I am so divided on this cover of the song. I think she starts off strong and think the initial attitude and perspective work, but then feel like the performance loses its way a little bit–and not just because of the lyric changes, or that she forgets the words at one point. I think it’s that I just want it to work so incredibly badly that I will forgive it a million sins, which robs me of true objectivity.

More on the show later.

If you liked Patti Smith performs U2′s “Until The End of The World” live you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

Yes. We went looking for The Joshua Tree.

This all started a few years ago, when I brought up a Bono quote from a Rolling Stone interview back in the day, about how they didn’t remember where the Joshua Tree that was photographed on the album was. Bono thought it was a good thing, because otherwise some fan would turn up at a concert with it: “Bono! I’ve got the tree!”

“That’s not true,” the boyfriend said. “They found the tree. It died a while ago, but the fans know where the tree is.”

Now, contrary to popular belief, the tree is not in Joshua Tree, or even in the Mojave Desert. It’s not even technically in Death Valley National Park, but rather just outside its boundaries. Thanks to the internet and the industriousness of the U2 community, within a few hours we had photographs, Google Earth screen captures and GPS coordinates at our fingertips. We just had to wait until a trip to LA or Las Vegas gave us enough time to make the trip ourselves – and this year was the year.

We watched videos and talked to people who had gone and planned and planned and planned some more. We rented a car with a GPS and satellite radio, stopped at a Starbucks on Windmill Lane (not kidding), and headed up into the mountains.

This would have been an excellent plan had the satellite radio worked, and had the GPS accepted longitude and latitude coordinates. This is a dead plant in the desert, it wasn’t like we could just enter “the Joshua tree” into the GPS and it would take us to where we wanted to go (although we ended up having data signal–of all things–and it’s now on Foursquare). So much for being sure we were absolutely in possession of the exact coordinates.

But we are not stupid. We were smart enough to have brought a RCA plug for our iPhones and the SO had even burned some emergency CD’s of a 1987 Chicago radio broadcast, just in case. He plugged the last intersection before the location of the tree into the GPS and we figured out how to reset the trip odometer on the car so we could find the location by watching mileage. We had printed out maps, we had screenshots of Google Maps on the phones.

Off into the desert we drove.

The Oceans 11 quote about still being in the middle of the fucking desert once you get out of Las Vegas becomes relevant about 15 minutes outside of town, as you head up and over actual mountains and into the middle of nowhere. Pahrump, the only town of any substance between LV and Death Valley was a blip of casinos and strip malls, and 10 minutes later we made a left turn towards Death Valley and two stop signs later had left all of that behind.

We saw wild horses. We saw a coyote crossing the road. When civilization of any size approached, you could see it miles ahead in the distance, because there was nothing else out there. We had brought water and snacks–and if I had to do it again I would have doubled the water and the snacks and brought more warm clothing, because if the car had broken down we would have been waiting a very long time for help. We never passed one law enforcement or official vehicle, and for the entire four hour drive, I never had a car in front of me. We would see cars pulled over on the side of the road and I would mentally prepare to stop and ask if they were okay, but in every single case, there was someone with a huge camera on a tripod taking advantage of the winter morning desert light.

We made a few stops to take photos and one to pay our national park admission fee, but mostly, we kept driving. I was worried about finding the tree and losing the light and so we would do any extra sightseeing on the way back. We talked about U2 driving around between Death Valley and the Mojave for three weeks 25 years ago (25 years ago the week we were there, just by coincidence), and how overwhelming all of this must have been for four guys from Ireland, where there was nothing at all like the wilderness surrounding us on all four sides.

For me, the desert is all about the silence. I guess it’s the thing that stands out for a city girl, more than anything else. And then the light, that amazing desert light, especially in the winter. The air, even when there’s dust blowing it’s cleaner than an average city street corner. The stars at night, the true, deep black, the absence of ambient city light. The colors are muted, the horizon stretches so far ahead you have to strain to see it, no dead-ending in New Jersey at the edge of the island.

I took the wheel for the drive out and am almost sorry that I did because I couldn’t take any photographs. I kept telling the SO to take his camera out and take pictures of the things I couldn’t. I would set up the shot in my head and tell him, “Take a photo of that. Now, take a photo of that. Wait, that. Did you get that?” He set up a tiny tripod on the dashboard and filmed movies of us driving through the desert. The scenery is unbelievable, awe-inspiring, purple mountains majesty and all of that. You feel tiny and insignificant and wonder about the people crazy enough to walk through this place on foot hundreds of year ago.

We reached our first official stopping place, Panamint Springs, a little before noon. Gas was $5.38 and we were at half a tank. We got out of the car and stretched, put $20 worth of gas in the tank, used the bathroom and their wifi, and bought some drinks before getting back on the road for what would end up being the worst part of the drive. The mountain pass before the valley before Panamint Springs was a steep grade and twisty and windy but the road was wide and felt reasonably safe. The road out of Panamint Springs felt tiny and the absence of guard rails less than comforting. (It got to the point that when we did see guard rails, we really worried.)

I started to get excited. It was close, or at least soon, and we would be there. The odometer clicked slowly towards the magic 107 mile mark. I didn’t know what it would be like to stand there and see those mountains. I saw clouds in the distance and scowled at them, mentally telling them to get lost, that they were ruining my photographs even as I was on my way there.

And then we came around a curve and sloped downward and the odometer crawled toward the 107 mile mark and I looked to my left at the mountain range shrouded in clouds and tapped the window gently saying, “There. There it is. Look. We’re here.” The SO glanced up, but back at the map, telling me to watch for the curve to the right and that there would be a dirt road on the left and I should pull over there.

And then there was a curve to the right and the dirt road fading into the distance on the left and with a pro forma glance back and forth to make sure there was no oncoming or following traffic, I pulled off the road, stopped the car and opened the door.

“KEYS,” said the boyfriend.
We always do this when we rent a car but the special emphasis was not lost on me. We would be SOL for a very long time if we locked the keys in the car. I held them up in the air.
“NO REALLY, KEYS,” he said.
I held them up and waved them vigorously.
We assembled everything we thought we needed, went through “KEYS” one more time, shut the door and headed into the desert .

The SO took out a map and some printouts of photographs and squinted into the distance. “There,” he said, pointing at a solo, non-branched Joshua Tree plant in the distance. He held up a photo printout to get my assessment. “We start walking towards that.”

But as we reached where we were heading, we realized quickly that it was not the right place. We studied the terrain and the maps and the printouts again. (Astonishingly, I had data coverage–I couldn’t pull up Facebook on the Strip, but in the middle of nowhere Google Maps was working.) I entered the GPS coordinates, it pinpointed the location of the car. I entered another set of GPS coordinates, it pinpointed the car again.

