From WW2 & the EU on iTunes & YouTube to FU² and #metoo with love.
Madrid, 20th September 2018.
I may not be U2s most ardent fan, but to say they put on an impressive show doesn’t come close. On the previous times I saw them in 1997 and 2005, they had essentially stuck with the paradigm of a band on stage playing a mix of their greatest hits whilst smuggling in a few newer tracks to promote their latest fare. Whatever they have been up to in the intervening 13 years has largely gone unnoticed in my world beyond a few minor headlines and the curious outrage of people who resented their free album on iTunes.
That was then and this is now and now is something to behold. Akin to being plugged into a U2niverse for a couple of hours, it’s personal, it’s huge, it’s unrelenting and vast, lavishly audiovisual and resistance is futile. You will get pulled in by their gravity like it or not – though given ticket prices, chances are you’ll be favourably disposed to them anyway. With something like 40 years under their collective belt, they are at the zenith of performance and they demand your full attention on their terms.
My tickets came at no cost to me so I went unencumbered by expectation and with no investment in the show being one thing or another, I simply hoped for it to measure up to the quality of the others I’d seen. Entering the general admission floor area was a little confusing with a long metal cage type structure on a catwalk running down the middle of the floor which left us unsure where best to stand. The only real indication of where the action would be was the concentration of people at the far end of the arena and along the side of the catwalk. My companion and I were happy enough with the likely view from where we stood and elected to remain there. A smart move it turned out to be as this gig dabbled in omnipresence.
It’s alive!
At 9.30pm the cage awoke. It lit gradually from the bottom up like the static screen of an old black and white TV set popping and fizzing into life. Once fully charged, Charlie Chaplin’s final speech from The Great Dictator (1940) voiced over images of destruction from the Second World War and modern scourges like Putin, Trump, Kim Jong-un and Assad, as he beseeched humankind for humanity. Explosions and devastation and then, and only then as the fury abated momentarily, came the show. The screen flickered between the band on the catwalk inside the cage/screen, tiny in size compared to the huge silhouettes of human shapes hitting against the inside of the screen, intimidating and unsettling in form trying to break through but held back as if bound to another reality. I don’t remember either the tune or the words but it didn’t matter, they were perfect for that and part of a bigger vision that couldn’t be distilled or broken apart. A magnificent opening.
…Sound and fury….
Over the ensuing two hours of the gig we were swept along from scene to scene, zooming from huge to personal and back again. The band’s history with Bono doubling as orator and singer recounting tales of lives and times in a Dublin long changed. Stories with imagery and sound as one, inseparable and transfixing; our lives as art boasting how far we have come. Step inside, absorb us and feel our digitalised angst. All our head trips, anxieties, dreams and memories are now realisable ambitions run on Apple software and bespoke hardware. The cage/screen morphed and moved in and out of the show becoming high raised catwalk, stage or hoisted high out of the way as a screen but always at work. From one end of the arena to the other the show went from small, up close and personal to stadium extravaganza. Where previously they had leant heavily on past glories to maintain the tempo, this time there wasn’t a single track from the Joshua Tree. There were a handful of oldies such as Pride, Sunday Bloody Sunday, New Year’s Day, One and Even Better than the Real Thing played in a small huddle at my end of the catwalk under a glitterball.
It is all there to see on YouTube for anyone who wants to get a flavour, but that’s all you will get. Like describing any event, there’s only so much we can recount without demanding more imagination than our audience has to give. It’s one of those times when someone says you just had to be there and that’s it. I didn’t emerge a changed man and I doubt anyone else did but the ante has been raised in what a show is and seatbelts may yet be a requirement further down the line.
However…
It’s a show, it’s an amazing show and it may even be the future of shows, but only to those with the budget U2 undoubtedly have. I loved every minute of it but can only remember the handful of songs I knew beforehand; the most recent of which were from 1992. A bit like ecstasy in that it took me somewhere wonderful and left me with a feeling of having experienced something worthwhile and exciting but I couldn’t give a blow by blow account of it or even say where we went.
Addictive?
No.
Would I do it again?
You betcha.
Sanctimony?
I remember Sting’s exploits in the rainforest years ago had him labelled a bit of a tree hugger and environmental luvvie but I suspect he did far more good than bad. More than anything the media references that leached into common speech left me with a distaste for lazy stereotyping and particularly the avoidance of real issues by it.
Nobody seems to have half an opinion on Bono or U2, some half baked but always strongly held. During the early part of the show I sent photos to a few friends and received replies from some with big thumbs up emojis, lucky you and so forth. Others were more reflective of their taste in U2’s music, preferring the older gear to the new and there were a few references to Bono’s tax affairs which were succinct but not excoriating. Then came the expletive laden diatribes dropping C bombs all over the place in some kind of pent up rage placing Bono centre stage of all the world’s perceived ills. The evil mouthpiece of a global cabal etc…
It’s a while since I gave much time to the thoughts of artists and sport stars on anything beyond their competencies and very few tread that line with sincerity and grace. I remember Bono as being fairly vocal about a number of humanitarian causes and it’s no bad thing to do more good than harm if it’s in your power and not just a vehicle for self promotion. I get the feeling he means what he pleads for and even if he drinks goat’s blood for breakfast, it doesn’t alter the message. If I say it, nobody hears and the world’s forests are replete with trees that fell in silence. Examples of the contrary are ugly and plentiful and power isn’t always put to good use. https://www.looktothestars.org/celebrity/bono
Late in the gig and under caution from his bandmates to keep it short, he spoke about nationalism and how flags were not a positive force. He talked about poverty, working together, how love was better than hate, on women organising and being every bit as important as men and U2 backed campaigns One & Red. It chimed with me because I already hold those views – with or without him.
I daresay half the audience probably didn’t have good enough English to understand him in full flow and a good few who’d forked out the not trifling sum to be there may not even rate poverty as something to concern themselves with. Women’s affairs in Spain, as with any country that suffers catholicism’s heel dragging on progress, are an ongoing argument to say the least.
With the backdrop of the EU flag, my fears for the future of Europe were spoken to. The projection of EU member state flags across the screen that barely two hours previously had shown the continent’s destruction was poignant. It is especially so now with the resurgent wave of the bovine, the wilfully uninformed and misinformed who embrace victimhood as identity despite having every cause not to. If you are a nationalist tool, or a tool of any persuasion, just shut up for once and listen to the music, enjoy the show and stop fucking the world for a couple of hours.
It was a great show and that is the bottom line.
