Afterwards on Friday night I described it to a good few people as almost bordering on a religious experience it was that powerful...
To those that say (and I accept there are a few) that U2 have lost their edge (excuse the pun!) I have to say that I spent Friday night in the presence of probably the best rock and roll band in the world in the best performance I have ever seen them in, bar none. And I have been following their live performances since their first outing in Croker this same weekend 20 years ago.
To say that songs like Elevation took on an almost frenzied element is not an understatement. Imagine if you will four seasoned showmen teasing a crowd of 83,000 all poised to sing along when you have two teasing verses of false starts building up to that Ooowooo Oohoooo owooo o oh. Hands punch the air, an entire field full of people bounces up and down to the beat.
Bono, a show man truly now attained the stature of Sinatra, Mercury and Elvis has an innate sense of how to work the crowd - Something tuned over 30 years since those early days in the Dandelion Market. He uses the two ramps brilliantly descending into the very heart of the crowd. He works the home crowd to fever pitch saying how special this homecoming to a changed Croker and a changed Ireland is and never mind the rain.
A great blend of oldies and newbies right from Boy up to How to Dismantle... are hammered out. Vertigo proves it has what it takes to become a new stadium anthem for them, joining the ranks of 40, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bad and One.
There is something truly beautiful and very moving about being in the midst of a crowd of eighty thousand other people as we all sing along to One.
Bono dedicates a song to his late dad Bob Hewson and another to the doctors and nurses of Crumlin Children hospital who cared for Edge's daughter during her illness earlier this year. He sings happy birthday to Ang San Su Chi of Burma/Myamar, the subject of Walk On on All That You Can't Leave Behind, who celebrated her 60th birthday on Sun the 19th, still under house arrest for merely winning the last election in that country.
He puts on the symbolic headband of Guantanamo Bay and Iraqi hostages and launches into a mantra appealing to Abraham and Joseph and David and Jesus to teach us all to coexist - powerful stuff. He tosses off statistics about 3rd world poverty and debt and disease, tugging at our heartstrings with facts like 3,000 people per day around the world die from malaria. He goes on a bit but you can't help but be impacted and think this is much more than mere rock and roll as a fighter jet flies across the back of the stage during Bullet the Blue Sky.
And all the time Edge plays a stormer. Adam and Larry look bemused, perhaps even a bit out of it at times, making up the numbers but you know it wouldn't be U2 without them either.
Towards the end the old Zoo stuff is paraded out - The subliminal verses and phrases flashed up on the amazing lighting/video stage backdrop. The cigarette lighters are replaced by mobile phones lighting up Croker as the message to text for charity is flashed up on the two video monitors - Bono tells us to go home but we don't want to leave just yet.
After two encores the names of those that texted ticker tape across the screen in five rows only to be interrupted mid stream by a third encore and a reprise of Vertigo.
We still don't want to leave but "The end" is up on the back drop so I s'pose we better go. What a night, the sound may have been a bit dubious at the beginning but somehow after a while the vibe and the performance and the atmosphere seems to have superseded even that. Everyone is truly happy, As I wait for the crowd to disperse I get talking to a Gardai. He's a U2 fan himself and has enjoyed it immensely but he's also delighted, It's been the most trouble free good-natured gig he's ever worked at.
And the verdict, in a nutshell. In all honesty I think the best live concert I've ever been privileged to attend in my life time so far. Better even than the Pope at Knock!!!
The Pix
Photos copyright Peter Jordan and John Rankin.