We looked at the map one more time. The boyfriend walked over to a concrete block in the middle of nowhere but it was a sea level marker. We looked at a solo tree in the distance but it seemed too far away to be the location of the photo. They stopped at this one location because there was a tree that stood out alone and wasn’t surrounded by other ones. We considered that the solo tree in the photograph we had, adjacent to the now-dead tree, had also died. That would make things difficult without a compass or a hand-held GPS.

I started to consider the futility of this effort. I started to consider that we might not find the damn thing, after all of this. I wondered how long we would have to walk through this particular stretch of desert before the boyfriend would be willing to give up. I wondered how stubborn I myself would be about all of this. There was no way I was going to give up after coming this far. I reminded myself that we were within sight of the main road, that it was still daylight, that it wasn’t the middle of the summer, and we were not going to get lost like those Dutch tourists. The boyfriend did insist that I be within his range of sight at all times, however, and I wished I had worn my cowboy boots and not sneakers.

After a few more minutes of walking and looking at pictures and more walking, the boyfriend stopped, and pointed to two trees in the distance, down the road away from the car.
“I think we should walk this way.”
I looked in the direction he pointed in, and agreed, with the provision that there was a small rise just ahead. I wanted to get to the top of the rise, and then discuss how we would split up and do a grid search, like I was in a CSI episode, or something.
No sooner did I get to the top of the rise than I saw something, something in a color not native to the desert. It was bright green.
“Honey…” I said.
“Yeah, I see it,” he said.
We started walking briskly in that direction, and then all of a sudden, we were there.

The green box was a plastic crate that has replaced the former “U Tube,” the PVC pipe that held the logbook for people who visited the tree. The box was full of messages and mementos and had been signed by people–some very recently–from everywhere on the planet. I was slightly humbled to see signatures from Poland and Serbia, that these people from the other side of the world would make their way out to this godforsaken place in the literal middle of nowhere.

Speaking of dedicated, whoever created this plaque wins the ‘dedicated’ title. It wasn’t just that they made a bronze plaque for the location of the tree, it was that they had to truck out cement, a cement mixer, water, and shovels, and a couple of people to help dig the hole, form the frame, pour the cement, and then wait around for it to cure. Did they drive an ATV into the desert? Did they push a wheelbarrow in from the road? It would have taken several trips to figure the whole thing out, and even if you ‘lived nearby’ you’re still talking about 8 hour round-trips at a minimum.

There were some people who had made signs out of wood or metal and brought them along, but aside from writing in the logbook or on the box, the popular way of marking your presence was to create something out of rocks. There was a peace sign; there were U2 logos; there was the heart-in-a-suitcase from a previous tour. I didn’t bring anything to put into the box because I disliked the idea of adding refuse to the desert, but it might have been smart if one of us had considered bringing a pen to write in the logbook (luckily there was a working pen inside the two ziplock bags holding the very wet logbook).

The boyfriend started picking up rocks. “So, ‘dream out loud,’ or something else?”
“Dream out loud.”
“We’re going to take a picture of this and send it to our friend, and she’s going to respond, ‘You know, they’re still not going to play ‘Acrobat’.”
We laughed hard, considered that no one who wasn’t a U2 fan would find that remotely amusing, and went back to picking up rocks and positioning them in the hard winter desert ground. No soft sand in the winter.

I am amazed that the now-dead tree is still there. I am amazed that no one has stolen it or sawn pieces off to sell on eBay or even taken a leaf or a branch. Trust me, U2 fans (just like intense fans of any band, to be fair) can be a brand of crazy I don’t even want to stand near, but yet, this site was left to exist in peace without being selfishly scavenged limb from limb. Sometimes people manage to rise to their expectations.

We were starting to lose the light, and the clouds blew away from the mountains but were now over the sky as a whole, and it was getting to be time to start heading back. I took as many photographs as I could think of, although I now look at them and wonder why I dismissed certain angles, or why I didn’t walk back far enough to get the tree location properly positioned against the mountains. We took pictures of each other, we did the goofy thing where you hold up the iPhone with the tree and the mountains in the background. I thought about bringing a tripod but it was okay that I didn’t, because no photograph will ever show what it was like to stand there, to be there with someone who wanted to be there as much as I did, who didn’t think that it was dumb or stupid or idiotic to make this trip, to stand in the middle of the desert in December because 25 years ago, a Dutch photographer and four guys from Ireland decided they would shoot photos for their next album cover here.

And then, almost at the same time, we decided that we were ready to leave.

The walk back to the road from the tree was infinitely easier than our walk to it (If you park at the turnout, walk back to the drainage culvert and head in from there.) and then we were back at the car and heading back towards civilization. We stopped back at Panamint Springs for lunch (recommended, mostly because there ain’t much else, folks) and use of their free wifi, and drove back over the mountains and through the desert once again. We stopped one more time, at Zabriskie Point, the site of the album cover proper, but it was almost 4:30 by then and getting dark so any hiking around in imitation of the band had to be shelved because we still had a long way to go.

It got dark quicker than we had ever imagined and it even started snowing as we were heading over the last mountain pass between Pahrump and Las Vegas, making the drive difficult and nerve-wracking at the very end, before we descended into the bright light city again.

It was about pilgrimage, even if you look askance at assigning such a word of weight and import to a journey that seems trivial on the surface. But we go to these places because we are seeking connection, because we are looking for something divine, magical, at least other, seeking meaning or significance above and beyond what’s on the surface. I look at the vast enormity and wild beauty of the desert and wonder how it felt to four young men from Ireland. I listen to the silence and wonder what it does to the imagination of someone who constructs sound for a living. I look at a place and see it through my eyes and the eyes of everyone else who has seen that place. I stand there and try to figure out what I feel and wonder if it is what others felt standing in the same place.

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

If you liked In Search of the Joshua Tree you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

I reminisce about rock and roll tourism, U2 style, in ye olde pre-internet days over at Scatter o’ light.

If you liked Dublin, 1984. you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

I remember Achtung Baby as the record where it was not just about what and who U2 were as it was about what and who they weren’t. At the time, people weren’t just U2 fans, you were either fans of the Joshua Tree- era U2 who didn’t love what was perceived as this sudden change, or you were the people who were starting to — not so much lose interest towards the end of that particular phase (including, by all accounts, the band themselves), but might have tired of some of it just a tad, and you loved Achtung Baby not because it was U2’s next album but because it was Achtung Baby. To me, it was closer to the era where they made their bones. For all of the insistence on noise rock influences and Einsturzende and their ilk, I heard the Stones at Nellcote, I heard Marc Bolan’s gold lame pants, I heard the Silver Factory, I heard the Bowie of Heroes, the Lou Reed of Transformer, the Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center. It was Manchester meets Motown.

It was iconic, it was ridiculous, it was groundbreaking. It was overwhelming and exciting – if you wanted to be overwhelmed and excited by all of the above, which I most certainly did.

