I have been a die-hard U2 fan since the late eighties and have been present for every tour since the early nineties. My love affair with U2 began in the ninth grade. I used to sit at a cafeteria table every morning that included upperclassmen. There was a senior who sat aside of me everyday with a pair of headphones on. His name was Mike. It used to bug me that he never made conversation with me, nor acknowledged the fact that however unplanned our arrivals were, we always seemed to land side by side on the same bench every morning. One day I asked him, what is it you are always listening to that's more interesting than me?? He looked at me like I was crazy. I must have been the last soul at school who wasn't aware of his devotion to U2. I had never even heard of them, a fact that seemed to make him want to change the seating arrangements.
He loaned me an early U2 album on cassette and said, "listen to this through headphones, you can have it for the rest of the week, but if you don't return it, I WILL hunt you down!" Given the rarity that a senior will even look in the direction of a freshman, I thought I should probably do what he said. I can remember how powerful that first listen was. It didn't take long for before I started showing up for school with U2 albums it my cassette player. The rest is history. I started following the band, buying their albums, and attending their shows. I even flew overseas to see them perform after my disappointment in losing a radio contest that promised two front row seats to the ZooTV show in Dublin, Ireland.
I purchased tickets for the 360° tour in '09, but when front man Bono injured his back, the Philadelphia show got cancelled. After two years of waiting for the band to return, I finally got the experience of a lifetime on Thursday night. More than 76,000 attended, breaking a record for the venue which is reported to only hold around 68,000 people.
The set included a giant claw which housed an enormous viewing screen and moving ladders connecting the inner stage platform to the outer catwalks which circled the entire stage creating a 360 degree viewing experience.
The band took the stage with David Bowie's Space Oddity playing in the background. Check out this video of U2 taking the stage in Philadelphia.
There were screams galore as they played through an incredible set of nearly 30 songs which included:
-Even Better Than The Real Thing
-I Will Follow
-Mysterious Ways
-Until the End of the World
-Get On Your Boots
-Magnificent
-I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
-Stay
-Beautiful Day
-Elevation
-Pride (in the name of love)
-Miss Sarajevo
-Zooropa
-City of Blinding Lights
-Vertigo
-I'll Go Crazy
Discotheque
-Sunday Bloody Sunday
-Scarlet
-Walk On
-One
-Where the Streets Have No Name
-Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
-With or Without You
-Moment of Surrender
...and blurbs of everything from Bowie to The Talking Heads with Space Oddity, It's Only Rock and Roll, Life During Wartime, Psycho Killer, and Hallelujah.
I have never seen a crowd this responsive before. People were screaming, crying, singing, clapping, jumping, and swaying through the entire show. Grown, adult, men were screaming "I love yous" to an all male band like little girls at a Justin Bieber concert!
When I took my seat the woman aside of me expressed concern that some people may stand while others sit and how this may cause conflict during the show. She had seen Kenney Chesney in this stadium just a month prior and had witnessed a fight break out when the audience, who was almost entirely seated, grew impatient with two people standing during the show. I didn't know how to break it to her that this wasn't Kenny Chesney, other than to say, "I hope you wore your Keds, because I will give you a $100 if every single person as far as your eye can see is not standing through this entire show with absolutely no sit breaks!" Almost two and a half hours later she glanced my way as if to say, "WOW! You were right, what an experience!"
TO BE CONTINUED...
"People say we take ourselves too seriously and I might have to plead guilty to that. But I don't take myself seriously, we don't take ourselves seriously - but we do take the music seriously." -Bono
"He's a poet. He's a philosopher. And last night, I think I saw him walking on water." -Mick Jagger on Bono following a U2 concert
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