Daily Mail

17th June 2005

 

ROCK REBELS WITH A CAUSE

REVIEWS BY ADRIAN THRILLS

 

(KING BAUDOUIN STADIUM, BRUSSELS)

 

THEIR biggest gig of the summer will be at Live8 next month, but for now, U2 are concentrating on the small matter of their first European tour in three years.

 

Last weekend, in front of 57,000 fans, the Irish quartet -- who play Twickenham Stadium in London tomorrow and Sunday before heading on to Glasgow, Cardiff and Dublin -- rattled out a timely reminder to Coldplay that they remain the world's most exciting stadium-rock entertainers.

 

The scale of this production was breathtaking, its energy astonishing. A curved wall of video tiles which stretched across the back of the stage was as impressive as anything the band have taken on the road in the past 25 years, while their overall performance had a hungry air that belied their status as rock veterans.

 

U2, to their credit, have never been a nostalgia turn, and they proved as much in an explosive, six-song opening burst that cherry-picked songs which spanned their entire career: The Electric Co. from 1980; New Year's Day from 1982; Until The End Of The World from 1991; Elevation and Beautiful Day from 2001; and last year's Vertigo.

 

  From then on, they flitted between past and present. The show opened in daylight and finished, 22 songs later, in almost total darkness, with fans holding cigarette lighters and mobile phones aloft in a graphic gesture of support.

 

The night's only jeers were reserved for a photograph of Tony Blair that was flashed briefly on to a screen.

 

Sporting shades and a short black jacket, singer Bono used an elliptical walkway to venture out into the first dozen rows of the crowd.

 

Guitarist The Edge was more restrained. While his frontman kept warm on a chilly evening by running around, he played the whole show in his trademark woolly hat.

 

BUT while Bono sang like an angel and The Edge played like a demon, the early part of the show was marred by distorted sound and a nagging feeling that U2, fresh from an American indoor tour, were still a bit ringrusty out in the open.

 

That said, their impact was immediate. Even at the back of this sprawling venue, fans were bouncing up and down from the moment Bono walked on stage and introduced his three colleagues.

 

I saw Bruce Springsteen play a three-hour show here two years ago and, for all of The Boss's showmanship, it took him two hours to connect with the slower fans at the back: U2 had them from the start.

 

They played for more than two hours, although Bono confessed afterwards that he would have preferred a tighter, 90-minute set: 'I don't like concerts that drag on, so we've divided this one into a series of shorter sets.

 

'I don't see it as one band playing two hours -- it's more like five or six different bands doing short shows. For the first 20 minutes, we're a punk group, then we become a theatrical production, a gospel act and an electronic group. In the final part of the show, we're a Las Vegas rock 'n' roll outfit.'

 

The singer also explained the unusual step of opening and closing with the same song, Vertigo: 'It's our way of getting back to the original, Italian idea of an encore, where you actually repeat something.

 

'When we first played in England, in 1979, we only had enough songs to last 45 minutes. We'd always repeat an early single, 11 O'Clock Tick Tock or I Will Follow, at the end of every show.' When playing their older songs, U2 took risks by deviating from the usual arrangements. One, their most poignant ballad, was revamped as a gospel number, with bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen prominent.

 

WHERE The Streets Have No Name, which once conjured up images of deserts and Joshua trees, became a song about Africa, with the flags of that continent projected onto the video-wall.

 

A U2 show wouldn't be complete without some improvisation.

 

While many acts do 'unplugged', U2 often do 'unscripted'.

 

And, true to form, Bono lapsed into snippets of old hits by The Who, The Beatles and The Walker Brothers. He even included a line from Natalie Imbruglia's recent Top Ten single Shiver (Imbruglia herself had travelled from London to see the gig).

 

But U2 in 2005 are not just about music. The local papers had devoted pages to 'Bono's Crusade', and the singer used the stage to reiterate his commitment to fighting Third World poverty, talking about the forthcoming G8 summit, and Africa's 'journey of equality from the charity of Live Aid to the justice of Live8'.

 

Beneath the preaching, though, one senses that even Bono sometimes gets tired of trying to save the world.

 

'Let's just see if this generation can actually do something,' he implored. 'Then I'll shut up and give this band a break.'

 

Not just yet, though. During a stunning anti-war trilogy (Love And Peace Or Else, Sunday Bloody Sunday and Bullet The Blue Sky) the singer donned a white bandana bearing the word 'coexist', spelled out with symbols from Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

 

The headband was then pulled down to become a blindfold. Those who find the singer over the top will baulk. But as an exercise in rock theatre, it was both pointed and very powerful.

 

(c) 2005 Associated Newspapers Ltd