“The Fly” flooded MTV and after years of gritty black and white earnestness there was a pulse, there was rhythm, there was Edge’s guitar shimmering around the edges like runway lights, reminding us that this was still U2. The video or the promo for the video or the ad for the album was on MTV once every fifteen minutes, and I am not sure that is an exaggeration of any kind. It’s no wonder that by the time that ZooTV went live on tour that the iconography was already so comfortable and familiar to everyone when this was burned into your brain nonstop for so long.

When the record was finally in our hands – and oh, this was still the day of the record – the cover was Robert Frank in technicolor, and the music did not disappoint. It opened with a one-two punch and it closed with a triad taking you in the other emotional direction. “Zoo Station” was a clarion call, chanting “I’m ready” every line. “Even Better Than The Real Thing” felt and sounded like the sun rising. “Ultraviolet” was liquid hope (“baby baby baby, light my way”) anchored by the rhythm section, “Acrobat” was despair set to 6-8 time, “Love Is Blindness” was quicksilver anguish channeled through Edge’s guitar strings.

The sounds and the spaces were colossal. It was big and brash and loud and dark and shiny. It was huge. It wasn’t what we had expected, it was more than we needed, it was what we dearly wanted. It walked that edge between dark and light and between heaven and hell. This record wasn’t about being in God’s country, these were songs about walking the planet every day.

It is a record of anthems, of battle cries, of hymns. After 20 years of hearing “One” in grocery stores and while shopping for jeans at the Gap, it’s hard to remember that you could ever listen to that song and find it evil, haunting and too close to the bone, but the first listen of that song had me on the floor the first time I heard it. I used to sing it at karaoke with my best friend and we’d piss everyone off. We pissed off the guys we dated, who knew we were trying to tell them something but couldn’t figure out what. It pissed off other women in the crowd because we were reminding them of things they didn’t want to think about. It pissed off the other guys in the crowd because our anguish was hot and we always leaned into each other when we sang, which gave them ideas that had no basis in reality. Of course, we sang the song and put on the performance because we wanted to piss everybody off. We sang “One” to each other over the phone. We sang “One” to each other on our answering machines. I marvel that now “One” is a song during which I take a break during a show, and certainly wouldn’t stop the car and turn up the radio if it came on, but back then, it rated that kind of reverence.

I got into the most trouble with the “Ultraviolet”/”Acrobat” axis at the end of the record. I would walk to the beach at sunset with the record on tape or I would sit in my living room with headphones on at sunrise, usually coming home after being out all night, back when that was something I would do. “Oh, sugar, don’t you cry,” Bono would sing, but I would usually be doing just that, exactly. “You I need you to be strong,” he would sing, and I would shake my head to myself in assent. It was the anti-”One,” it wasn’t about regret, it was about moving up and on: “light my way,” over and over again. I would listen to the song grow and expand and open itself up into the bridge, where Larry and Adam were right up front in a giant cavern that filled my heart with sound, and Edge was in the back scratching and Bono singing, pleading, begging, with a voice that sounded like it had been dragged through sandpaper or whiskey or both.

And then, just when you’d recovered, you’d be thrown into “Acrobat.” I should not like “Acrobat.” I do not like 6/8 time, not in a rock song. If you had told me “U2 have a song on this record that’s in 6/8 time” I would have dismissed it out of hand as being entirely too precious. But it works, that’s the thing, it works here without being pretentious. It is the perfect device to give the feeling of being on edge, the manic madness that takes you into another perfectly orchestrated break where the drums parry the guitar and Adam is holding them all down so they don’t swirl into the ether. “You can dream/so dream out loud/and you can find/your own way out, and the Delmore Schwartz reference (which once woke me up in the middle of the night as I was falling asleep to the record and finally placed the line), it’s another rung in the ladder to climb up or out, whatever you need at the time.

You think you’re going to be able to relax by the time “Love Is Blindness” shudders into your ears, and that’s just what they want you to think. They want you to be off-guard, they want you to take a breath or two and listen, and that’s where they get you. They get you with those initial guitar licks in the background, glowing, glimmering, before taking over and shrieking into your brain and your heart at the end.

And then you would start it all over again.

This record stayed with me. I never needed to put it away or give it a break and even with every very specific, very raw, very emotional association I had with it, the music trumped the memories and I never had to give it up. I would drive late at night with the roof open and it ringing in my ears, I would walk through the rain with the volume up just enough to not overshadow the raindrops, I would lie on the floor and stare at the ceiling and look for an epiphany. Nowadays I walk with it, I let it take me through the streets of New York City at twilight, for comfort or strength or solace or all three. I let it power me up when I have something to do or somewhere to be. I decided that if I was a Major League Baseball player, I would choose “Even Better Than The Real Thing” as my walk-up music. When I am facing the public or giving a reading, I will have listened to side one at some point before I got there.

So on the 20th anniversary of this record, it is being revisited and re-examined and re-explored, and I am at a loss at all of this RE-ing because it was the second or third album that went onto my first iPod in 2003 and I have never stopped listening to it long enough to be able to re-anything when it comes to Achtung Baby. It’s hard for me to revisit that which has never left.

In 1993, I was living overseas, and had been there for over five years already. I was living this odd no-man’s land of not being quite American but not being quite European either. In a way, Achtung Baby also occupies that emotional space, the band still being who they were, despite the previous few years of pursuing their Kerouac-like On The Road fantasy through the USA. Joshua Tree was white lights and cowboy hats, Achtung Baby was strobe lights and leather pants. When the tour rolled out in the US, despite being thousands of miles away, the magic of MTV made you feel like you were there. We knew everything that was going on, we knew about the calls to the White House and the pizzas and the video confessional as well as if it was in our backyard. I wanted to see it live but I didn’t know how I was going to make it happen – until my sister’s wedding in August of 93 required my presence back on the East Coast. I could route myself home via London just in time for Zooropa at Wembley Stadium.

I will tell you that nothing, not a damn thing, not a MTV News report or a photo essay in Rolling Stone or in-depth Q Magazine coverage prepared me for the sheer size of things. Part of it probably had to do with the fact that I had been living in a country that would neatly fit inside the state of New Jersey, everything was going to be massive by comparison. I had seats in the stands, about 1/3 back, halfway up. I looked at the mass of humanity on the pitch and wished I was there. I was by myself; despite the obsession my particular circle of friends had over this record, I don’t remember why I ended up traveling solo. It was an odd, disjointed time in my life, where I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Everyone around me streamed into the stadium in large, laughing groups, and I found my way to my seat by myself, feeling like a country bumpkin.

I was utterly not prepared for this. I was a girl who didn’t do stadium shows, who had sworn them off after surviving the Who and the Stones at the beginning of the 80s, who skipped her beloved Bruce Springsteen by the time Born In The USA got to the blimp nests because it wasn’t about watching the show, it was about spending some time in the same physical space as an artist and I wanted more from my music than that.

