@U2 has just heard back from one of our Vertigo Tour special correspondents. Special thanks to Peter Wells for filing this report with us. (He says photos will follow in the next few days). We know he’s only getting 4 hours of sleep before getting back in the GA line for tonight’s gig…here’s to a great catnap!
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On the wall of my bedroom is a poster advertising the release – on the 2nd of November 1998 - of The Best of 1980-1990 & B-Sides. Although the image of Peter Rowan has practically been the first thing I see when waking and the last thing I see as I turn out the light for some seven years, it only occurred to me recently that my first U2 concert will occur almost exactly eight years after discovering them. In truth, I bought the compilation in December, but it was a month of being ‘haunted’ by a mysterious and magnetic sound. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before. I was 15, and although I was in the School orchestra, I wasn’t really into popular music and didn’t have a record collection. But the sound that was being played in the TV advertisements made me feel like I just had to buy this album, as if my life depended on it. But I digress…

Accompanying me for the first portion of the day is my old school friend. We weren’t as proactive as we had intended, and arrived at Telstra Stadium at about 3:30pm. We knew that people had been there since very early on, and I’d become a little paranoid that we might not get a great position. We joined the line and began enjoying the sound check, which was wafting its way over the stadium roof (or possibly through the walls). Another friend arrived, and not long after this, the line surged forward. We discussed which songs we’d like to hear, the snippets of other songs we’d like to hear, and generally wondering just how far we were going to be from the stage. This is Sydney, and we want Michael Hutchence (the late lead singer of INXS) to get a nod in any way, shape or form. I’m anticipating a little bit of Midnight Oil, as Bono recently played a part in inducting this band into Australia’s music hall of fame (for all those international readers).

News gets passed down the line, and most people are saying having a bag might slow one down as they move up towards the security guards with their metal detector wands. My pockets were bulging and no one stopped me, so perhaps it is a good idea to travel light if you can help it. Having passed the guards, we move up to the turnstiles and scan our tickets. Then, for the first time, we don’t have the queue pushing us forward and it’s now up to us to run, walk (in front of security), then run again, through the innards of the stadium.

We emerge at ground level. The ‘horseshoe’ already has people in it, and we’ve got some other old school mates who we know are also in there. A friend had run all the way up to another gate close to the stage and beckons us over. Unsurprisingly, there’s no distinct line here, but this is the way into the horseshoe. We pack in and the guards announce that they will take 70 more. Then it’s down to 50 more. And finally, they call “30 more”. It’s like a cattle feedlot here and everyone is a little tense – this is where your night could go from great to greater. My friend gets through. I get through. But one friend doesn’t. I look back and he is right at the front of the line. There still seems to be plenty of room inside, but security won’t let any more in. My friend and I ended up two people back from the fence, in front of the left-hand side target. Despite our good position, I am still devastated because my other friend couldn’t make it through. This is opening night, and I want my oldest U2 connoisseur here with me in this horseshoe. So this blog is dedicated to him - ‘Soul A-Man’ -because it really felt like I lost my brother last night (that’s a paraphrase from PopMart Mexico in case you were wondering).

Kanye West is the support act for the Sydney shows. Waiting in line, there had been rumblings and grumblings about his choice as a warm-up. I might write a little more about this in tomorrow’s post, but I think he did a good job. The waiting game continues and I spent some time staring into the sky. Was that a drop of water on my elbow? All this week, my friend and I have been trading differing weather reports. Although we’d been sweating over the possibility of rain (affecting photos), we just ended up sweating in the sun because Friday turned out to be (here comes the pun) a beautiful day. But the heavens were starting to open up, and the technicians make a final scramble over the stage, covering the equipment. The Arcade Fire’s ‘Wake Up’ blasts out across the stadium and the lights are out. I really like this song, and I sing to the sky as the rain pours down.

It is a surreal feeling. I have waited for and wondered about this moment for years, and in the next few minutes, I am going to be immersed in a real, live, U2 concert.

Australia missed out on the Elevation tour, and we had our March concerts postponed. You know that the stadium is just going to erupt when they take the stage because it has been eight years since this band played a note here. The band take the stage … and we erupt. Welcome to Sydney!

