It’s Complicated: On the Road with U2
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Let’s set the stage: It’s big, but not gargantuan. Not, say, a stage the size of a small building. That one, from 2011, took an army to transport it because of “The Claw,” a video and sound system structure that towered over arguably the world’s biggest rock band and looked like the digital spawn of Cthulhu. But it’s 2015 now, and comparative modesty is the name of the game.
Though modesty is a funny word when you’re dealing with U2, a group that once had a custom 100-foot (30-meter) tall golden arch built for its world tour, whose members have met world leaders, whose most recent album, Songs of Innocence, was automatically downloaded to 500 million phones. So… modesty? It’s relative.
U2’s “smaller” stage setup for their current “Innocence and Experience” shows includes the main stage, in the shape of an “I,” which stands for innocence; a smaller acoustic platform in the shape of an “E,” which stands for experience; and a long runway in between, where Bono, the band’s lead singer for all 39 years they have been together, will strut, jump, yell and run. Then there is the video cage: a long narrow walkway with two 96-foot (29-meter) wide screens (each composed of 240 individual LED video panels) that hang on either side of the railings. The cage allows for the band members to step inside and perform while surrounded by high-def imagery of, say, Bono’s childhood street in Ireland, or a recreation of the Berlin Wall. It’s bright, it’s loud, it’s more intimate than usual for them, but still very U2.
Before it all starts, though, the band has to get their house in order. It’s night two, three hours before show-time at the Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam, and Bono and The Edge, the group’s guitarist, are on stage doing a few quick tuneups. They fiddle with the transition between “Zooropa” and “Where the Streets Have No Name,” while Larry Mullen Jr. sits at the drum set, arms crossed, waiting for his cue. Meanwhile, Adam Clayton, U2’s stoic bassist, stands off to the side — a tall, lean, gray-haired rock star, sipping a cup of tea.
While the band has always looked to attract a diverse group of fans, on this particular ride they’ve been aiming for the younger crowd. Though bringing in a new generation of U2 devotees is important, a more youthful audience also means dealing with the trappings of digital media, where people feel the need to capture every second of every show.
“There were less here than there were in Italy,” says Bono of the number of phones he saw pointed in his direction the evening prior. By now the group has finished soundcheck — it took them several tries, but they finally nailed that transition — and are killing time on stage before the doors open and another sold-out crowd comes spilling in.
“In Italy it turns out everybody and their mother was doing it,” adds Larry.
“And their daughter and friends,” says Bono.
Adam steps up to offer his appeal.
“I think what it has instituted,” he says, “and you see it a lot from the stage, is the minute there’s not much to look at, people go to their phones, and they start to check their emails and stuff. That’s a new phenomenon.”
“That’s not what I am talking about,” Larry says to Adam. “What I am talking about is when there is something happening, the phone comes up to record it, which is a different response.”
The band soon begins a back-and-forth dialogue on the tenets of smartphone usage at concerts and what it all means, for both current and future artists. Bono eventually offers a philosophical end to the discussion.
“These songs have strong emotional attachments to people, so one way of looking at it, it’s like a kid scoring a goal or a child taking its first steps and having his mates have a photo of it,” he says. “Seeing Edge operate that pedal board, I feel like that every night.”
“I am like a child taking a first step?” replies The Edge, who chuckles.
“You’re like a child taking their first steps on the moon.” Edge was joking, but Bono sounds dead serious. “I think we should just see it as a new phenomenon that will settle when people get over the gadget.”
For now, the band takes it all in good stride. They’ve been doing that a lot lately, after a series of mishaps, misfortunes and accidents over the last year. There was the aforementioned Songs of Innocence rollout, which caused an uproar, with people angry that music had been installed on their phone without their consent; Bono suffering a facial fracture, a break in his left humerus bone and three separate fractures of his left shoulder blade during a grisly bike accident in Central Park; and The Edge falling off the stage during the opening night of the tour.
But then there’s the good news: They have been touring around the world playing on this beautiful set constructed by longtime creative director Willie Williams; Songs of Innocence, despite its rocky release, has been heard by 81 million people and downloaded 26 million times (as of October 2014); and, most importantly, people are still coming out to see U2 every night.
Maybe it’s the commitment that’s kept them together: to themselves, to putting out the best music and live production they can, to trying new and different things. That last one makes the current subject on Innocence and resulting tour a bit of a surprise, particularly to hardcore U2 fans, who aren’t used to the band waxing poetic on their childhood or days past. But that is exactly what they do on the new record, where songs like “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)” pay homage to the sounds of their youth, and “California (There Is No End to Love)” looks back on their first trip to the West Coast. Then there’s “Iris (Hold Me Close),” an emotional ballad written for Bono’s mother, who died when he was 14. When U2 plays that one live, Bono reaches out and sings to home videos of her projected on the screen in front of him. Even the album cover is a departure, showing the usually private Larry shirtless while clutching his teenage son.
Those raw emotions then extend in the second half of the set, where the band plays older songs. One moment in particular draws attention, as Bono has a pointed conversation with his younger self.
“Have you forgot where you came from?!” shouts the young Paul David Hewson. “You’re hanging out with the powerful like you’re there for the powerless!”
The youthful anger is aimed at Bono’s current status as a successful rock star and, more significantly, a humanitarian — who has had to converse with people his younger self may find detestable — and his attempt to reconcile those two sides.
“When we were younger we had very clear-drawn enemies — us versus them. And then as we went through the ‘90s, things started to change for us, and we started to realize the biggest obstacles in the way of our personal development and our band’s development were internal forces,” says Bono, as his bandmates listen on. “You know, I miss the black-and-white view of the world that I had as a younger man. It could be a bit pious and self-righteous at times — it certainly had a righteous anger to it. But now I measure things by their ability to achieve the result. I tend to divide not only my friends, but people into two camps, which is terrible and does not show maturity, and people who risk making mistakes to make things better. So it can be uncomfortable. I have met with some people and supped with some people that my younger self might not have liked the company of, but I think I have been effective in that.”
Us versus them. Friend versus foe. Despite the sold-out shows, the millions of albums sold, the 22 Grammys won, U2 still sees itself as a young group of punks from Dublin looking to push themselves and challenge the status quo unapologetically, if not diplomatically.
As Bono says, before the band heads off stage to get ready for the show, “You can learn a great deal from your so-called enemies. I have learned a lot to opening up to people I normally wouldn’t be open to, and I think it’s made for a richer and…”
Larry chimes in: “More complicated life.”
Bono laughs. “…if complicated life.”
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