And then the lights went on, Edge hit the intro riff, Larry smashed the drums, and every single person at Wembley got to their feet. There was Bono, silhouetted against the blue, the fly against the TV screen. There were the leg kicks, there he was, humping the microphone stand. The music reached out across the enormity and pulled me in like I was standing at the edge of the stage.

I knew what “Zoo Station” was going to be like because I had seen it so many times, it was almost familiar, the first number had been in countless tv broadcasts. I even knew small details, like that last song before the band came out was going to be “Television, the Drug of a Nation” by the Disposable Heroes of Hiphopiacy (just like I’d known that John Lennon’s version of “Stand By Me” was the last song before the band came out on Joshua Tree). But nothing was going to prepare me for being there, and even being so far away from the stage – I didn’t! Do! Stadium! Shows!- it was overwhelming, even from where I was. I was glad I wasn’t closer because it would have swallowed me whole if I had. I held my breath through “Zoo Station” and “The Fly” because I was in shock. I was physically, mentally, emotionally unprepared for the spectacle, the power of the music live, the energy generated in such a large space. For London greeting U2 at Wembley fucking Stadium. 

And then the trabants went up and the lights flashed on and “Even Better Than the Real Thing” roared out of the speakers and into the center of my chest and it was like I had just woken up, like I had been frozen and had thawed out, that moment in the WIzard of Oz where everything goes from black and white to color. It was so big, so bright, so all-encompassing. It’s going to seem stupid when I tell you that that was the moment that I realized that I was moving back to America, that I had been heading in the wrong direction, that I thought I was doing the right thing with my life but that I had been doing anything but. Even at the time I said something to myself about being so cliche as to having a catharsis at a stadium rock show but there was something about the loop being closed, the circuits being opened, seeing this record live. It was the size, it was the sound, it was the power, it was something shaking you upside down until you came back to your senses.

I laid awake in bed that night staring at the ceiling and not believing I was going to do it again the next night.

There was a problem with my tickets the second night. They were legit, but they had been given to someone else more important than me, so a security guard took me to the production office to find another place to sit. Apparently I was the only person who didn’t walk in there ready for a fight – to be fair, would you want to find out there was a problem with your U2 ticket? – but I was just so happy to be there, to be able to be part of the circus one more time that as long as I had a ticket, I would be okay, which is what I told them. That’s when they noticed the accent, and asked me if I’d come just to see the show, and I said yes, and before I knew it I found myself on the same side of the stadium (Adam’s side, stage left) and a much much lower row. This was still Wembley, so I was still miles away, but after the previous night, I knew it wasn’t going to matter.

I got to my seat and noticed the entire row behind me were wearing MacPhisto horns. No sooner did I sit down than I felt someone tapping me on the shoulder and proffering a set of horns.
“What’s this?” I said.
“You have to get into the spirit of things,” he said.
“Don’t worry, I’m in the spirit of things.”
“You’re American!”
I nodded.
“I brought enough for everyone,” he said, “But you have to wear them.”
I put them on my head immediately.
“Now, that’s the spirit!” he said, standing up and waving at the people behind him who were not wearing devil horns. “Look, the girl from America put them on.”

This was the best possible section of people to be with for this show, people who stood up and danced and sang and shouted all night long. Tonight was participatory, yelling comments at Bono as though he could hear them, my new friend imitating every single one of Bono’s moves onstage with gusto (especially the crotch-in-camera ones, to much hilarity). You haven’t quite lived until you’re imitating belly dancing moves during “Mysterious Ways” with a motley group of kids from the London suburbs, all wearing devil horns. Everyone knew all the lines because they had been watching and listening and paying attention for the past year or so: “You didn’t come here to watch TV, now have ya??” we yelled with Bono as though we had heard it every night of our life.

In a way, of course, we had.

When the show was over, I walked out of Wembley with my new friends, several of them insisting on getting me back to the tube station even though I kept telling them I knew where I was going just fine. I didn’t realize I was still wearing my MacPhisto horns until I got off at my stop and walked into the off license to buy a drink. The elderly shop clerk looked up at me, saw the horns, did a double-take and I caught my reflection in the window just as a big smile broke across his face.

He said, “So, who did Bono ring up tonight, then?”

I wish I knew what happened to those devil horns.

–
(For the record: the first night was — I believe — the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Bono and the crowd sang “I Just Called To Say I Love You” and the second night was the coach of a football team whose name I have long since forgotten, but understood enough about UK sport to get why we were singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” I am hoping a kind commenter will fill in that gap.)

If you liked Remembering Achtung Baby, 20 Years On you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

It was inevitable, it being New Jersey, and it went on all night – adding “Promised Land” at the end of ISHFWILF, thanking Bruce for the loan of the hall, getting the crowd to “Bruuuuce” them. It was inevitable, and I knew it was coming, but when Bono went to the front of the stage and pulled out the sign – and that person had to have gotten online at the stroke of dawn to get that spot – it didn’t make it any easier, as he proceeded to dedicate “Moment of Surrender” to the E Street Band. And again, again, even with all of that, even though I knew it was going to happen, I’d seen the video, I’d heard the song files from Oakland, Bono invoking the last verse of “Jungleland” in New Jersey, across the parking lot where we stood and watched them all there not that long ago – well, goddammit, you learn from the best, you Irish bastard.

I didn’t expect Bruce to play and I realized on the train home that I had no real need or desire for him to play.

More later on the show, I just wanted to get this one thing up.

If you liked “For Clarence” you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

I could, and should, someday write a long treatise about hauling myself from Tel Aviv to London (en route to the US for my sister’s wedding) in August of 1993 to see U2 at Wembley Stadium on the Zooropa tour, and how it altered the course of my life completely. That time is not now, but it would go a long way in explaining why I would spend 4 days hauling myself up to Montreal to see U2 play a show in the middle of a race track along with 79,999 other people, why I would get up at 6:30 on my day off and go sit on said racetrack for 8 hours, waiting on line, to then sprint down the racetrack in the heat and then hug a metal barrier for the next five hours until the band comes onstage… and I get a shot like the one above.

That shot is one I almost didn’t get, because I was so full of the moment, so conscious of the fact that all I wanted to do was just stand there and watch them. In my life these days, just standing and watching is a revolutionary act, when everyone around me is photographing and recording video and Tweeting and texting and Facebooking. There were so many of these moments, the reason that I sat and ran and stood and spent close to $30 CAD on plain old water (it was very hot), to stand feet away and watch Bono and Edge sing to each other. You can try as hard as you want to to convince me that it’s fake, that it’s an act, that it’s Bono and the Edge playing the characters of Bono and the Edge, and I will tell you that yes, you are right, but you are wrong, because I think the only way U2 could keep going is if there still wasn’t some kind of human connection they can only get from each other.