This is what they played:

City Of Blinding Lights (I think Bono sang some lyrics about rain towards the end of the song, but I couldn’t make it out)
Vertigo
Elevation (includes snippets of ‘Out Of My Head’ by Kylie Minogue, and ‘Dazed and Confused’ by Led Zeppelin)
Until The End Of The World
Beautiful Day (Bono added ‘Here Comes The Sun’ by The Beatles at the end)
Yahweh
Walk On
Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
Love And Peace Or Else
Sunday Bloody Sunday (Included ‘Rock the Kasbah’)
Bullet The Blue Sky (Included ‘Johnny Comes Marching Home’ and ‘The Hands That Built America’)
Miss Sarajevo
Pride
Where The Streets Have No Name
One

Encore 1
Zoo Station
The Fly
With Or Without You (Snippets of ‘Never Tear Us Apart’ by INXS and ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ by Joy Division)

Encore 2
The Saints Are Coming
Angel Of Harlem
Kite

Having watched the Chicago DVD, I have to say that I quite like this new ‘karaoke’ version of Elevation where the band kicks in around the second chorus. The crowd lapped up the opportunity to sing along to this one. I really like when Bono samples other songs in the band’s own, so squeezing Kylie and Led Zep into the song went down a treat with me.

Until The End Of The World – although I was thrilled to have it – lacked the bullfight! Did they call it off because of the rain? For shame! The rain eased up towards the end of this song, which meant that I could start taking photos. I had a quick look at them, and they’re a bit blurry and I know it’s because of the ISO settings I decided upon. Some of them look like they’ve been taken out of the Mysterious Ways video clip. They’re ‘artistic’, but let me rustle up some better ones on Saturday.

Bono removed his glasses and paid us a visit during Sometimes. This is why the concert is surreal – moments like this. I keep trying to remind myself that this is not a DVD I’m watching. That really is Bono singing to a crowd that I am finally a part of. That is Adam, waving his bass at us and reaching out to shake the hand of a guy two people in front of me. That really is The Edge in front of me, stomping his feet into a puddle as he kicks into an outro. Yeah, but I still can’t believe it.

I was expecting that tonight’s performance of Sunday would make mention (as it did in Brisbane) of terror suspect David Hicks. His head wrapped in the Coexist headband, Bono dedicated this version of Sunday to the victims of the Bali bombings. It was a nice touch and the song drew a great reaction from the crowd.

Miss Sarajevo … I love it. I’m a fan of the studio version, but I’m really happy that it has been integrated into the setlist. I like that it’s just a different piece, what, with the opera and all.

That ’sound’ that I mentioned earlier – that coerced me into buying the Best Of 1980-1990 was the riff to Streets. I could write for pages and pages about how much this song means to me and how it makes me feel, but after tonight I think that all that emotion is best condensed into two words … I cried. My emotions were still running hot during One, but I had an overwhelming feeling of ‘completion’ that my musical pilgrimage had finally come full circle.

Bono was taken aback by the visual response when he asked for the crowd to wave their mobile phones in the air to create a ‘galaxy’ just before One started. Bono had come down towards where I was and found a sign in the crowd that said “0.7%” – referring to the 0.7% of GDP that he wants countries to commit towards official development assistance. He proudly held the sign up for the cameras to focus on, then bowed and blew a kiss to the lady who had brought the sign. That was a nice touch too.

The slot-machine start to Zoo Station was quite an interesting one. An image of Prime Minister Howard appeared on one of the TV screens, and on the other, an image of Peter Garrett MP (but the ex lead singer of Midnight Oil). If, through the magic of Zoo TV, U2 have gazed into their crystal ball and made a prediction about our next federal election, (Treasurer) Peter Costello is probably as equally upset as (Opposition Leader) Kim Beazley.

I was happy to at last see some INXS weaving its way into WOWY – a perennial crowd favourite. The Saints Are Coming really got the crowd moving again, and Angel Of Harlem just turned into a great, big sing-a-long, which is how it should be.

