentless white smoke adding to the affect, the stage went dark as the stadium loudspeaker piped in David Bowie's voice: "Ground control to Major Tom..." One by one, the four members of the band (still the original members from 1976) walked on stage. In succession: drummer Larry Mullen, bassist Adam Clayton, guitarist The Edge, and finally, lead singer Bono. As Bruce Springsteen pointed out when inducting the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, U2 has proven to be the last rock band where even casual fans know all the members' names. "We're gonna play some old songs, some new songs and some songs we never sang before," Bono told the crowd. The first four songs were all new, off the latest U2 offering, No Line on the Horizon: "Breathe", the title track, "Magnificent", and the album's rockingest tune, both a sexual come-on and global call to action, "Get on Your Boots", which begins with the line, "The future needs a big kiss."

"Chicago! Chicago!" Bono shouted repeatedly. "Irish Boy, Irish Boy," he soulfully crooned, before Edge played a familiar riff. "A Beautiful Day" was the first big crowd pleaser of the evening. Seeing U2 on a big stage, like having seen the Rolling Stones or the E Street Band, has a way of making you feel you're at the center of the universe, attending the biggest party in the world but also feeling part of history just for being there. Always referencing other artists in the rock canon, Bono continually dropped outside lyrics into the preceedings. In this song, he sang snippets of the Beatles' "Blackbird", a nod to the Police with the words "there's a little black spot on the sun today", though he pointed out it was a very small spot, and he even borrowed lyrics from local band Wilco with the words "kiss and ride on the CTA". "A Beautiful Day" is gorgeously anthemic, each time resuscitating decades' worth of the positive energy U2 has put out into the world. Don't let it get away.

The Edge's famous reverberating, echo-laden guitar, playing one classic riff after another, announced the presence of each beloved song. Bono had the crowd sing the opening verse to the next song, "I have climbed highest mountains/ I have run through the fields/ Only to be with you". "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" is the band's search for God and truth and found Bono imploring us to sing along with our "Sunday voices".

"Elevation", like "A Beautiful Day", is off my favorite U2 album, 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind, and is a song to show off Edge's love of distortion as the spaceship got closer to lift-off. "Unknown Caller" is a new song and was the most bizarre of the night, with an inaudible recorded message from a NASA astronaut, seemingly beamed down from somewhere above. "Your Blue Room" included snippets of "Stand By Me".

Off 1991's Achtung Baby, "Until the End of the World" might be the band's most bad-ass song. "We ate the food, we drank the wine/ Everybody having a good time..." I cheered my agreement at that line. "....except you, you were talking about the end of the world...", which, of course, launches into the sickest guitar riff Edge has ever played, and sent me into near spastic convulsions as its the rare moment in a song that forces me to do something as painfully uncool as playing air guitar in public. "Waves of regret, waves of joy/ I reached out for the one, I tried to destroy you/ You said you'd wait 'til the end of the world..." and Edge's final riff again sprung Bono from his knees and he ran a dead sprint around the outer circle of the stage, a route akin to a 400 meter dash. He collapsed dramatically at the end of the run and sang most of "Stay (Faraway, So Close)" while flat on his back.

"The Unforgettable Fire" is the title track from a 1984 offering and reminded me that Bono is still the only guy who ever looked cool with a mullet. Tweaking the lyrics, Bono sang that Chicago is a "city lit by fireflies", in a song off 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, then he led a singalong for even the unfamiliar with the repeated lyrics, "Oh you look so beautiful tonight/ In the City of Blinding Lights".

"Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce" are words I saw printed on the back of a thousand t-shirts on Sunday, evidence of those who saw the band on their last tour, and a place called Vertigo is nearly as thrilling as "A Beautiful Day" in terms of sending 70,000 people into euphoria. It segued into another great new song, "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight".

The big screens then showed dark images of rioting and warfare and Bono offered a prayer for the people of Iran. Then dozens of people unrolled Irish flags for "Sunday Bloody Sunday", a song about "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, with the words "How long must we sing this song?" resonating against the screens' images.

Then an on-screen message told the story of Aung San Suu Kyi, a woman elected president of Burma in 1990, who has been almost continually under house arrest ever since, then "Walk On", a 2000 song originally dedicated to her, closed the main set. "What you got they can't steal it/ Hell, they can't even feel it..."

Being a band that counts presidents and world leaders among its friends, Bishop Desmond Tutu appeared on the big screens to say that the people fighting for social justice today, in this country, in this stadium, are the same who have been doing it around the world through time. We are indeed, "One". Speaking as someone who has sold "One" and Product Red-themed cell phones, I was also especially attuned on Sunday to the numerous Blackberry sponsorship signs around the stadium. Once Time magazine's Person of the Year, it's well-established that no one walks the walk like Bono, and understanding the capitalist world we live in as he does, no one has done more to promote corporate activism and responsibility. And more than anyone, his sleek wrap-around eyewear has kept me fighting the good fight against the dirge of aviator sunglasses that is poisoning society as we speak.

"One love, one blood, one life," he sings every night. "... sisters, brothers... we got to carry each other... One..." which leads to an "Amazing Grace" prayer. We met up with an old school buddy at the show who has seen the band a dozen times and claimed I would never hear a better live song then when they play "Where the Streets Have No Name" (better than "Born to Run"? Really?), and the beginning is really cool. I got a chill as I heard the famous opening notes, building in speed and volume, just as it was so perfectly captured in the Rattle and Hum documentary film from '88.

A final encore found Bono in a black suit, covered with glowing red lights - a specter-ish Irish Christmas tree - and with the coolest stage effect of all: He sang into a microphone at the center of glowing red steering wheel that dangled from a rope hanging from the "spaceship" above. The band played "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" and during the guitar solos, he swung across the stage from the rope/microphone like Tarzan.

"With or Without You" was achingly pretty, its intensity boosting it above pop anodyne. "Moment of Surrender" was a plaintive finale, a subtle and modest closer. Then the sounds of Elton John's "Rocket Man" ushered the true believers back from space. A timeless flight.

posted by Anonymous @ 8:18 PM