Of course, the other thing that will get me to withstand adversity is the presence of Achtung Baby dominating the set, that tremendous opening with “Even Better Than The Real Thing” and “The Fly” and “Until The End of the World”. The crowd around us had their cameras up in the air during the “Space Odyssey” opener, tiny blue screens glowing as far as the eye could see, and then once everyone had a photo of Bono, they went back to doing what they were doing, oblivious to what was transpiring musically around them. I will invoke 1993 again, I will tell you that “Even Better Than The Real Thing” would be my walk on music if I was a Major League Baseball player, by the time the band moved through the first four songs (“I Will Follow” on Friday, “Out Of Control” on Saturday coming in after that trio) I was ready for a cigarette break, if I still smoked. Instead, I drank water during “Boots” while everyone around me got excited.

I am disappointed that so much of the last album is now missing from the set, that in order to do things like play “Stay” or “All I Want Is You” with just Bono and Edge and an acoustic guitar in front of 80,000 people, they have to bookend it with “Beautiful Day,” that the only way they can get away with “Zooropa” (which was absolutely, utterly phenomenal) is to put down the honeycomb video screen and follow it with the fireworks of “City of Blinding Lights”. I will tell you that I think the set has lost cohesion and thematic arc with the removal of new songs like “Magnificent,” that the pairings of (say) “Elevation” into “Pride” or “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” into “Sunday Bloody Sunday” are trainwrecks (even if “Crazy Tonight” is wonderful and delightful and the kind of reworking I wish they would do more of), that the older songs feel like they are jimmied into the setlist with the subtlety of a crowbar.

There is no other reason that this is happening now, at the end of a tour, except that subtlety is hard work in an enormous space, and it’s the tradeoff for playing these enormous places, which they have to do in order for the people who just want to say they were there and scream at Bono and spend lengthy parts of the show getting their picture taken with the claw in the background. These are the people I have to share this band with, which is why I don’t have a show total for U2 like I probably should have. (It was bad enough having to share Bruce with everyone during the BITUSA stadium era, which I successfully avoided.) There is only so much of the casual show going that I can take. In Canada, amazingly, we stood halfway back on the field for night two and no one talked through every slow or unfamiliar song, which still went on when we were in the inner circle night one, most notably by the people wearing hospitality room passes who showed up just before the band walked out onstage. (I still do not understand this mindset of going to a concert and talking through it, especially if you like the band who are onstage, no matter how hard I try.)

But the tourists and the thematic dissonance doesn’t ruin all of it, or much of it, it’s the thing you think about for a half second before returning to be in the moment. Part of the deal, sometimes, is that willing suspension of disbelief, your ability to throw yourself into the moment and stop analyzing and processing and just be there, be part of that moment where (to quote Bono, who was quoting Quincy Jones, before you take him to task) God walks through the room during “Where The Streets Have No Name”. It is magic, most of the time, if you are willing to let it be magical, if you can drop whatever you are hanging onto in your brain and just pogo up and down for those first 30 seconds before Bono starts to sing, to throw your arms in the air and sing along at the top of your lungs. Those are the moments I live for, those are the moments that give you hope and remind you of what rock and roll was supposed to be about. Those are the moments that U2 do like no one else does, and that is the reason I still show up, hang on, and let go.

If you liked U2, Montreal 2011 you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

The corner of 7th & Main in Downtown Los Angeles. If you know what it is, you know what it is; if you don’t recognize it, it won’t mean anything even if I explained it to you.

(Of course, if you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you saw this last week, so I apologize.)

I have to say that this was one of the coolest rock and roll things I have gone looking for in a long time. It was so much fun figuring out where this was, realizing it was still there, and then going there and putting the puzzle pieces together.

If you liked ROLL SOUND. you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

Because The Night

In the lull waiting for U2, the conversation went a little bit like this:
“Um, there’s a piano on the stage.”
“Really?”
“Who’s going to play that piano?”
“Daniel Lanois?”
“Or another bald-headed gentleman who seems to be missing.”
We looked one row in front of us. Roy Bittan was no longer in his seat. He had been in the 10th row. We had been in the 13th row, until Curtis King and Jake Clemons and their guests had moved.
“And those aren’t the Edge’s amps, either.”
I looked. They were tilted back, against the drum riser.
“And look who’s walking across the stage.”
There was Kevin, Springsteen’s guitar tech, ambling by.

In 30 million years, I honestly never expected it. Everyone was blah blah blah Mick Jagger, blah blah blah Bob Dylan, blah blah blah. We knew how early the Bruce setlist had leaked out the previous day and so stayed far, far away from the internet. Seeing Bruce with U2 was on the bucket list, but we didn’t know how it would ever actually come to pass.

However, I will confess to going completely numb when Patti Smith walked out onstage with Bruce Springsteen. I always explain that I have no coherent memory of the first time I saw key artists, because it was all one glorious blur of overwhelming emotion. I was starting to do that again, and even though I didn’t want to take pictures because I wanted to WATCH IT, taking pictures kept me present, kept me grounded in the moment.

Of course, there was a slight problem. Patti was singing her version, Bruce was playing his version, and U2 were playing what they believed to be a version of the song that they were familiar with. They stopped. They started again. They stopped one more time. Bono came over and sang in Patti’s ear. She looked nervous, and a little abashed, but she was also smiling from ear to ear, excited and happy.

I. am. freaking. the. fuck. OUT.

U2 were always okay by me, but that cover of “Dancing Barefoot” sealed the deal. Then there was Larry Mullen Jr. talking about the bands that were important to U2 at the HOF induction. There was Patti opening for U2 at MSG (which I missed because I was broke). But there is a straight line between one and the other. There was never any doubt.

And let’s take the other angle under consideration, which was PATTI SMITH AND BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN ON THE SAME STAGE, which is something I fantasized about ever since seeing the photos of the two of them onstage together in Rock Scene back in the day. Things I would have killed or died to be at.

This is the stuff that defines you. These are the things that fill in the colors and the shading, layer upon layer.

She was thrilled to be there. They were thrilled to have her there. I know she only got into the HOF because Michael Stipe put his foot down (or at least that is how I envision it). She should have been there all along.

The song finishes, Roy playing it out – oh yeah Roy Bittan was up there too!! – and then everyone is hugging Patti. But no one hugged her more than Larry Mullen Jr., who gave her a big kiss as well, and whose face looked like a little boy who just unwrapped a bright red tricycle on Christmas morning.

Bruce on “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” was beautiful. That song has soul. He still had his soul voice from the day before. The call and response between the two of them was nothing other than epic.

We will not discuss the Black Eyed Peas. I don’t care how much you like them or how fun they are or what Important Musical Person likes them or whatever inane argument you’re going to offer. They are not Hall of Fame material and it was a waste of a song. It was trivial. It was not relevant. The whole point of these shows were, “This is who we are and what we do” and then here are our influences and here are our tributes to other legends. That stupid song was none of those things. (Neither, just for argument’s sake, was “Vertigo,” but we’ll get to that.) In this regard, Metallica did a far better job than U2 did, but we’ll also get to that later as well.

