Special thanks to special Vertigo Tour Correspondent Rob Perry for sending in his report from New Zealand!
——————-
The wet and chilly Friday evening into which my plane touched down in Auckland at 5:00pm was a far cry from the hot, sunny Wellington afternoon that I had left behind me. U2 just don’t know how to pick their venues! I’d missed out on a ticket to tonight’s concert, so I was unhurried. I threw on a raincoat, grabbed an American hotdog and a Fanta and dissolved myself into the thick river of less unhurried people flowing down to Mount Smart Stadium, where I found a very wet but perfect plastic seat just outside the gate. It’s amazing how happy you can be sitting alone outside a gate that everyone else is allowed through, in the cold rain with a soaking wet itchy butt.

Would I have rather been inside? Of course. But there was a quality of excitement about being two hundred metres away that you don’t get being one metre away. It was the musical equivalent of eroticism - the voyeurism that would be ruined by the seeing. When Edge did his guitar riff at the beginning of City of Blinding Lights, the thought “It’s really them!! They’re here!!” was at least as exhilarating for me out here as it was for anyone in there. I don’t have any doubt about that. There’s also something equally exhilarating about seeing the back of the stage suddenly light up and hearing a 45,000-strong crowd roar approval from so far but yet so close.

No ticket lottery for the “ellipse” (”uterus”) area. First in, first served.

In one of the first few songs, perhaps ‘Elevation’, Bono sings a verse from ‘Four Seasons in One Day’, by Neil Finn from New Zealand’s Crowded House, which receives a big cheer. After ‘I Will Follow’, Bono says, “The first place this was a hit was this place.” Big cheer. “Kiwis ahead of the groove.” Bigger cheer.

Something I learnt this weekend is that Bono’s patriotic boosts to his audiences around the world are not just crowd-pleasers. They’re a hundred percent sincere. When he introduced One Tree Hill, you knew what a special place New Zealand held in all of their hearts. For those who don’t know, One Tree Hill was chopped down by a Maori protester a few years ago. I was moved when Bono said, “Sprinkle some seeds up there. Grow some love”, a request which he reiterated at the end during ‘Kite’.

About five songs in, Bono said, “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for your patience.” Huge cheer.

And then …… God smiled on me.

A guy came out of the gate and said, “You got a ticket? ”

Thinking he must be a security guard, I defensively said, “No, but I was told I’m allowed to sit here.”

Holding out his ticket, he asked, “You want one?”

“Ughh….ktplrrrrrrrr….”

“You’re welcome. Have a good one.”

” …… YEAH, BABY!!!!!”

I ran in as ‘Love and Peace’ was beginning. I was high up in the stand on Edge’s side. It’s not possible to do justice to that moment in words. The best analogy I can think of is the comparison between a person waking up and seeing the same old sun and trees out the window, and a blind person seeing them for the first time (by which I don’t mean this was my first U2 concert - it was my tenth). Clearly everyone around me had already had their buzz from seeing the stage for the first time half an hour ago, but here was my moment to do the same while somehow not jumping out of my skin at the beautiful redness of the ‘Love and Peace’ lighting. For the stage, I had been expecting ‘Live in Chicago’. I knew it would be bigger, but I had no idea it would be so much better.

I’m anxious to express something subjective here, because this was the moment that awed me and has stayed with me. The stage was shiny and new, and the lights had right angles - not circular and blurry. There was a crispness about it all, right down to Adam’s stunning red shirt. And the video screens up the top left and right were beautiful in quality, not just any old video monitors. It was all so right-angled and crisp.

Blood red crowd, rose red shirt on Adam, beautiful colour screens, shiny metal on Bono’s boots, crisp guitar, ninety-degree angles on the stage lights. New. Crisp. Young. Current. Kick ass.

As a longtime fan, I had been telling less experienced concert-goers throughout the day that it would all look and sound better than they could ever imagine, and that the band was very far from having had its time. It turned out I was preaching what I needed to hear. The last person I was expecting to be surprised by their quality was me, and this was more than a little humbling. To put it crudely, the band had cut the crap and were showing us their willy, and I’m sure I was not alone in expecting it to have shriveled just a little by now. Wrong.

Bono said something in the middle of ‘Love and Peace’ that really moved me. He said, “All the war and terrorism in the world at the moment is just a family feud. That’s all it is.” A family feud. Wow.

On Saturday morning, priority number one was to get the Deluxe edition of ‘18 Singles’ from a record shop. It turns out Canada wasn’t the only country to experience a delay with that one. Universal New Zealand had promised me it would finally be in stores nationwide on Saturday morning at the latest, and I was very happy to find they had stuck to their word.

