Wednesday, July 27, 2011

U2.COM : Until The End of the Tour

'Real Thing', The Fly, Mysterious Ways, Until The End of the World... what an unexpected set list U2360° has developed over two years and four continents. Twenty years after release the opening quartet of tracks from Achtung Baby lead us to the 1970's (I Will Follow),  back to now (Get On Your Boots),  to 1987 ('Still Haven't Found') and we're in 1993 (Stay) before we've even noticed the trip.

'If I could stay, then the night would give you up.
Stay, and the day would keep its trust.
Stay, and the night would be enough....'


Nobody else can do this, nobody else has the songs and the staying power and tonight, as Bono put it, on a beautiful evening in Pittsburgh,  'there's no place we'd rather be'.

The penultimate show of the tour, the last one in the US and at Heinz Field, on the site of the old Three Rivers Stadium,  Pittsburgh was up to the challenge. 'Hot summer night in the burgh, come on now champions, where you gonna take us?'

There's so many great people associated with this city that the band might feel intimidated, suggests Bono, but... actually they weren't! Pittsburgh may have introduced Charles Bronson to the world 'but we have our very own movie star, Larry Mullen Jnr.' Pittsburgh may be associated with that 'paragon of style and comfort Perry Como.. but I give you Adam Clayton!' The world would not be the same without the great Andy Warhol 'but could not the same be said of the man on my right... The Edge?'
As for the vocalist, he'll take comparisons with that blue-eyed soul singer Christina Aguilera: 'I'm in touch with my inner chick'.

Special guests  tonight included a little boy who received a tour of the stage during City Of Blinding Lights and 'Matt and Melissa', serious about the band and about each other, who slow-danced their way through With Or Without You as if they were the only couple in the house. 'I never thought of our band as a smoochin thing... '

We thought it was the beginning of the end when the lights went down, the cellphones came on and the milky way arrived 'for all the people who are trying to hang on' but Moment of Surrender from 2009 led into another song about surrender. This one came from 1984 and it arrives in the show like a miracle on special occasions, tonight complete with some Van Morrison and Lou Reed and a final benediction in '40'.
'This is a special song for a special city. This is for a very special man who grew up on Cedarwood Road. We wrote this song about him, we play it for him tonight...'

'If you twist and turn away.
It you tear yourself in two again.
If I could, yes I would
If I could, I would let it go.
Surrender, dislocate....'


Were you smoochin' or wide awake at the show in Pittsburgh tonight? What was the moment you thought you'd died and gone to heaven?  Post your own review and upload your photos on our Tour Pages.

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