U2.COM : GAME CHANGER

Noel Gallagher, currently touring the US with his High Flying Birds, was at the second show in San Jose last night.

Afterwards he spoke to U2.com. Here's what he thought of the show.

'I thought it was as great a leap forward as it was when I saw ZOOTV the first time, which itself was a great leap forward from Rattle and Hum. If it's at all possible to get a great leap forward from that, then tonight was it.

It was theatre.

It starts off as a punk rock gig but then it gets intimate, there's a lot of truth in it about where they come from and the people that they are.

At points it's quite touching when you see footage of people like Bono's mum and his kids, stuff like that, walking up the street they grew up on.

Visually the band were explaining it to me for a good six months but I still had no idea about this screen they were talking about, it didn't make much sense to me at all - most things don't with Bono at four o clock in the morning. But tonight, I don't like to use the phrase, but this is a game changer, not only for them but for shows in general. It is something competely different.

You don't expect to have that screen in that position and doing that thing... and the beauty of it all is that it still does not take away from what a great band they are.

It was always going to be a contentious thing what they did with the album release but I think it paid off tonight because the stories of the songs have been told visually and it works, I really do think it works in a visual sense.

For people who haven't seen it, they play inside of a video screen and it's something else, it's like watching a television but you kind of forget sometimes that they are actually there on stage and they are playing live. It's a psychedelic experience.

I've been a fan since hearing 'New Year's Day' in 1983 and I've seen them loads of time. With the greatest respect in the world when I saw the 360° Tour I thought that was the end of something, and not in a bad way. I thought, this is so staggering and huge and tall, so amazing, I thought this was the end of something and I wondered what the beginning of the next thing will be - and here it is.

It was staggering - and only the fourth show. I can't wait to see it again.'