Ready For The Deal: U2 Inside The Sphere

Floating sentinels, winking their neon eyes, accost your discombobulated brain in the airport. Just put your money in the slot and watch all your problems disappear. I catch a lift on the result of a one-night stand between an 18-wheeler and a mini bus instead, gloriously air conditioned because the heat, even at dusk, is serious business. We’re in the desert, with The Grand Canyon to the east and Death Valley to the west but turning a corner we’re presented with the attraction we’ve flown so far to see.

It's as if the moon has cut its strings and crash landed in Nevada and - never missing a shot - the people of Vegas quickly moved as one to plug it in. The Sphere is cash thrown at the clouds to create a new world wonder between the ones nature wrought. In a town lit up like a Christmas tree, it is the crowning star. It’s an asteroid billboard. It’s a plaything for the gods. And that’s only the outside.

Everything is bigger (and brighter) in Sin City. The suite I’m presented with, not quite on the thirty-first floor nor behind a gold plated door as Gram Parsons moaned, is ridiculous (although you could get used to it very rapidly) and I half wonder if I’ve been given the keys to Bono’s room by mistake. I’ve been warned that the mini bar is pressure sensitive so If I even lift up the $16 bottle of water to marvel at it, I’ve bought it. There’s gold on the monstrosity that is Trump Tower which dominates the window, blighting the view of the mountains beyond. I made my way downstairs, ate something ridiculously overpriced and hung out for a while, nursing a couple of drinks and hearing reports of what lay ahead from wide-eyed people like former HP man Neil McCormick returning from the opening, star-studded show, although I was reluctant to hear too much.

Even Better Than The Real Thing

After breakfast the great and good of the Irish media are given a tour of Zoo Station: A U2:UV Experience, an “interactive and immersive exhibit” developed by Vibee (“The destination experience company built for music fans who want MORE” and part of the Live Nation group) with Gavin Friday and input from the band. Our guide, a perfectly nice chap, works hard to sell it all. They copied the sign, he tells us, from the Zoologischer Garten train station in Berlin, close to Hansa Studios where a lot of the Achtung Baby recordings took place (although they still keep a photo of Bowie in the window), for the entrance and hired local graffiti artists to recreate “Zoo:TV iconography.”

There’s a Trabant with the baby icon on the bonnet, a subway train carriage with the serial number taken from the bank notes that were handed out back in the Zoo:TV days. I still have some of those at home. They will not be accepted as legal tender. There’s a drum kit and a couple of guitars on the “B Stage” and the U2 Pop Up shop with exclusive merch and a queue out the door. You can hear the strains of ‘What do you want?” from ‘Zooropa’ which makes some sort of sense.

On the first floor the décor reflects more where there at than where they’ve been. A “fun fact” is that this used to be a Barney’s retail space, but it’s nothing like that now. There’s the Ultraviolet Lounge and The Fly Bar where we'll be generously wined later on. A mini 172-seat cinema where you can watch concert films and exclusive content is useful but the whole shebang is knocked into a cocked hat by a display of Anton Corbjin's marvellous photos which have visually defined the band since the days of War.

Tour over, I wandered through The Venetian. Gondola rides available on the indoor waterway under the plaza’s fake sky which changes colour a the day goes by. No need to go outside at all.

We’re then taken to the Sphere, a fifteen-minute walk although still in the same resort. The anti-chamber – $20 beers, more t-shirts, a robot greeter - is impressive but the venue itself is something else. The screen is off but even so, your ocular nerves have to adjust to take it in. Here are some numbers.

$2.3 billion was spent constructing this 18,600-capacity, 112 metre tall planet-conquering death star by the Madison Square Garden Sports Corporation. The steep seats face the largest LED screen on the planet (19,000 by 13,500 pixels) and are surrounded by 167,000 loudspeaker drivers. Pick the bones out of that.
Walking past the flashing Trabant DJ booth where BP Fallon provided the vibes back in the day, we’re allowed on stage. In the same way he did on the opening night of the last tour in Tulsa, the 15-year old inside me who took a bus to Dublin to see his first concert when U2 played Croke Park in 1987 does a couple of summersaults.

The stage - an adaptation of Brian Eno’s colour-changing turntable released as a limited edition with London’s Paul Stolper Gallery in 2021 - is sparsely furnished. A peddle board next to a keyboard. A drumkit behind a spinning podium. We’re given a turn so I put on sunglasses, suck in the gut, and do my best Fly impression. The photographic results are disappointing.

