“America is not just a country, it’s an idea.”
Deep, right?
Let’s say it again, Bono did last night at MSG at the midway point of U2’s eight night residency on their worldwide “Innocence And Experience” tour. .
“America is not just a country, it’s an idea. An evolving concept”
Got it.
Well, U2 isn’t a band, it is an idea that three middle age men can pick up a huge paycheck for going through the motions while one lead singer can shoehorn himself between Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela. At a price of $75 for a behind the stage nosebleed seat, it is a very expensive idea with very very good, maybe great, maybe as great as people claim, moments and some very very very bad songs, performed better than on their current album, the atrocious Songs Of Innocence. Cut into two, the first half innocent, the second experience, and the encore neither.
The entire evening reached its zenith with “Bullet The Blue Sky”, Bono shouting “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe” in an extended nod to the racial tensions exploding across the country. The song segued into “Pride In The Name Of Love”. And, as my friend Tomas Doncker noted, since Tomas was the only black person in the Arena, these two of a three song miniset to deal explicitly with black people, was being performed solely because it was what Bono felt needed to be said. “How can you not love him?” Tomas asked me. “Dr. King, we need you more than ever… Charleston, S.C., Ferguson, Mo… Sing for the peacemakers!”, Bono replied.
As for me not loving Bono, it is not that he lacks integrity but rather that he is focussed on really his and not the world’s concerns.For instance: why is Bono rabbiting on about the Irish civil war, which ended in 2007? During the awful, I do mean atrocious new song “Raised By Wolves” about a 1974 terrorist attack, pictures of the victims were shown on the long, oblong, and deeply immersive 40 screen images going through the center of the arena. It was moving, true, but when you consider ISIS are currently going through tiny hamlets on the border of Syria, slaughtering, beheading, setting on fire, men women and children, excuse me if I question where Bono’s heart is? I mean, really, I’m sorry, but cmon guy. Why not take on Islam? No, wait, I’m eager to guess.
The show opens with the atrocious new song (actually all the those new ones are atrocious, so take it as read from now on) “The Miracle Of Joey Ramone”, a silly way to start the set. What is it with the damn song? Why name something after Joey Ramone when it has absolutely nothing to do with Joey, or the Ramones, or the miracle of anything other than The Edge still picking up a paycheck. At the start of the Songs Of Innocence, the song is like a huge neon sign reading: WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO WRITE HOOKS. Or maybe, three year earlier it had a great hook and they wrote it out over years and years of refining the sucker -I have this feeling that there is a time in every U2 song over the past 15 years when they’ve had it right and then they’ve second guessed themselves, and destroyed it. “Miracle” is just a bad song, everything about it is pathetic. They followed with “Vertigo” which is like U2 covering Bruce covering U2, and pretty good and then they finally nail one with “I Will Follow” (“I thought it was about wanting to follow my mother into the grave but it was actually about unconditional love. How punk rock is that?” Bono asked. Wellllll…), U2’s breakthrough of course and then we got the band introductions. In 2015, Bono needs U2 about as much as McCartney needed Wings in 1974. U2 are not a band and the not band is not great. I have nothing against Adam Clayton and Larry Mullins Jr, the rhythm section, they do the job with astounding discretion given what’s going on and just putting up with Bono and the spectacularly overrated The Edge, should be reason enough for them to be rolling in dough. But they aren’t very good, on “Sunday Bloody Sunday” they mess up the martial beat. How can you mess it up? Not that anybody noticed, of course.
Now, the band is ready to delve into the Innocence and Experience theme with the atroc… no I wasn’t gonna say that anymore, with the essentially creeped out ode to his Mom (his second in five songs) “Iris (Hold Me Close)” and Bono trying to reach out to his Mom. Sad, to a degree. But Iris died when he was 14 years old and he is 55 years old, get a grip man. Also, and more importantly, if you wanna write about your dead Mommy for chrissake have something to say about her more meaningful than hold me close tiny dancer. The low point of the evening.
After chasing his poor Mummy round a screen we are ready for the much discussed walk across the two stages during the atr… during “Cedarwood Road” and I could explain the video bridge I really could, but I’ll let Jim Farber of the Daily News do it for me: “Instead of mounting the video screens in static positions behind the stage, they ran a two-sided contraption lengthwise through the arena, letting the images bisect the core of the building. The result created an uncommonly wide vision, immersing the crowd in visual stimuli. Better, the band ran a cat-walk between the two sides of the screen, allowing the musicians to seemingly walk into the scenes being depicted.The set-up proved especially effective in a song of nascent yearning like “Cedarwood Road.” Here, the contemporary Bono wandered down animated recreations of the streets he walked as a boy.” Got it?