I watch Fergie climb on the back of the drum riser and all I can think is, “Get away from him.” But then Edge hits a note and the look on my face registers with my companion and then we know that the rumors are all true, because there is no way Mick Jagger is not going to walk out on that stage if U2 are covering “Gimme Shelter,” and then before we have a chance to think about it too much, there is Michael Phillip himself, walking out onstage.

I was very glad to have the railing in front of me to lean on at that moment. It was all a little much.

I’ll start at the beginning: It went a little bit like this: On Thursday morning, while counting the hours until we got online for the first show, I started emailing links from eBay to the SO. Then he sent me a link to a pair of tickets on the floor, second section back, but the third row of the second section. We set a price, we bid, we won. (Not naming the price, but we did not pay face.)

I don’t want to say we didn’t belong sitting where we did but boy was it odd. Money does not indicate fandom; in fact, quite the opposite. People there for status, people there for no visible reason we could see (because they sat down and looked bored and annoyed the whole night). I ran into Nils Lofgren on my way to the ladies’ and stupidly blurted, “Hi Nils!” I say stupidly because it came out purely because I have seen the man so often lately that it just seemed like the most natural thing in the world to say hi.

We were in the 13th row, and then decided to self-upgrade up to the front row of the section right before U2, placing us in the 11th row. Before you think us greedy, if we didn’t upgrade, someone else would have taken those spots. And once we got there, we realized that the people who had been sitting there probably weren’t coming back, given the special guests.

I will start at the beginning, briefly. Tom Hanks once again gave an introduction which was boring, unnecessary and not very rock and roll; Jerry Lee Lewis was trotted back out, and while he seemed like he had a little more energy, him kicking the piano stool over at the end wasn’t cool, it was just a little sad.

I was ready to dance my butt off to Aretha Franklin. I do not want to tell you that she phoned it in, but she did. Her voice sounded fine, and she had 8 backup singers and a horn section and two keyboard players and a conductor (among others, all of whom she felt she had to introduce *individually* later in the set). Annie Lennox came out and was in fine spirits, as did Lenny Kravitz (who I could care less about). This was like John Legend coming out for Stevie Wonder. They are not Hall of Fame caliber artists and bringing them out for things like this does not make them so. (And I don’t mean to diss Annie Lennox, who I quite like, just the general principle.)

Jeff Beck was next, and while I realize he was filling in for Eric Clapton, and that he is a fine musician, he was boring. Everyone got up and walked around. The entire Garden was constantly in motion. Yes, he brought out Buddy Guy; yes, he brought out Billy Gibbons; yes, Sting came out to try to spice things up. I just question whether this was the best they could do given the short notice. (Which of course begs the question about where certain obvious candidates were, and brings up the contentious relationship many, many artists and their managers have with Jann Wenner and the Hall of Fame, and you wonder what could have been instead of what was.)

Metallica finally woke everyone up. The intro video set the playing field, as the roar came down from the upper level the first time their picture flashed on the screen. 40 year old men with bad mohawks were sneaking their way into empty seats in our section to make out with their girlfriends and give the devil horns at the stage and sing along at the top of their lungs. The hipster next to my SO felt the need to explain Metallica to him, because he was nicely dressed and not wearing an ironic tshirt; we got along much better with the 50-something couple wearing leather jackets sitting behind us who were so clearly fans and loving every second of it.

When we tried to rank the performances from both nights, there was a lot of debate about who was #2, Metallica or U2. And it’s definitely debatable. Metallica were rehearsed. They were excited to be there. James Hetfield was visibly nervous when he spoke. They played the songs that defined them: “One,” “Enter Sandman,” “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. The special guests may not have been chosen by them, but they embraced them wholeheartedly and god did it all make sense. Doing “Sweet Jane” and “White Light/White Heat” with Lou Reed, “You Really Got Me” and “All Day And All Of The Night” with Ray Davies. But the Garden went absolutely apeshit from top to bottom when Ozzy Osbourne walked out onstage for “Iron Man”. It was absolute pandemonium. It was loud. It was raucous. It was PERFECT. “Paranoid” to finish was gorgeous, and I didn’t know how on earth Ray Davies was going to follow that. (His set succeeded because it was short and to the point.)

I will not mention the gratuitous video played during “Enter Sandman,” to which our response was to offer the state bird of New York.

So now we’re back to where we started. Do not get me wrong – U2 were U2. It is ridiculous that there were so many equipment problems (the crowd sang the first two lines of “Vertigo” until Bono’s mic got turned on). But if you look at the strongest sets from both nights, it was where the musicians played the songs that defined them, played covers of influences, brought on their influences, paid tribute to their roots. Yes, U2 did that with bringing on Patti and Bruce for “Because The Night”. But given that the intro filmed showed the entire CBGB’s roster, backed with that Larry Mullen Jr. speech, a Ramones cover wouldn’t have been out of place. The selection of songs seemed unfortunate. It wasn’t “We’re U2, and this is what we do.” Where was “Streets”? Where was “Bad”? “Magnificent” works great in a crowd of U2 fans who know every word. Last night was not a crowd of U2 fans.

I do not mean to seem nitpicky or ungrateful. It just seemed like a lost opportunity for a band capable of working a room such as MSG like it was a tiny theater. It seemed easy. It seemed almost unworthy of them. If I have high expectations it is because the band themselves set them.

And even with that, it was still one of my all-time best rock and roll moments, ever, and a night I will never, ever, ever forget. It accomplished what it set out to do, which was link our rock and roll past and our rock and roll present, to give the music context and deeper meaning. Politics aside, that is the whole point of the Hall of Fame, and with these two shows, for the most part, they succeeded.

If you liked Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Night 2 you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

I went to this show because the lineup was kind of randomly and delightfully eclectic and the chance to see the members of U2 in an extra-curricular activity is not something I generally get to see, and the whole Gavin-Bono-Guggi trinity is fascinating. I really believed that all four members of the band weren’t going to appear onstage as U2 tonight. They were listed individually by name in the event listing.

I am also an idiot who was woefully unprepared for the wonder that awaited me.

I didn’t take notes because I’m kind of reviewed-out right now, but a couple of observations:

–It is still fascinating to me to see a big, popular band in a small room, because that’s when you can really see why they are big and popular and successful. No claw, no lights, no video, and yet U2 still utterly commanded the stage when they were on it.

–My favorite thing to watch? Larry Mullen Jr. playing drums. On any song. Haven’t had that clear or proximate of a view of him since the War tour.

–Courtney Love: needs to go far, far away. She didn’t sing, she read a long rambling love letter to the Virgin Prunes that also made sure to cover how much she loved Bono (so much so that at one point I asked my companion who she was introducing). Luckily she didn’t get in the way too much.

–Best out of nowhere cameo: Fred Armisen coming on as Prince.

