LIVE REVIEW: U2 wow Rogers Arena on opening night

In Bono’s recently broadcast Today FM interview with the late Tony Fenton, recorded when he was still recuperating in his Dublin home following a cycling accident in NYC, the U2 singer spoke about the alchemy of live performance and the “miracle” of rock ‘n’ roll: “These concrete sarcophaguses are parked on the outside of some city [on] industrial wasteland, suddenly become some kind of…Xanadu.” (In fairness, he immediately blamed the painkilling medication he was taking for his use of the word ‘Xanadu’).
The last time U2 played Vancouver was in October 2009, when they finished the first North American leg of 360 in its world class BC Place Stadium. As the record books show, that was the highest-grossing tour of all time, with its 7.2 million tickets bringing in €653 million in sales as the band played to massive stadium audiences of up to 90,000 all around the planet.
Tonight and again tomorrow night they’re playing literally just across the road from BC Place. Situated in the city’s downtown area, and home to the Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team, the 19,000-capacity Rogers Arena is no concrete sarcophagus. In fact, built just twenty years ago, it’s quite a plain but modern-looking building. The hope, however, is that as the venue for the very first of 70 planned shows worldwide on U2’s iNNOCENCE + eEXPERIENCE tour, it will become some kind of Xanadu before the evening is out.
This will actually be the first time U2 have played indoors in over a decade, but while they’ve scaled down the audiences to suit the more intimate feel of the new songs on their thirteenth studio album,Songs of Innocence, their ambition remains as unchecked as ever.
Personally, I’m not overly optimistic that we’re going to witness a band at the height of their powers this evening. Speaking to Hot Press in a local restaurant last night, Bono admitted that he was suffering from sinusitis and finding it hard to hit the high notes. But it’s not just that. Opening nights are often fraught with nerves, teething problems and technical difficulties anyway (this is the band who found themselves stuck in a giant malfunctioning lemon when the Popmart Tour kicked off), but a lot of other stuff has happened to U2 in the long lead-up to this opening show – much of it negative.
First, there was the online brouhaha following their controversial decision to give Songs of Innocence away as a free iTunes download last September. The unexpected backlash – which was ultimately more against the power and dominance of big tech companies like Apple than the four Dubliners themselves – largely distracted the public from the quality of the album itself. It seemed that most people were too busy shouting about invasion of privacy to actually listen to the songs – though given that more than 30 million iTunes customers have since downloaded SOI, the stunt could hardly be considered a failure.
The door falling off Bono’s private plane in mid-air during a flight home from Germany wasn’t anywhere near as serious as the tabloids made out, but it was hardly a good omen. Soon afterwards came the slightly bizarre bicycle crash in Central Park, which left the singer badly injured – he broke his arm in six places, and fractured his eye socket, hand and shoulder blade - and seriously held up rehearsals for this tour.
Bad shit usually happens in threes, but U2 have always gone one better – or worse. The sad news that Larry Mullen Jr’s elderly father had passed away filtered through on Tuesday. Given that the cover of SOI shows the topless drummer holding tightly onto his own son, Elvis, it seemed particularly poignant.
Larry had to fly home to Dublin for the funeral – during his eulogy he sadly quipped, “Nice one on the timing, dad,” – but arrived back in town this morning. This won’t be the first time the band have had to deal with a death in their extended family before a big show: they played a memorable Slane gig in 2001 just a few days after Bono had lost his own father.
Still and all, long one of the most divisive and hard-necked bands in rock ‘n’ roll, it’ll take more than keyboard warriors, malfunctioning aircraft, bike accidents and personal bereavements to stop these guys. Even with a singer who’s part titanium - a situation that would have at least been appropriate during the futuristic Zooropa tour - and a jetlagged, grieving drummer, U2 can be trusted to put on a good show. But will it be a great one?
It’s actually such a beautiful evening in Vancouver that it’s almost a shame this show is indoors. The Rogers Arena is stuffed to capacity and the sense of anticipation is electrifying. There’s no support act. Tonight is all about Bono, Edge, Larry and Adam – and the 19,000 fans here to see them.
Previous tours have featured psychedelically painted Trabant cars, 40-foot mechanical lemons, giant crowd-straddling Sci-Fi Claws, live telephonic link-ups with the International Space Station, and other technical marvels. In very stark contrast, iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE opens with a single swinging oversized lightbulb.
They begin with new album opener ‘The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)’, Bono extending the “oh-ooh” group chants at the beginning before Edge’s crunchy guitar riff slams in. “I was chasing down the days of fear,” Bono sings, “chasing down a dream before it disappeared.” His voice seems absolutely fine, and the sound in the arena is good (though, despite the much hyped Sensurround system, it occasionally seems a little muddy later when he talks).
