Near the very end of U2’s show in Vancouver – during the fourth and final song of the encore, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For – guitarist The Edge is strolling casually along the edge of the catwalk when he steps out into thin air with his right foot and crashes down in a tumble, the headstock of his black Strat slamming the corner of the stage with a bang.
Fortunately, he’s all right – unlike frontman Bono when he wiped out on his bicycle in New York last November and required major surgery. But the top brass at concert promoter Live Nation – like Arthur Fogel, the CEO of its Global Touring division, who Bono had profusely thanked just seconds before – must have damn near died. It’s the very first date on the band’s capital-letter-heavy iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE tour, which has shows sold out across North American and Europe until the middle of November. The prospect of The Edge with his fretting hand in a sling will not be welcome at this point.
The 53-year-old’s run-in with the forces of gravity isn’t the only threat to the Irish juggernaut’s latest attempt at box-office supremacy. Four days earlier, drummer Larry Mullen Jr’s 92-year-old father died, leaving fans to wonder whether he would be emotionally ready to handle the demands of the tour.
But Mullen has soldiered on, and 45 minutes after last night’s scheduled showtime, he, The Edge, Bono, and bassist Adam Clayton take the stage at Rogers Arena and launch into The Miracle (of Joey Ramone), the so-so opening track off that album they downloaded into your iTunes library last year, whether you wanted it or not. You may know it as the Apple commercial song.
U2 return to that album, Songs of Innocence, six more times during their 24-song set, leaving longtime fans to no doubt wish the band had cut back on the newer material to make room for unplayed gems like New Year’s Day and One. Cedarwood Road, one of the stronger new tracks, benefits greatly from the use of the show’s main effect, a massive rectangular structure dangling from the roof that serves as both a catwalk and, with its perforated metal sides, a video screen that allows you to see Bono amid the gorgeously animated street scenes reflected on it.
Before the less impressive 2014 song, Invisible, the screen is used to show snippets of vintage interviews with various punk and glam-rock stars of the 70s, including David Bowie, Lou Reed, the Clash, the New York Dolls, and the Sex Pistols. But this sequence drags on too long. As for the reportedly “special sound system”, which has numerous banks of speakers hanging from the arena ceiling, the overall quality of the sound is not any better than it usually is in the hockey rink.
For his part, Bono doesn’t seem to be showing any ill-effects from the accident that broke his arm in six places, among other injuries. He’s still very good at lifting up said appendage whenever a rock-star pose is in order – or when it’s time to pull off the slinky belly-dance moves of Mysterious Ways, during which he thanks the doctor “who put me back together”.
For Sweetest Thing – a song the band hasn’t done live since 2001 – Bono pulls a young woman up from the crowd and gives her a phone to film the band playing the song, her footage appearing on the big screen. It’s like a greatest hits of the crappiest YouTube concert clips you’ve ever seen. “Technology has its uses,” declares Bono when the song was over, “but we gotta get better at this”.
The encore features a recording of Stephen Hawking speaking on power and politics and Bono promising an end to the scourge of HIV/Aids before The Edge comically forgets that you can’t walk on air. For anyone hoping to have a chuckle at the high-and-mighty U2’s expense, it’s clearly a Beautiful Day.
