It was just last week that I asked a simple question: What’s with the steering wheel microphone?
Thanks to this awesome video shot by U2gigs.com, we have an answer.
Your thoughts? Cool? Awkward?
This is a post from the @U2 blog.
About that steering wheel microphone…
Direct Link
(This is an uncut/unedited clip)
From U2Tours.com:
Main Set: Breathe, No Line On The Horizon, Get On Your Boots, Magnificent, Beautiful Day, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Angel of Harlem, In A Little While, Unknown Caller, The Unforgettable Fire, City of Blinding Lights, Vertigo, I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Pride, MLK, Walk On
Encore(s): Where the Streets Have No Name, One, Ultraviolet, With Or Without You, Moment of Surrender
Comments: U2 opens the U2360 Tour. Bono calls Barcelona ‘the capital of surrealism.’ He dedicates ‘Angel’ to Michael Jackson, and sings bits of ‘Man In The Mirror’ and ‘Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough.’ After ‘Little While,’ U2 does a lengthy linkup with the Intl. Space Station. People walked around the catwalk with Aung San Suu Kyi masks during ‘Walk On.’ A Desmond Tutu video about the ONE Campaign plays before the encore. ‘One’ is a mess, and the band has to restart the song.
Audio courtesy of MacPhisto
U2 kicked off their first tour in three years, rocking a raucous Barcelona crowd of around 90,000 and reaching for the stars with a live link-up to the International Space Station.
Featuring one of the biggest concert stages ever built, the U2 360 Tour will visit 31 cities across Europe and North America and entertain an estimated three million people. More dates are expected to be announced in 2010.
Fans surrounded the circular platform inside Barcelona’s Nou Camp stadium, allowing for a bigger audience and lower average ticket prices during the global recession.
“All around Spain, all around the world, things are difficult. Thank you for coming back to us again and again,” Bono said during the high octane show.
The quartet, one of the world’s most successful acts, opened with Breathe from their acclaimed new album No Line on the Horizon, and the crowd came to life with the anthem-style Magnificent on a hot summer’s night.
U2 mixed old songs and new, playing classics including Beautiful Day and Sunday Bloody Sunday as well as Angel of Harlem, which the band dedicated to US pop star Michael Jackson, who died suddenly last week aged 50.
“We wrote this one for Billie Holiday but we are going to play it tonight for Michael Jackson,” said Bono. “Unspeakable talent, that’s all there is to say, really,” he added, and the song morphed into Jackson hits Man in the Mirror and Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough.
Half way through the concert, U2 linked up by video to the International Space Station.
“Very nice to hear you,” said one astronaut as the microphone floated around the cabin.
“Commander, can you see Barcelona?” asked Bono.
“Right now the most beautiful sight in our cosmos is the blue planet earth,” came the reply.
Great expectations
The tour is reported to be the group’s most expensive to date, costing an estimated $100 million, but industry experts suggest it could be money well spent.
Live performance is becoming an increasingly important source of revenue for major acts like U2 as sales of physical CDs declines sharply and online piracy remains rampant.
Billboard, an authoritative music industry publication, believes the U2 360 Tour could become one of the highest grossing ever, possibly eclipsing its 2005-6 Vertigo tour which earned the band $389 million.
The stage, which takes 120 trucks to transport, is another grand statement from U2, which has won more Grammy awards than any other band.
On the Zoo TV tour, huge video screens overloaded fans with flashing images of pop culture. On the PopMart tour, Bono appeared from inside a 12 metre glitterball shaped like a lemon.
The abiding visual memory on this tour is sure to be the Claw, a four-legged “monster” that towers 50 metres over the band’s heads and on which the sound system is mounted.
- Reuters
Here are some sights and sounds from opening night of the 360 Tour in Barcelona, Spain.