They follow with ‘Out of Control’ – U2’s first ever single and the song the teenage Bono wrote on his guitar after seeing The Ramones play in Dublin. Songs Of Innocence sees the band largely looking back at their Dublin past, and ‘Out Of Control’ is really where it all started. Midway through, Bono takes a sip of water from a bottle and cheekily spits it at Edge. Back in the punk days, he wouldn’t have been spitting Volvic!
He gets an audience member to count in the “uno dos tres catorce” intro to an energetic ‘Vertigo’ and an equally frenetic ‘I Will Follow’ follows that. His stage moves aren’t quite as fluid as they’ve been on earlier tours, but the man did celebrate his 55th birthday the other day. He does seem to have fully physically recovered from the accident, and actually loosens up more and more as the show progresses. With his hair dyed blonde, he reminds me of Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet for some reason – this stage character seems slightly sleazy, slightly dangerous.
It’s when they play ‘Iris’ (about his late mother) that the scale of the production begins to reveal itself. There are two stages –a large traditional rectangular one for Innocence and a smaller circular one for Experience – with a long walkway connecting them. Hanging overhead is what looks like some kind of massive cage. As ‘Iris’ begins, the ‘cage’ becomes a screen and shows the old footage of Bono’s late mother in a lemon dress that inspired an earlier song about her, ‘Lemon’.
He really only begins to properly engage with the audience with ‘Cedarwood Road’, explaining that “if you can’t look back at your past, you can find yourself stuck in it.” The screens show us an animated facsimile of his childhood bedroom, with a teenage Bono idling around and dreaming of becoming a rock star, and then the suburban streets of Glasnevin.
It’s hard to know where to look. The visuals are so compelling that it takes a while to realise that Bono has walked to the other stage, leaving Edge, Larry and Adam on the other one. The visuals continue as they segue into ‘Song For Someone’…and then you suddenly see that he’s actually inside the cage/screen, walking around the visuals. It truly has to be seen to be believed.
The choreography is jaw-droppingly superb, and continues that way for the rest of the show. These moves have obviously been seriously rehearsed.
Larry walks between the stages aggressively banging a drum at the start of an acoustic version of ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’. It’s a powerful rendition that sets up the next song nicely. You can sense the hand of Gavin Friday in the montage of RTE News clips about the 1974 bombings, and quite shocking explosions, that introduce ‘Raised By Wolves’ (he has previous form in the bombing department from the In The Name of the Father soundtrack). The song is overtly political anyway, but the visuals here are explicitly calling for justice for the victims of those cowardly car bombings. It’s powerful enough here tonight in Canada, but that message is going to really hit home in Ireland.
‘Until The End of the World’ wraps up the first half of the show. There’s an interval – a first for U2 – during which a short film about punk and the 1970s is shown. Featuring clips of Lou Reed, Johnny Rotten, David Bowie, Phil Lynott, Joe Strummer and others, it’s compelling enough that few in the audience seem to leave for a pint or a piss.
Because of the choreography required with the visuals, the setlist for the first half probably won’t be changing much during the tour (though Gavin Friday was sitting in front of me furiously scribbling notes throughout).
The second half will be more flexible – especially given the vastness of their back catalogue. Of the ten songs they play here tonight, only two are from SOI. There’s a stripped-down ‘Every Breaking Wave’ (to these ears, one of their greatest moments ever) and a haunting version of ‘The Troubles’ that sees an onscreen Lykke Li doing the backing vocals.
Otherwise, it’s a hop, skip and jump through their impressive back catalogue: ‘Invisible’, ‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’, ‘Mysterious Ways’, Desire’, ‘Bullet The Blue Sky’, and ‘Pride’ all get an airing. There’s no ‘Bad’, and the only sign of ‘One’ is a spooky snippet of a Stephen Hawking spoken-word version that’s incorporated into the intro to the first song of the encore, ‘City of Blinding Lights’.
I can’t seriously fault iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE. This was the opening night and, with a lot going against them, the band seriously delivered. It was very much a Bono show (I don’t think another member uttered a single word), but the performance was tight and the overall production absolutely stunning. The Rogers Arena didn’t quite become Xanadu, but it was still a very pleasurable dome. Once U2 get a few more shows under their belt, it’s really going to catch fire.
I’m beyond impressed. They’ve done it again. The keyboard warriors will be incensed…
SET LIST
FIRST HALF
‘The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)’
‘Out Of Control’
‘Vertigo’
‘I Will Follow’
‘Iris’
‘Cedarwood Road’
‘Song For Someone’
‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’
‘Raised by Wolves’
‘Until The End Of The World’
SECOND HALF
‘Invisible’
‘Even Better Than The Real thing’
‘Mysterious Ways’
‘Desire’
‘The Sweetest Thing’
‘Every Breaking Wave’
‘Bullet The Blue Sky’
‘Pride’
‘The Troubles’
‘With Or Without You’
ENCORE
‘City of Blinding Lights’
‘Beautiful Day’
‘Where The Streets Have No Name’
‘Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’