–Number of times ‘fuck’ was uttered on the Carnegie Hall stage: 3

–Number of times ‘motherfucker’ was uttered: 1

–Number of T.Rex references: half a dozen (“Children of the Revolution” to open was phenomenal, except that the sound was a trainwreck)

–Number of times ushers yelled at us that no electronic devices and no cameras were allowed: at least half a dozen before the show started.

–Number of iphone screens I could glowing see from my seat: too many to count

–Number of people busted trying to blatantly videotape U2′s first onstage outing: 1, from the front row of the dress circle (these people later left during “Sweet Jane”. More below.)

–Improbable thing I will write and tell my mother about: Joel Grey performing the opening number to Cabaret, which of course I know by heart because I grew up on show tunes

–I always wanted to see the Virgin Prunes. But it was one of those things you didn’t want to ever say because you would always be accused not actually liking the Virgin Prunes but wanting to see them because of the U2 connection, and no amount of “No, seriously, I like the concept of dadaist punk rock and I think it would be cool” would convince anyone.

–Larry and Bono almost falling out of the door to backstage watching the Virgin Prunes’ performance was beautiful.

–Did you know that ‘Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves’ was incredibly popular in Israel? Like out of proportion popular. I probably knew every person who owned it, but it was hella popular.

–I really did not expect the members of U2 to play together, let alone multiple times.

–I really did not expect Lou Reed to show up.

–I really, really didn’t expect Lou Reed to play “Sweet Jane” with Gavin. No seriously. “Sweet Jane”?

–It was worth the $90 to see Lou and Bono hug. (I missed the Lou/U2 love fest during Zoo TV because I was living overseas and only got to see it on video.)

–Of course the needle went off the chart when the Edge walked out and picked up a guitar, so now the Edge was playing on “Sweet Jane” WITH Lou Reed.

–And then I almost fell out of the balcony when the Edge hit a riff I could identify in my sleep. On the recording, you can hear me gasp, and then for a second I thought it was something else, because my companion did not react as strongly as I did so i thought I got it wrong, but no, it was “Jean Genie”. Let me just say that again: IT WAS ‘JEAN GENIE’. With Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson and John Zorn and Gavin Friday and Edge on guitar and Larry Mullen Jr. on drums and even Adam came back out for this one and Courtney Love is there and all I can think is, OH GOD DON’T RUIN THIS PLEASE and Gavin does Bowie proud and my companion leans into my ear and says GIVE BONO THE MICROPHONE, which of course happens, and at this point we are standing up and people are dancing and clapping and you would not believe how many people LEFT during “Sweet Jane” – and let me explain that this wasn’t a straight version of “Sweet Jane” or even a bombastic ‘Rock and Roll Animal’ era “Sweet Jane” (complete with 20 minute intro), it was more a Metal Machine Music-type “Sweet Jane” that I’m actually not sure was meant to be “Sweet Jane” except that at one point Gavin came onstage and started singing the lyrics, and the fantastic band picked it up and shaped it into something that sounded more like the “Sweet Jane” that most of us know. But seriously, people who claimed they were there to see U2 and yelled every time Bono was onstage and said things like “I guess they’re not going to play ‘One’” when they took Larry’s drum kit apart after that awesome, crisp version of “King of Trash,” these people LEFT, which of course I am perversely pleased about, that Lou Reed can still clear a room at his age, and that the Virgin Prunes can make people visibly uncomfortable during their performance, and that this all happened at Carnegie Hall because a bunch of friends made a promise to each other 35 years ago.

p.s. I didn’t give a shit about Lady Gaga being there, which is why it is not anywhere on this list.

LINKS TO IPHONE RECORDINGS, DON’T COMPLAIN:

• King of Trash
• The Last Song I’ll Ever Sing (Bono solo)
• Jean Genie

Sorry, Sweet Jane was too much of a trainwreck and didn’t come out.

If you liked happy birthday, gavin friday you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/

I don’t do stadiums.

I really don’t. If I am in the blimp nest for a rock and roll show, there has to be some kind of exceptional reason – end of band, end of tour, end of something. I sat out Born In The USA when it got to the stadiums. I have skipped other Bruce shows there. I made an exception for the Stones once, and never again.

Of course in the same breath I can tell you that seeing U2 on the Zooropa tour at Wembley Stadium changed my life. I do not exaggerate here. This is not a turn of phrase. It caused me to reflect on my life as it currently stood and make major revisions to it. It wasn’t just a rock and roll moment of the ages (even though I just missed the night they called Salman Rushdie), it was a cosmic wake-up call that absolutelyi changed the course of my life at that point in time. And it was precisely the sheer biggness of it, the colossal level of the set and the show and the presentation, the over-the-top-ness of it that caused it to have the impact that it did.

So I trust U2 to do this stuff right. I trust that they will make it worth my while and that everything about the experience will make sense.

The 360 set is absolutely mindblowing. The physical set is insane. The revolving bridges (one of which kept positioning itself OVER OUR HEADS), the morphing video screen, the lights and the bombast and the immense quantities of fake smoke (much of which was generated right behind our heads). In the inner loop, the stage is disorienting – if you stand close you can only see what’s in front of you and you can’t see the video screen. If you stand further back, you can see more, but you still can’t see what’s going on on the other side of the stage. We got lots of Lord Adam Clayton action (to quote my dear friend, the fabulous scatterolight), but couldn’t see Edge for shit, much less see him play keyboards. You’re having to constantly scan your entire surroundings to find out where the singer is, where the bass player is, where the guitar player is. The only person who doesn’t go walking around is the drummer, and the one time Larry came out (we were joking earlier that we’d love to be a fly on the wall in the production meeting where this his one ‘walk on the catwalk’ appearance each tour is negotiated) he went around so quickly and got back so quickly it was like he wasn’t even there. My response after the show was that they used the loop too much, but then you remember that most of the audience isn’t where you are and the band has to get on the loop – but when they’re out there, they can’t hear each other, they can’t see each other, and the show has the best chance to go off the rails.

Seeing and hearing each other: the palpable, very real, very hysterical affection between the individual band members is so very very obvious. There was much eye-rolling and laughing and what were clearly inside jokes going on. For a bunch of rich guys who live in the South of France, they still very clearly like each other. I don’t know if this stuff is obvious in the last row of the upper deck or if that many people think or care about this. But I do. I am struck by the fact that this is the youngest band nominated to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame whose members are all still very much alive. This matters. It all matters.

Not paying close attention to setlists is the way to make sure the show is fresh for you. It astonishes me that I know every word to every song (okay, except for “Your Blue Room,” and only the crazies [used affectionately] know the Passengers album by heart). We had positioned ourselves towards the back of the loop, near the rail – the rail’s edge occupied by the people who had waited in line all day. These were good people. From our pre-show discussions, I can tell you that they were rock and roll people, not just U2 people. These people were there to sing along and lose their shit and throw themselves into the moment. We sang. We pogoed. We raised our arms in the air unironically. A U2 concert is not the place to get all selfconscious and detached. You are ceding control to the Bono, you are going with him and even though there are times you are thinking “what a prat” the deal is that if you go, he will absolutely make it worth your while.