Not Even Close To The Real Thing: Bono asks why this idiot was allowed onto his stage.

Still Running

Handsome Englishman Willie Williams - U2’s stage/tour/miracle designer since 1983 - seems very relaxed although I suspect this probably wasn’t the case 24 hours earlier.

“We had to dream up a show for a completely new kind of venue. These things are the confluence of art, science, and diplomacy, and the diplomacy was pretty enormous as not only were they finishing a building but Darren Aronofsky has his movie [Postcard From Earth] in here so we had to share. The great thrill was watching 18,000 people come into a space no one has been in before with absolutely no idea what was about to happen. In the first fifteen minutes of Zoo TV the audience didn’t know what to do, and it felt like that last night.”

Williams puts the reaction succinctly.

“They lost their shit.”

When asked about the absence of Larry Mullen, he’s philosophical.

“When Dennis Sheehan died [long-serving tour manager who passed in 2015] we couldn’t imagine touring without him. It’s such a cliché but the show must go on. It was really lovely to see Larry when he came out for the [Atomic City] video shoot. We just laughed at how absurd it is.”

The show is divided into four sections and for Williams, it’s the closing segment that works best.

“We open with a whole chunk of Achtung Baby. Since the early nineties, the whole world has become Zoo TV. The genius of The Joshua Tree show was that they presented it without being at all nostalgic, like it was their new record. It turns out the Zoo TV aesthetic felt really fresh so we’ve sampled some of it to begin. If you think that Joshua Tree has a light side and a dark side then Achtung Baby has a dark side and a really bleak side. As one hit it would be too much, so we take a break for a section intended as a kind of sorbet and the Brian Eno stage lights up. You’re looking for a balance between spectacle and emotional connection.”

“The final section is more cinematic, which this place was built for. I think that section connected most. The whole show up until then has been from a three-year period and then we cram everything else in at the end.”

Williams has been working on the show for about a year but admits he had to be talked into it.

“It’s no secret that I was not keen to begin with, not least because I hate Las Vegas and I picture it as the place rock n’ roll comes to die. It’s different from the other shows I’ve done as here, we’re starting with a given, somebody else’s screen. Starting with hardware isn’t always the best thing to do but we did have the benefit of being here first.”

Sam Jones

Let Me In The Sound

If Williams is the picture of relaxation under pressure than Joe O’Herlihy, the affable Cork Man who’s been U2’s chief sound engineer since the seventies, is almost horizontal.

“Bono called me in August ’21 and said he’d been talking to Jim Dolan [CEO of Sphere Entertainment] whose building this thing in Las Vegas with this new sound system from HOLOPLOT,” he grins. “Could I go and see if I can break it?”

“Audio has always been the poor relation in these productions. The German government employed HOLOPLOT to fix the audio in train stations. Their 3D beaming can point audio in a particular direction, putting a precise amount to that area and then stop it carrying on into areas it shouldn’t. I went for a demo for a day in Berlin and I was so impressed I stayed for a week. We’ve transferred that here.”

O’Herlihy then gave out a technically detailed explanation about how the stage is mapped out in sound terms which went slightly over my head but here’s the gist of it.

“Each musician’s audio goes into their domain. Above them is the immersive system so treatments or backing vocals go out wide and become almost orchestral. Further back is a surround system which is very good for something like the opening of ‘Streets’ where the sound gathers momentum and rolls to the stage. It’s an incredible thing for audio to be able to replicate an album like Achtung Baby.”

Is this the best they’ve ever sounded live?

“Absolutely and I can safely say that because on the 28th of September 1978, I did the sound in the Arcadia Ballroom in Cork and yer man embarrassed me last night by telling the audience. The brief from Jim Dolan for the designers was it has to be perfect or else what’s the point? The world saw his vision come to life last night and it was fantastic to be part of it.”

Will there be similar venues in other parts of the world?

“They’re looking at having one in Stratford in London. It may not be quite this capacity but to do the acoustics and the audio correctly, you have to have this dimension. The smaller it gets, the more time-alignment issues you’ll have.”

Again the question of Larry’s absence and any resultant difference in sound is raised.

“Bram is 41 so the difference is the energy that a younger drummer brings to the table which means that Adam has been playing the best bass of his life. Bram’s such a Larry fan that he’d stop us during rehearsals to say that Larry did it this way on the record. He has it down.”