I walked back to my uncle’s house and kissed my precious Milan DVD goodbye for now before heading down to join the cattle queue at midday. Ended up getting a spot right up beside the stage at the end of Edge’s “arm”. For many people, this would have been their dream. Not for me. I was wishing I was where I had been the night before. Jumping up and down and punching the air looks so romantic until you’re amongst it. I’m more one of those people who likes to, as Bono has said, comment from the back on how good the crowd looks tonight. The beauty of the stage and the entire experience went down the plughole that night. But it was more than worth it to be up close and personal with Bono and Edge.

This night was more light-hearted. More lightweight? Perhaps a little. It was memorable for Bono’s one-liners. Edge was right in saying Bono could have been a stand-up.

A couple of examples:

1. Bono was introducing Sometimes, and was quite genuinely in a serious mood. One of his crew handed him a water bottle. “This song is dedicated to ……” He took a swig. For a completely unrelated reason, a group of people beside him burst out in laughter. “I was going to say something serious, actually”, he tells them with a mock expression of offence. “Azzz uuuusual.” Everyone laughs. He turns around 180 degrees and is suddenly seven years old: “WELL, YOU DON’T LISTEN!!!” Huge laughter throughout the stadium. Then he introduced Sometimes: “If my father were here tonight, there are three things he’d say to me: “Take those f—ing sunglasses off.” Big cheer. “If you’re going to sing a song about me that has a high note in it, don’t f— it up.” Bigger cheer. “And lastly, look after the consonants, and the vowels will look after themselves.”

2. “Is it just my imagination …… or are you folks better looking than the one’s last night?” Massive cheer. [Serious note: we actually needed that. A lot of people that night felt a little bad about possibly being an afterthought following "U2's long-awaited return to New Zealand" the night before.] “Is The Edge better looking than The Edge from last night?” Big cheer. “Is Adam better looking than the Adam from last night?” Big cheer. “Is Larry …… no, no, I’m not going there.” (Editor’s note: Larry is always better looking.)

To the band’s credit, the setlist had about seven or eight different songs. Desire was sounding good but not great. Then, halfway through, Larry kicked in. Whoa!!! That’s more like it!!! Moral of the story: Desire is not about the guitar. It’s all about the drums.

I can’t express in words what it was like having Edge playing three feet away from me. Anyone has seen a forty-six-year-old man standing just in front of them playing an electric guitar. But this time there were a couple of tiny slight little differences - it was The Edge, and the little ditty that he was strumming was Until The End Of The World.

One thing that really struck me was that during the gruntiest guitar part of UTEOTW, Edge was just gently stroking the fret board. Sometimes his body might be gyrating for visual effect, but I had a realisation at that moment that U2 are in charge of the song-writing and technical brilliance, but the speakers are in charge of kicking arse. That was absolutely amazing to me, because people on the other side of Auckland would have been woken up what these light little strokes that Edge was doing. This gave me two insights. Firstly, U2’s magic and power come from their writing and technical mastery, because anyone can make something loud. And secondly, the band will be no less great when they’re sixty, or if they’re in wheelchairs for that matter.

In ‘Sunday’, Bono did something I thought was pretty cool, but I had no way of knowing how original it was - he beckoned for an Irish flag from the front of the crowd, wrapped it around his head, and went behind the stage to get someone (Dallas?) to carefully write “Coexist” on the middle white section.

Bono included a few more lines by Neil Finn, this time from his Split Enz song ‘I Got You’, into one of the last songs, which made the crowd go nuts. He also praised New Zealand in some altered lyrics for Beautiful Day. Bono wore a New Zealand Warriors rugby league team logo on the back of his jacket, which he later swapped for an All Blacks jersey, doing a mock rugby kick into the crowd. Once again, this wasn’t just crowd-pleasing. U2 are rugby fans, and are in awe of the All Blacks. Bono’s All Blacks jersey had a number 7 on the back. Bono took it off to reveal an Irish rugby team jersey underneath. Boos. Then he turned around to show the number 13. Laughs.

In response to the entire night’s loud applause, Bono said, “This is crazy. You’re crazy people. Crazy island folk.”

They were three songs into the second encore now. Surely no more than one song to go. They couldn’t possibly miss out One Tree Hill. And just as I had that thought, the crowd quite loudly began giving verbal expression to it in a “One Tree Hill” chant. I was worried that the band might send the crowd away empty-handed. But then the familiar octaves riff started up. DEAFENING cheer. I and everyone else were moved when Bono announced that Greg Carroll’s family were in the audience tonight, and that the band send them their love.

‘One Tree Hill’, which I had missed visually the previous night, was amazing. After telling us, “Don’t forget about us, now”, Bono adopted a schoolteacher face and said, “Now go home!”, which was received with laughter, but also as a compliment, because he was really saying, “Stop liking us so much and crying out for more all the time!” We wanted them to love us, but also we wanted them to know we loved them too. Bono has a talent for confirming both.