Setlist:
1. Breathe
2. No Line On The Horizon
3. Get On Your Boots
4. Magnificent
5. Beautiful Day
6. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
7. Angel Of Harlem / Man In The Mirror (snippet) / Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough (snippet)
8. In A Little While
9. Unknown Caller
10. The Unforgettable Fire
11. City Of Blinding Lights
12. Vertigo
13. Crazy Tonight
14. Sunday Bloody Sunday
15. Pride
16. MLK
17. Walk On
(Encore – Desmund Tutu speech plays leading into Streets)
18. Where The Streets Have No Name (With the red lights again! 
)
19. One – MESSED UP>> restart *
(Short break)
20. Ultraviolet
21. With or Without You
22. Moment of Surrender
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Take a sneak peak at U2’s upcoming 360 World Tour! Featuring stage construction, soundbites from band manager Paul McGuinness and tour producer Arthur Fogel. Stay tuned for the opening night piece which MHP will be posting tomorrow night!
THE sun is shining at Barcelona’s Nou Camp stadium — and U2’s futuristic new stage, above and right, is taking shape.
The band kick off their ‘360′ tour in the Spanish city on Tuesday and will take in 14 European cities over the summer.
The spectacular stage will allow Bono and the boys to perform in the middle of the stadium, so that fans will surround the band on all sides.
Four days before U2 play their first date, technicians were still putting the final touches to the canopied structure that hovers over the stage.
Lights and lasers are expected to play an important role in the show, and rumours abound that the circular stage may revolve, giving every fan a bird’s eye view of the proceedings.
Costing more than €100m to stage and running for the next 18 months, the band has already sold some 2.5 million tickets for its dates throughout Europe and North America as they showcase their latest album, ‘No Line on the Horizon’.
Meanwhile, glimpses of the plans for the Croke Park concert dates show that the stage will be set up near the Canal End with no backstage area.
U2 will play in Croke Park, Dublin, on July 24, 25 and 27, with around 80,000 fans expected to attend each night.
As a practice, I don’t usually quote rock drummers on the subject of wealth and economic fairness.
But U2’s Larry Mullen had some choice words recently about the rich and the recent surge in populist resentment.
“Love them or loathe them,” the spiky-headed drummer said, “all those rich wives, all those rich guys with all those balls, all those women that you see organizing this and organizing that, without them we’d be in a very, very different state than we are now. A lot of people who are well off in this country make huge contributions with their time and with their money.”
Mr. Mullen was speaking specifically of Ireland, which has given some of its rich–including billionaire financier Dermot Desmond–a hard time. His thoughts were echoed by bandmates Adam Clayton and Bono, who cautioned against Irish people becoming “sour.”
“Melancholy and bile are not our greatest traits,” said the singer, who clearly knows a thing or two about bile and melancholy.
The U.S. isn’t Ireland, of course. But populism is clearly rising on both sides of the Atlantic. And when left-leaning super-groups start defending billionaires, you know maybe things have gone too far.
Perhaps U2 will even write a song about the disenfranchised rich. “Angel of the Upper East Side”? Or “Even Better Than A Millionaire”?
U2 are on the cusp of their 360 Tour, and are asking fans to remember Burmese democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi by wearing a mask featuring her face.
“U2 believe the world must not be allowed to forget Aung San Suu Kyi and every night on the 360 Tour fans are being invited to wear the mask when the band play ‘Walk On,’ which was written for her,” the band’s website said today. “Put it on with thousands of others when Larry [Mullen, Jr., drums] and Edge [guitar] strike up the opening bars of ‘Walk On.’”
A downloadable mask is on the site with directions, but you’ll need Adobe Acrobat Reader to print the file.
“Wear it to work or college,” the post on the website reads. “Wear it on the bus or the train. Wear it in the pub or at the shops. And don’t forget. Bring it to a U2 show.”
Suu Kyi is a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and won elections in Burma in 1990, but the military junta refused to accept the results. She has spent most of the last 19 years under house arrest.
Suu Kyi was recently tried for violating the terms of her house arrest after an uninvited visitor swam across Inya Lake in Yangon, Burma to visit her house twice. The trial was widely condemned as a sham by the United Nations and western nations.
