“It was an amazing feeling looking down into the crowd...”

It was funny how our involvement in the Elevation Tour came about. Things had been going really well on that tour overall for U2. All That You Can’t Leave Behind had gone to No.1 all over the world, more or less, and they ended up playing to over 2 million people in total on the tour – and Slane was like the apex of it in so many ways. The first Slane Castle show was a sell-out and we heard then that they were maybe going to do a second gig there. We’d just put out the Walls’ debut album, Hi Lo and we have a mutual friend with U2, who was in school with them. We said, “If we gave you a package, would you give it them?”

They were still in America on tour, so it was kind of a long shot – but it was worth a go. We put together a package for each one of them with a CD of the album, a packet of Tayto crisps and some Barry’s teabags. And there was a handwritten note, telling them to be careful with their backs when they were lifting heavy equipment into the van and stuff like that. Three or four weeks prior to the gig, which was on 1 September 2001, we got a call from somebody working with U2, asking us if we were free for Slane. We immediately assumed it was somebody pulling our leg. But it was them – and so we got to do the second Slane show, alongside Ash, Moby and Nelly Furtado, amongst others.