Kite was wonderful, with the addition of the didgeridoo and this new bird kite flying away at the end. Edge also belted out a second solo/outro after Bono sings the last verse, and there’s truly nothing better than seeing these songs being updated. I was a bit shocked to see some of these recent setlist changes – Yahweh, Walk On, and One moved into the main set – because they typically enjoy ‘closing status’. But it just rocked, and I have to say that I think it made for a beautiful end to a beautiful evening.

All in all, it was just fantastic. I could grumble a little about the lack of songs from Pop (c’mon, some of that stuff rocks pretty hard) and Boy, but it doesn’t really change the fact that we had a phenomenal time. Even my friend who was stuck behind the fence loved it. You could see that the band was having a great time too. Bono really held on to some of his notes this evening, which made for soaring renditions of the songs. The crowd loved it. He must have loved that the crowd loved it, and a wonderful rapport just built itself up as the night wore on. I know that within a U2 fan site, it’s perhaps easy to be quite biased, but really, it felt like no one – band or crowd – put a foot wrong. Bono often commented (as well he might) that this was ’some crowd’. And why wouldn’t we be? You haven’t seen us for eight years, mate! Larry seemed to smile more than I thought he was allowed to, so I think that must mean it was a good concert. Why didn’t they film it?!

It’s early morning now and I am getting tired because I’ve been writing since I got home. That, and I was at a rock concert. Furthermore, I am supposed to be meeting my friends in a couple of hours for the second concert, but I think they are just going to have to save my spot in the line. So, until I check back in with my next report, I hope this one gave you a good idea of what U2 were like on Friday the 10th November, 2006. Rock on!

For those of you looking at attaining a perfect score on the U218.com quiz, be forewarned - two questions posed currently have the incorrect answer allocated to them. Questions 5 and 29 are the culprits in question.

Question 5 asks what year was a “preacher stealing hearts from a traveling show?” - a line from the song Desire…and any good U2 fan knows that Bono didn’t write Desire prior to U2 receiving their first record contract.

Question 29 asks what city was the Where the Streets Have No Name video shot, and the quiz creators have confused the correct city with the one where Bono spray painted “Rock and Roll Stops the Traffic” later in the year.

Just a tip for those fans who felt a little confused by taking the quiz and realizing that the score was off a little.

What did we used to do before YouTube?

This is so unbearable, I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry, or something worse.

http://www.gawker.com/news/clips/bank-of-america-offbeat-offkey-212726.php

Two suits from Bank of America covering “One,” and changing the lyrics to celebrate their merger with MBNA. There has to be a law against this kind of thing, doesn’t there?

Vince tipped us off to this; not sure if I should thank him or not.

Special thanks to Andrew Thompson for filing his report about Opening Night:
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First up the line getting into the show was terrible, totally unorganised, so be patient if you are going to the other shows. I don’t think this will happen again with the other shows, lets hope! It was the same with the leaving the show with the buses, again same as above.

To the show:
As a raving mad U2 fan the show was fantastic!!

The crowd was pumped and when the good Mexican Wave started the crowd got even more excited. The show started with just a spotlight on Edge as he started ringing out the sounds for Bllinding Lights. The crowd went nuts. I’m not to sure of the exact running list of songs but they busted out some great versions of Vertigo, Elevation, Beautiful Day. Yahweh was played early
in the set. I must admit the boys were a bit rusty at the start or maybe nervous as there were a few mistakes made. Adam hit some bum notes, Bono’s timing was out at the start of Walk On and Larry stopped to early for Walk On, Edge had a couple of guitar problems early.But this only made them play harder, pushing each other. Bono held onto the long notes even longer, Adam was playing like the early days - re. Red Rocks, Edge bashing the stage with foot and Larry giving even more and i caught him singing on a few occasions. And this worked the boys the were then in full swing by the middle of the show and rockin’! They seemed to relax and enjoy the moment, lots of banter between each other, Bono making Larry laugh while he was playing and Larry giving Edge a few cheeky grins, Adam striding the massive stage like he owned it.