U2 start their world tour in Barcelona on Tuesday. The tour, which is in support of the recently released No Line On The Horizon, hits Toronto in mid-September.
You can see U2 here:
June 30, July 2 Barcelona, Spain @ Nou Camp
July 7-8 Milan, Italy @ San Siro
July 11-12 Paris, France @ Stade De France
July 15 Nice, France @ Parc Charles Ehrmann
July 18 Berlin, Germany @ Olympic Stadium
July 20-21 Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Arena
July 24-25, 27 Dublin, Ireland @ Croke Park
July 31-Aug. 1 Gothenburg, Sweden @ Ullevi
Aug. 3 Gelsenkirchen, Germany @ Veltins-Arena
Aug. 6 Chorzow, Poland @ Slaski Stadium
Aug. 9-10 Zagreb, Croatia @ Maksimir Stadium
Aug. 14-15 London, England @ Wembley Stadium
Aug. 18 Glasgow, Scotland @ Hampden Park
Aug. 20 Sheffield, England @ Don Valley Stadium
Aug. 22 Cardiff, Wales @ Millennium Stadium
Sept. 12-13 Chicago, IL @ Soldier Field
Sept. 16-17 Toronto, ON @ Rogers Centre
Sept. 20-21 Boston, MA @ Gillette Stadium
Sept. 24-25 New York, NY @ Giants Stadium
Sept. 29 Hyattsville, MD @ FedEx Field
Oct. 1 Charlottesville, VA @ Scott Stadium
Oct. 6 Atlanta, GA @ Georgia Dome
Oct. 9 Tampa, FL @ Raymond James Stadium
Oct. 25 Pasadena, CA @ Rose Bowl
Oct. 28 Vancouver, BC @ BC Place Stadium
About to embark on a tour that will span five months and more than 30 cities in a third as many countries, Irish rock titans U2 recently got in a quick rehearsal at Barcelona’s Camp Nou stadium (pictured). The storied quartet, whose hits include “With or Without You,” “One,” “Sweetest Thing” and the recent “Get on Your Boots,” has dubbed this their 360-Degree Tour as it sports a massive rotating stage. It’s the tallest setup ever used on a tour of this size, and reportedly requires 120 trucks to haul it around. But don’t worry—the band’s buying carbon offset credits to cover the environmental side. Let’s hear it for responsible rock!
U2 to Barcelona, Milan, Paris, Nice, Amsterdam, Gothenburg, Chorzow, Zagreb
U2 begin their European tour in Spain, with 2 concerts in Camp Nou Barcelona next week. From then on the 7th and 8th July, Bono and co head to the San Siro Stadium, in Milan playing in the 2nd enourmous stadium. Snow Patrol are the main support for these.
The French 80,000 seater Stade de France in Paris hosts U2 for 2 nights. Kaiser Chiefs will be the support in the French Capital.
The entourage of trucks, equipment and Stage as well as crew head to be set up in Nice for the concert on the 15th July.
Germany’s Berlin will hold 1 concert in the Olympic Stadium on the 18th, then it’s the Dutch Music Capital Amsterdam in the ArenaA for 2 nights.
Snow Patrol are back supporting the Nice, Berlin and Amsterdam shows.
Tickets are only available for the 2nd Barcelona night, (2nd July) , and for the shows in Berlin and Amsterdam. All others are Sold Out.
U2 return home for 3 Sold out nights 24,25, 27th July in 80,000+ Stadium Croke Park in Dublin.
The end of July- Start of August Lunasa Festival, sees Ireland’s top Band return to the Continental circuit, with concerts in Gothenburg (31st July and 1st August).
Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen holds the capacity crowd for the concert on the 3rd.
Then Poland’s Chorcow Slaski Stadium are followed on the 9th and 10th ugust by 2 concerts in the Croatian Capiotal Zagreb – both of which are Sold Out.
Snow Patrol are again in support for these concerts.
- Written by Siasy, europeanirish.com
