October 25, 2005

“…Where the streets have no name…we’re still building and burning down love…”

Yep, it was an awesome concert. The first one I’ve stayed till the end in a long, long time. Of course, they ended with 40…and Larry Mullen was the last one to leave the stage…he just went to the edge of the stage and stood there in the light for a long time, as everyone was singing, “How long…to sing this song…How long…to sing this song….”

They had an amazing stage set. The most incredible one I’d ever seen. The stage was a circle, with concentric circles of lights set into the floor. And that main stage was set into the end of an ellipse-like runway that extended way out into the main floor, and back, in a large swoop. The fan club people were inside the ellipse–standing, of course. There were more concentric lights set into the runway. And they also had these beaded curtains made of fiber optics that acted as moving video screens, which raised and lowered depending on the song. Really cool.

Bono spent a lot of time on the elliptical runway, as you can imagine. And what prompted the title of this blog entry was what he did during the last song of the first encore.

The intro to With or Without You was playing, and he went down to the furthest part of the runway, reached into the crowd, and pulled up a woman from about three rows back onto the stage with him.

He hugged her, and she (of course) hugged him, and as he was holding her, as if they were embracing, her head on his shoulder, his head on hers…he sang. The whole song. While he was holding her.

I can only imagine what it must have been like to be her. She could feel the rumble in his chest as he sang, could feel his warmth, his smell, feel him every time he took a breath…OMG. Bono!

As my husband said, “It was Bono’s way of dancing with every woman in the arena.”

Yeah. I’d have fainted once I got back to the ground.

Another highlight was when, during Love and Peace or Else, the lights came up, and there was Larry Mullen, standing on the farthest part of the ellipse, with a single drum, just banging away. Probably the first tour he’d ever gotten that close to the fans while playing! And after that song ended, Larry dashed back to the main stage and Bono took over on the single drum there, pounding out the beginning to Sunday, Bloody Sunday.

That was awesome to see: Bono slashing the drums, his arms raising high, one after the other, slamming down on the drum, with his white “coexist” bandanna over his forehead. Very moving.

A friend of mine doesn’t like to see U2 in concert, because he, as he puts it, “comes to see them perform, not preach about politics.” Well, I have to disagree with his sentiment, because that’s one of the things that I admire most about Bono, Edge, Larry and Adam. They aren’t afraid to–and in fact, I believe they must feel the responsibility of–using their exposure and influence to speak out about inequalities in the world. And they do, and they did.

And I appreciate them all the more for it.