One more song for his Mom… no wait, “Song For Someone” is for his wife, two songs about “The Troubles” (over back in 2007: or did I mention that) and a one more before a ten minute intermission (lights remained off) and we are back with their best post 2004 song (at the very least) and three hits Bono’s Mandela tribute “Ordinary Love” followed and if,as Tomas claimed, “Pride In The Name Of Love” is the best song ever written about MLK, “Ordinary Love” -based on Nelson’s private letters to his fiancee, is the worst song ever written based upon somebodies love letters. Lady Gaga joined them onstage to play piano. Nice touch and tons better than the movie soundtrack version.
“Better Than The Real Thing” was a blast, the most pure fun oif the evening though they phoned in “Mysterious Ways”.And the third: “we’ve got some technology that I’m pretty sure you’ll be good”, he cracks to a Japanese audience member before performing to a worldwide audience who are streaming “Elevation”. “Elevation” is nothing great but compare the hook to… Wait a second, isn’t that racism? God, I hope so.
OK, into the homestretch and the audience is going bonkers, even Tomas is calling them “great”. He explained. “For Bono it isn’t about the music any more. It is about the causes that matter to him and he doesn’t care what anybody thinks.” Seventy-five bucks down and it is about the music and that’s it as far as I am concerned. Musically U2 are hitting on all cylinders now, “Pride”, “Beautiful Day” and “With You And Without You” leads us to the encore. All perfectly fine versions and with the one in the middle coming close to elevation itself. The Edge may well be a one trick pony but the one trick sure worked here. The sound of his guitar was being messed with in the mix and its very tone was bewitching. Really gorgeous and I don’t even like the song.
The encore wasn’t great, Stephen Hawkins introduced the Bono recommends we become Global Citizens (a talkover) but who needs “City Of Blinding Lights” off the beginning of the end How To Dismantle A Bomb, for the first song? Why that song? It sucks, I didn’t even recognize it. Next, “Where The Streets Have No Name” had a preamble about his “Red” AIDs foundation. You know, the one where they raise money to pay off African politicians -not the worst idea I’ve ever heard. That and being a tax exile -St. Bono with his halo a little on the wobbly side. Still, the “Mother And Child’ Reunion” snippet made sense in context (about women infecting their unborn children with AIDs) and finally “One” became an Arena wide version of the drunk girl sitting next to you singing along to every word. So that’s it. 126 minutes of free floating U2.
So what are Bono’s concerns in 2015? A lot less about wealth distribution for the “developing” nations (cute euphemism, right?) than about a mom who has been dead for decades, a war that’s been over for years, and an epidemic that is close to being eradicated.
As for U2, they are going through the motions and letting the stage do their work for them and even so, when the song and the sound come together they are worth all the bullshit surrounding them. Tonight “I Will Follow”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Pride In The Name Of Love” and “Elevation”, they absolutely justify Tomas’ deep affection. I’ve never seen em worse… well, maybe the “Pop” tour with the big lemon but that one had a better setlist.
“How can you not love Bono?”
U2 is a concept by which we measure our patience…
Grade: B+
Setlist:
The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)
Gloria
(with Them’s “Gloria” snippet)
Vertigo
I Will Follow
Iris (Hold Me Close)
(with Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” snippet)
Cedarwood Road
Song for Someone
Sunday Bloody Sunday
(acoustic, without final verse; with “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” snippet)
Raised by Wolves
(with “Psalm 23” snippet)
Until the End of the World
(with “Love and Peace or Else” snippet)
The Fly
(Remix)
Invisible
Even Better Than the Real Thing
Mysterious Ways
Elevation
Ordinary Love
(with Lady Gaga)
Every Breaking Wave
Bullet the Blue Sky
Pride (In the Name of Love)
(with “The Hands That Built America” snippet)
Beautiful Day
With or Without You
Encore:
City of Blinding Lights
Where the Streets Have No Name
(beginning with Paul Simon’s ” Mother and Child Reunion” snippet)
One
(ending with “All You Need is Love” by The Beatles snippet)