It should be noted that Larry has left a message for Bram in the beautifully-produced show programme.

“Just remember not to get too comfy up there!”

The Boys Play Rock And Roll

We get an unexpected minute with Adam Clayton and The Edge.

“When you mix that clarity of sound with the quality of those images, it’s hard to then imagine a normal concert,” says Clayton, “This has changed it for everyone. It’s exciting to be the first to do that.”

“You can see the top tier seats so it’s not like arenas or stadiums,” says The Edge. “You can hear Bono whisper. We’re still experimenting to see how far we can take that intimacy.”

“Since the technology’s bespoke, there’s always that nagging question, ‘Is it going to break down?’” Edge goes on. “At one point, although I didn’t see it, my guitar technician Dallas [Schoo] was on his knees switching effects for me. Normally I’d do it but I was down at the front. He’s usually under the stage but his system broke down. With all the technology involved, that’s what went wrong.”

What about Joe’s claim that this is the best you ever sounded on stage?

“It’s the best I’ve ever heard The Edge sounding!” Clayton laughs.

“I tell you what,” his mate continues. “There’s no hiding. The sound is so clear that every single mistake is audible so we’re having to raise our game.”

“It’s pretty scary in many ways,” Adam admits, talking about Larry’s absence. “We did some rehearsals with Bram so I knew he had my back, like Larry was always there for me. He’s got a great attitude, he’ll adapt to whatever the band needs.”

“He’s a huge Larry Fan, he’s not out to reinvent the wheel,” says Edge. “He stays true to the spirit of the songs. He was the least nervous yesterday.”

“These Dutch people are different. They’re not like us,” smiles Clayton.

O’Herlihy joked about coming back here next year with Larry.

“I wouldn’t rule it out,” is Edge’s response. “We can’t predict the future but that…could happen. This is the only place in the world where we can lay on a show like this. I’d say there might be Spheres popping up but it takes so long to build and the technology involved is so expensive. The thing that excites me most is the acoustic stuff. It allows the audience into the song. They’re able to participate in a way they can’t otherwise. I’m excited about where we can take that.”

When asked what other bands might be suitable for this space The Edge wisely plumps for Gorillaz or Kraftwerk. The final question is about the new single, ‘Atomic City’, so he keeps going.

“We had a more contemporary sounding version but it didn’t have that chemistry so we re-recorded it with Steve Lillywhite [who’s knocking around behind us. I try to catch his eye as I’ve interviewed him before. I fail.] and Larry came over to play the drums in Sound City. That chemistry is something people unconsciously relate to and I think guitar music particularly benefits from that.”

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation

Your Eyes Are Wide. Your Mind Can Wander

After a few photo opportunities, we given an hour or two to spruce ourselves up before meeting again at The Fly Bar for some complimentary cocktails. Given the eye-watering prices of everything in Vegas but especially the beer which makes the publicans of Temple Bar seem like reasonable village inn keepers in comparison, some of the media professionals present (i.e. me) give the Gin & Tonic a good go and are in suitably fine form as we walk back down to the venue for the show.

Our group is fast-tracked to the best seats (it says $500 on my ticket). As DJ Pauli “The PSM” Lovejoy spins in the back of the East German motor, you start thinking again about the Zoo TV tour, which wrapped up three decades ago. It was constructed to reflect a world where we thought technology was taking over but we had no idea, as Williams pointed out, what was over the hill. The Sphere is technology caught up with thought. Zoo TV was, as Williams also mentioned, overpowering but U2:UV makes it look analogue. If Zoo TV was shelling out to watch a big telly then attending the Sphere is being consumed by the screen. It’s techno-surrealism. You’re in it rather than at it.

Pauli cues up ‘Bennie And The Jets’ long after the show should have started. When he plays The Eagles we fear the worst but there’s Bono, giving it some sean-nós, here of all places, “I couldn’t find you, where are you hiding from me,” before Bram and Edge catapult us back to the future for the late-night push-pull of ‘Zoo Station’ anchored by Clayton’s bass. Bono puts on those shades like it’s 1992, then he and Edge sing to each other like it’s 1979 as the train of time makes the future the past. The screen is a cross of light and interference. Zoo TV in 16K HD.

‘The Fly’ throws its greasy funk in our face as the screen spits words from ‘ABBA’ to ‘Woolworths’ to ‘Orgasm’. Everything we know is wrong. Taste is the enemy of art. We’re in the right town. The Edge goes into his solo and the wall is taken over by The Matrix as a jumble of flashing, alternating digits climbs and then falls back on to the audience, threatening to drown us in information overload.