Bono metioned about David Hicks, he is an Aussie terror suspect imprisoned in Cuba, that he should be brought home to be tried. There were alot of cheers but also alot of boo’s, the crowd was divided on this but Bono didn’t seem to upset by this. Lets see if he tries this at the other shows. My highlights of the show were the mistakes they made and how they pushed each other to make it better, Yahweh, Somtimes - Bono hit the “Sing” line and held it the same with Miss Sajaveo, Streets, One, Bloody Sunday, in fact the whole show it was fantastic and they are only going to get better as they go, so all of you with tickets to the up coming shows your in for one of the best tours ever!

Special thanks to Annette Messell for sending along her report from Opening Night in Brisbane. She tells us that she has some photos forthcoming. Here’s her report:
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Myself and the others of my small group managed to get to the stadium at around 9.30am-10.00am. We were by no means the first people there, but we were in a pretty good position, so we sat and made up our little ‘shanty town’ as we called it, that was
comprised of a blue bed sheet tied to the line barriers (of course it was humid so our little shelter was envied by more than a few). There were rumours going up and down the line that the guys up the front had been waiting since 4am, now that’s dedication. The day was spent sitting under our little cloth, playing board games, talking aimlessly with the guys next to us, and considering what t-shirt to buy from the merchandise stall (most shirts were $45, badges for $3 each, silver necklace $60, programs $35, there were also hats and hoodies for sale).

After hearing various times of entry from the security staff (and growing slightly frustrated because of the heat), we were pleased to know that the first 4000 people would be let into what we called the horse shoe (ironic that it was Melbourne Cup day…and thankyou for the stadium for putting the race over the speakers). We finally started to move into the lines at around
5pm (I think). They scanned our tickets and the majority of us bolted towards the front of the stage. After losing…and then finding my friends again, we had prime position about one row from the barrier, just in front of where Adam would play. Everyone took a seat to relax for an hour and drink or sit and be excited. When Kanye came on stage, everyone was admittedly a little apprehensive. There was no doubt in our minds that he was a fantastic musician, it just baffled us all that he would be opening
the tour. It didn’t take us long to get into the spirit, and by the end we were all dancing and cheering for him. Some gentleman about three meters to the right of us managed to start a fantastic Mexican wave that eventually flew around the whole stadium…an amazing sight.

I guess the best way I can describe the actual concert is one big, fantastic, fun, happy blur. None of use could believe that we were standing there listening to (and watching) U2. There is no doubt that waiting around for 8-9 hours getting burnt by the sun or just plain sweating, that it wasn’t worth it. Everyone was screaming as they came up on stage (Edge being the first I believe). City of Blinding Lights was fantastic as we all sang and jumped up and down. The lucky kid that got pulled on stage just (before
Walk On??) got to sit with Bono for a while as he talked about what we need to do for future generations. Larry went down (Stage left) side of the horse shoe to drum for Love and Peace or Else. Bono sang Miss Sarajevo (Stage Left)…and thankyou to the guys that were sitting next to us in the line, especially the one that lent me his shoulders for this particular song so I could see. During One we were asked to Txt our names for Amnesty International, as Bono asked for the moon to come out and shine for us (it was behind a cloud) and hold up our phones to create a milky way. Seeing everyone wave their phones, with all the lights off was fantastic. In the last minutes of the song, some savvy people had turned around and started to point at the moon, which had move from behind the clouds to shine, for me, that was one of the highlights of the show. After a couple of encores and a rockin’ performance of The Saints are Coming, we were happy to hear Kite as the last song. There were rumours around our little ‘shanty town’ that Kylie would be a special guest, but unfortunately that was not true. Instead, we were happy to see a man play the didgeridoo along side Edge ( I cant remember names!). Bono meanwhile, was singing down the horseshoe (stage
left) as he released a ‘kite’ into the air, a multi coloured bird tied to a bunch of balloons. None of us could ask for a more perfect ending.

All I can say is, the wait was worth it. I hope that everyone else on this leg of the tour has a fantastic time and I hope that
all the people who went to Brisbane had as much fun as me.

PS. And kudos to the man near us who could tell what songs were going to be played just by what guitar Edge had…woah.
PPS. We did a ’song dance’ for rain…I cant remember what song it was exactly…but I can tell you with all honesty that it is raining on the Gold Coast…right now.