(If this is starting to sound familiar, well, then, it starts to sound familiar. There are reasons I love what I love.)

This is why I found myself unashamedly crying like a little baby when the intro to “Streets” started. I mean, how many fucking times have I heard “When The Streets Have No Name”? There was a period of my life when Joshua Tree was on unilateral ban because it was just played to death all around me, it was on the radio everywhere you turned that summer, the summer when that band stopped being mine and became everyone else’s all of a sudden. But “Where The Streets Have No Name” is that song where – as Bono put it – God can walk through the room. If you listen to it when you are down and out it will pick you up, even if it’s just for the duration of the song. It is the song I would want playing on my ipod if I was running the New York City Marathon at the moment I was crossing the 59th Street bridge. I am giving away all my secrets here. “Streets” can still do that. “Streets” makes you feel like you are whole, like you are home, it is my “Theme from Rocky,” it makes me feel like I can do anything.

And this is why I stand and cry in public in the middle of Giants Stadium.

I do not find this album disappointing. Interestingly, I found the previous two albums disappointing at the time – All That You Can’t Leave Behind especially so – but revisiting them to grab a song or two for the ipod generally means I take the whole albums and plop them on there. This album revealed itself to me sooner, and then kept revealing. The fact that there were two versions of “No Line On The Horizon” indicated that this album was a monster with many heads, and for the band to take a song from the album they are currently still promoting and turn it on its head into a disco smash that wouldn’t have been out of place on Pop – I mean, you know, they don’t have to do that. This band could go out on a standard stage and play the same set every night exactly the way it is on the album and they’d still sell out 80k tickets at Giants Stadium. They don’t do that because they actually seem to give a damn about being interesting and different and pushing the envelope (as much as a ginormous intergalactic rock band can push the envelope), and the fact that they give a damn is probably the other reason I will actively embrace something this large and this popular.

(On the other hand, I am old. I really do not have the strength to play indier-than-thou any more. I like U2. You know? I did my time in the indie rock trenches. Go ahead and judge me, I bet I’m having more fun than you are.)

Sorry. I was trying to talk about what they are doing to “I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” on this tour. When it started, I had no idea what it was – it’s that selective ‘I’m reading about the tour but I’m not consuming every setlist because I don’t have patience or time and I can’t go to more than one show so if I just kind of vaguely pay attention I’ll be excited but not jaded” thing that I have kind of fallen into. So I didn’t know they remixed it. I didn’t know that they blew the power ballad bombast out of the song and turned in into something that you could jump around and wave glowsticks to (and plenty of people did). Maybe they do it because it doesn’t matter what they do, the shows are sold out and everybody is going – there were people at the Giants shows that I could not hold a serious conversation about rock and roll with, but yet consider themselves enormous U2 fans (even though they probably couldn’t name more than Bono and maybe Edge). But it’s more work to do it than it is not to do it, so I am still going to give them brownie points.

No one does a big stadium song like U2 does, and they have a dozen or so. “Beautiful Day” isn’t tired, “Elevation” had us all jumping up and down like idiots (even the upper deck at Giants was jumping up and down), even “Sunday Bloody Sunday” had people getting way too excited. They are fun, they are interesting points to stop and see how people are reacting, they are connective tissue. The heart is in the other stuff.

We got a text message as we were getting off the train:

did u hear? Bruce is going to be there yo. Soundchecked.

you wouldn’t fuck with us

She’s the one via u2log tweet

While I walked into the stadium feeling like God’s chosen child after that exchange, while I am sure he was there that night (my quote earlier in the day, “If I was an attention whore, where would I want to spend my 60th birthday?”) we all know of course He didn’t go onstage, but we did get the most brilliant live mashup EVER, “She’s The One” into “Desire” back into “She’s The One”. Or rather, “He’s The One”. Like, holy FUCK. Like, serious happy 60th birthday. Like, thank you Bono & Co. for a moment that felt like it was addressed to me and my other half specifically. (We had the phone open to our editor at Backstreets, who said later all he could hear was static and then very loud and out of tune people singing the choruses. We had arms up, the choreography and all, representing, just like we will later this week.) And when it was all said and done, it was actually okay Bruce didn’t come out onstage after all. Yeah, my head would have exploded and it would have been one thing off the bucket list, but the show was enough as it was. It was their night, not his. (He’ll get his this week.)

And finally, finally. The thing I knew they were doing but hadn’t quite internalized that they were doing it every, every fucking night, a song I’d never seen them do, but looms large in my legend as probably my favorite song from my favorite album:

Oh sugar, don’t you cry
Oh child, wipe the tears from your eyes
You know I need you to be strong
And the day is as dark as the night is long
Feel like trash, you make me feel clean
I’m in the black, can’t see or be seen
Baby baby baby light my way

This is the moment where the rest of the audience, aside from my companions, dissolved around me, the annoying bankers with their blackberries and the earnest idiot way too focused on his camera position and the non-fan girlfriend looking like she was going to burst into tears if one more person bumped into her and the guy from Spain who jumped up and down all night singing into his cellphone – they all disappeared, they all dissolved, it was me and the band and the song and the music, and the 360 thing meant it was coming at you from all angles (or at least it felt like it, before you write in with a technical description of how this isn’t possible), and it was finally hearing my song, this song, this chameleon that takes on different meanings and different emotional resonance and morphs into whatever I needed it to be at any particular time. “Ultraviolet,” live and in person. The whole neon microphone and neon light up jacket was lost on me because once I realized it was “Ultraviolet” not one other thing mattered, AT ALL. It was almost a distraction.

It didn’t even matter that the next song was “With Or WIthout You,” and the people who were filing their nails during “Ultraviole”t acted like THE BEST SONG IN THE WORLD was suddenly being played. I will quote my BFF Sharon, whose all time quote is “How can a band that can write a song like ‘Party Girl’ write crap like ‘With Or Without You’” (and Sharon, I did quote you completely and fully and out loud, in Hebrew, Wednesday night, so you were there too), and then “Moment of Surrender” is there so you know it was the end of the show, because my brain and my ears and my heart were still back with “Ultraviolet.”

And then it was done, and all I could think was, why are we only seeing one, and how can we see another, and would it be as good the next time, and even waiting in those horrible lines for that goddamn train, all we would say was, “Stop – remember, ‘Ultraviolet’” and everything would be okay again. And I look at tour itineraries and try to play with frequent flier miles and vow to do it differently when they come back next year, and try to carry some of those fleeting moments of joy and freedom and guitar notes hanging in the air with me on the inside.
–
photoset from the show

If you liked light my way [U2 at Giants Stadium] you may be interested in my novel, "B-sides and Broken Hearts": http://www.bsidesandbrokenhearts.com/