“Sorry for being late,” says Bono. “A lot of numbers involved in tonight’s show, ones and zeros mostly. Rock N’ Roll loves a bit of technology! A guitar loves a fuzzbox! This whole place feels like a distortion peddle…of the mind!”

Marco Brambilla

Swinging to The Music

‘Even Better Than The Real Thing’ makes the Fly display look like a torch shone through a piece of paper. The sound is Marc Bolan’s T.Rex transplanted to a nightclub east of Venus. Then your brain slides down the surface of things.

YouTube videos can’t do this cascading/ascending wall of Elvis justice. It’s a specially commissioned piece called King Size by Marco Brambilla combining images from the movies, from Vegas, and some that have no past at all. It’s the invasion of the AI Elvii. It’s the strip forever tattooed on the inside of your eyelids, a CT scan of the Vegas hive mind. Gravity goes out for a smoke as the stage seems to levitate. The Elvis Of Rhodes, The Elvis Of Liberty, the giant Elvis with the spinning head floats towards us. Any other band would be lost but U2 move through the air in bubbles, projecting themselves into the myth of The King. Cross the world to see this because nobody has seen anything like it before.

‘Mysterious Ways’ blasts the band at us in such ferocious HD that staring at them in the flesh seems ridiculously old-fashioned. If Bono’s voice as he goes into Donna Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ has a slight rasp then he’s more than covered by Clayton playing like his life depends on it and sounding deep as heavy as a fallen star we’re in.

There’s been a few internet experts who possibly weren’t there complaining about spectacle over emotion but ‘One’ shows this up as dark arsewater. Bono whispers in our ears and the lights on a thousand phones are combined with a thousand more on the screen like a slow ride across the milky way. Gravity comes back from the bar and people are holding hands. Overcome, I kiss HP pal Tom Dunne on the cheek. We’ve worked together several times but we’re not that close. In my defence, he did look deep into my eyes beforehand, he's a handsome man, and it’s that kind of show. One love indeed.

An interlude of ‘Love Me Tender’ with JFK choosing to go to the moon before the explosion of ‘Until The End Of The World’, a song about the ultimate betrayal, the kiss in the garden that broke a heart for thirty pieces of silver, written at a time when Fukuyama’s End Of History idea floated about. As dark as you think Achtung Baby is, it’s darker still. Water laps on the screen, Bono gives it a bit of Édith Piaf and then Tipperary man John Gerrard’s Flare artwork – a gas flare in the shape of a fluttering flag – towers above them as the Edge drives the song into the ground.

The flare breaks apart in a thousand falling flaming embers as Bram’s toms dominate ‘Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses’ and then a rope of tied sheets is raised to the ceiling, wherever the ceiling actually is in this place. The looped groove kicks in, Clayton’s bass joins it from somewhere deep within the earth, and for a minute you fear Bono might do a Bon Jovi and swing out over us but he’s a different idea in mind. Digital fireworks detonate as a young woman is brought up from the crowd but Bono decides against letting her fly as she might not be dressed for it. A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation

Heartland

“That’s the end of side one. Let’s have a break from all that intensity.” To bring it down, they cut to the Songs Of Surrender version of ‘All I Want Is You’. That album seemed more of a placeholder than anything else as they worked towards this big guitar album they keep banging on about but it did show how bullet proof a lot of U2 songs are. Stripped down they could still stand up. The chorus roars in to Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ before it staggers to a close.

Bono introduces Bram and sends love to Larry. He recalls his first reaction to the dutchman at rehearsals in Dublin. “He’s too tall. He’s too good looking. This’ll never work.” Bram refuses to respond which Bono reckons is very Larry of him.

They busk out skiffley versions of ‘Desire’ and ‘Angel Of Harlem’ and then the final Rattle song of the evening, the Dylan co-write ‘Love Rescue Me’. The Edge plays it on a bass through a slight echo. Perhaps this was worked up for Songs Of Surrender and wisely didn’t make the cut. It doesn’t quite work but it’s such a great song it very nearly does.

This section of Rattle & Hum songs reminds you again how far they travelled in three short years from it to Achtung Baby. Perhaps they’re included as proof they don’t need a giant toy box to put on a rock n’ roll show although they reveal something else. Baby is seen as a reaction to the backlash that the earnest and rootsy Rattle endured upon its release. To escape it, they disappeared behind curtains of irony and showbiz subterfuge but that’s not what really happened. Achtung is actually their most honest album and the sidestep to Sun Studios and all the guest stars on Rattle, as good as those songs are, is actually the one where they were play acting. Pain and anguish is far more apparent on their Blood On The Tracks but like Dylan before them they hid it behind a pair of shades. If I had a plane at my disposal it would only take me a hour to get to Joshua Tree National Park. You might think bug-eyed Bono is a long way from Stetson Bono but they’re actually not that far apart at all.

“It’s our most bloody, brutal, bareknuckle fight of an album,” says Bono, reading my notes. “And because it hardly ever leaves the bedroom, it’s our most political album.” I always imagined Roy Orbison singing ‘So Cruel’ in some sci-fi movie bar. In another dimension there may be an Orbison Sings U2 ballads record. He already owns one of their greatest songs, ‘She’s A Mystery To Me’, and this ode to the confusion in the space between fear and desire is right up there too.

The Edge’s playing through ‘Acrobat’, a swirling ‘Ultraviolet’, and an especially moving ‘Love Is Blindness’ is both furious and tender. As on record, the ‘Blindness’ solo – an approximation of the pain that goes with living, that dangerous idea that almost makes sense – is possibly his finest couple of bars. Bono adding a melancholic ‘Viva Las Vegas’ calls to mind all those souls chained to slots and tables nearby, throwing down their last dollars to grasp at dreams that will never come.

All The Colours Bleed Into One

If the screen was deliberately under used in sections two and three then it comes alive for part four as a white dinner jacketed Bono woos us into ‘Elevation’. Blue shapes try to break through a dark background as Edge tears ‘My Way’ apart with distorted chords before the screen flashes to the technicolour vista of The Strip. It’s a phenomenal effect that makes it look like the building has disappeared.

‘Atomic City’ despite its gorgeous middle eight isn’t much of a song - between 1945 and 1962, hundreds of nuclear test explosions were carried out here in Nevada in the Mojave desert. If they set one off now, would we just presume it was another theatrical wave of the hat? - and the time-slipping footage of the strip’s rise and fall is the one point where the spectacle dwarfs the music. It gives way to the desert at night. Those in the seats above seem to be hanging from the sky. ‘Vertigo’ threatens to take the skin off the front row faces. The desert sun rises as the intro to ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ spins around the speakers of a sound system that God dreams about having in his living room, and Gerrard’s Flare is back. It reminds you of the glorious moment in the Rattle & Hum movie when the light comes up, or the John Ford vistas on the Joshua Tree anniversary tour screen, which seemed pretty big at the time. It’s another moment worth traversing the Atlantic for.

The desert sun fades and we’re bathed in white light. The pulse of ‘With Or Without You’ soundtracks a globe within the globe floating on a body of water across the electronic wall. It moves closer and opens out, revealing Es Devlin’s Nevada Ark, an animation of local species that flies towards the crowd, engulfing both us and the screen, a Sistine Chapel ceiling of light. Bono sings a chorus of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ and they thank us for coming to see them.

There’s one more. ‘Beautiful Day’. Edge’s big Coca-Cola riff. Bram van den Berg trying to bust his snare. Adam Clayton’s bass that could support another hotel extension. Bono singing to the heavens where Devlin’s animals swirl in all the colours that came out after the flood. There’s an appropriate snippet of Louis Armstrong’s ‘What A Wonderful World’. They wave their goodbyes. The audience collapses into their seats, trying to make sense of what they’ve just seen.

Don’t Try And Make Sense

Back in my hotel suite, trying to sleep, I played the show over again in my head, thinking about Willie Williams comments about updating Zoo TV and how Vegas is the place where rock and roll comes to die. How can you be sincere in place like this that exists only to separate visitors from their money, a place where everything, apart from a few sketches by Picasso, is fake, the town Americans visit to see the wonders of Europe when Europe is too far away. The place where ‘Lie’ really is the middle word in ‘Believe’, shining out in neon that never fades. What happens in Vegas stay in Vegas, because it couldn’t happen anywhere else. For U2 to take their most painful, emotionally naked album to the altar of fake, a city that art and heart forgot, and then put it up on the largest display in history, and somehow succeed in making it even more intimate may just be the greatest trick they’ve ever pulled.