U2 have spent decades now trying to shore up their status as one of the biggest bands on the planet, wielding a ‘bigger is better’ approach to stage production which has found them upping the ante tour after tour, making their stadium shows a visual feast as well as an aural one.
Hark back to 1993 and the Zoo TV tour (reimagined as Zoomerang in Australia) featured a multimedia barrage on a stage set so epic and revolutionary for the time that sensory overload seemed like a real possibility. Pretty much every tour since then has found the foursome trying to better what had come before in terms of providing a memorable concert experience.
Now, having brought The Joshua Tree tour to Australia some two years after it wrapped up elsewhere on the planet, they seem to have finally found the sweet spot where ambition and technology collide. The hi-res LED cinema screen behind the band for the duration of the set is so cutting-edge it’s spellbinding, the pristine visuals – courtesy longtime band cohort Anton Corbijn – adding another dimension to the concert experience which at times seems to overshadow the music and even the band itself.
Early comers to Suncorp Stadium are eased into the action by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, the raffish former Oasis mainstay now relegated to warming up the huge crowd rather than satiating it. His expansive new outfit toys with the punters and runs through some of their own more bombastic numbers before giving the people what they want and bringing it home in a barrage of Oasis covers. Lesser-known highlights like Little By Little and Stop Crying Your Heart Out soon give way to singalong staples in Wonderwall and Don’t Look Back In Anger, which find the crowd in full voice already. Their finale – a cover of The Beatles’ All You Need Is Love – is possibly a bridge too far, but no one seems to mind, so no harm, no foul.
U2’s intro music for the tour is The Waterboys’ classic The Whole Of The Moon, and it seems almost uncannily prescient that a beautiful full moon is resplendent in the night sky above the huge outdoor stadium, slightly discoloured by the lingering smoke from the bushfires still raging in NSW and Queensland, but a perfect visual counterpoint to the unveiling action.
The four band members each enter to a hero's welcome as they one by one walk down the long catwalk to the smaller stage set up amid the ravenous throng. They open proceedings with a short but powerful set of songs from the band’s earliest forays: opener Sunday Bloody Sunday has lost none of its earnest charm, New Year's Day is still effortlessly evocative, Bad is rejigged to include snippets of Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning (and is dedicated to the firefighters) and Pride (In The Name Of Love) reminds the audience of the band’s own power and passion back in the day when they were dominating events like Live Aid amid a flurry of flag-waving and symbolism.
This opening salvo also proves the undiminished musical chemistry that remains between U2: the unabashed brilliance of The Edge’s guitar work and the unrelenting stoicism of Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr as they propel the rhythm, no doubt resigned to the fact that all eyes are on Bono as he wanders into the fray, belting out his vocals with the power and conviction of someone half his age.
Now it’s time to actually hit The Joshua Tree album – the first time that U2 have ever revisited one of the albums from their halcyon days in full, perhaps an admission of the diminishing returns offered by their most recent recordings – and it’s here that shit gets real.
We’re simultaneously returned to 1987 as the opening notes of Where The Streets Have No Name ring out, but also dragged into the future as Corbijn's work bursts into brilliant reality, the black-and-white short film playing in glorious high-definition and literally dwarfing the band before them, who look like insignificant specks against such vivid and illuminating contrast.
It’s a cavalcade of hits and memories as I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For tumbles into With Or Without You – as fine an opening trio as you could ask for on a record, really – each track with its own custom-made film blowing people’s minds from a whole different angle and perspective.
Given the nature of The Joshua Tree album itself – it was U2’s musical and spiritual stab at unveiling the ‘real America’ as opposed to the ‘mythical America’ – the footage has a distinctly American slant, and some of the ‘Stars and Stripes’ imagery that may prove button-pushing in the Northern Hemisphere falls a bit flat here (same as when they shoehorn snippets of The Star-Spangled Banner into Bullet The Blue Sky – we’re just not the target audience to achieve its full impact but it’s still evocative on some level).
The limitations of playing an album in full also become apparent as the second half begins to drag somewhat – there’s probably a reason that songs like Red Hill Mining Town and Mothers Of The Disappeared have rarely graced setlists over the years – but the band’s commitment and intensity never wavers. It must be strange for them returning to this relative nostalgia after a year of touring their most recent album Songs Of Experience but, like the seasoned campaigners they are, they take it in their stride and keep on surging forward.
Again you can’t overstate the power of the visuals appearing on the huge screen, which threaten to steal the show at points – even Bono suddenly donning the era-appropriate black jacket and pilgrim hat during Exit seems almost insignificant given the action unfurling behind him – but it’s all just part of the marvellous pageantry underpinning this production as a whole.
The screen grows dim at the album’s conclusion and the band traipse back out onto the smaller Joshua Tree-shaped stage amidst the crowd and bash out a tuneful rendition of Angel Of Harlem – keeping things in chronological order, coming as it does from 1988’s Rattle And Hum – and that’s the end of the set proper, done and dusted.
There are tens of thousands of ravenous fans here so an encore of hits is a given – they do have another 30-odd years of tunes to pick from, after all – and this section of the show is probably more of an acquired taste, depending on how your level of infatuation with U2 has ebbed and waned over the years. Songs like Elevation and Vertigo (with its little included tip of the hat to INXS’ Devil Inside) seem to connect with many but feel a little flat overall, while the visual recognition of powerful women played on the screen during Ultra Violet (Light My Way) is mesmerising and moving, but the song itself – from 1991’s Achtung Baby – seems flat and almost turgid in comparison to what’s come before.
But that’s all petty gripes at the end of the day as the steady stream of bangers continues – to someone somewhere Beautiful Day or Even Better Than The Real Thing is possibly the highlight of their evening – and the huge crowd stays in the palms of their hand for the duration, a huge salvo of gently waving mobile phone glows lighting up the stadium as they finish with the galvanising message of One.
So should lapsed U2 fans contemplate returning to the fold for The Joshua Tree experience? Definitely. The band is still a strong musical proposition, Bono is as socially aware and happily opinionated as ever, and the early songs retain their communal appeal and grace. But ultimately it’s all about the production.
At the start of the evening Bono proposes making a night that was memorable and which we’ll all look back on long down the track. On that promise, U2 once again and without a doubt deliver, providing a sensory experience against which all future stage productions will be measured, and against which most will fall resoundingly flat. No matter what you think about this band and the musical contribution they’ve made over the years, U2 know how to put on a show, and in that regard this is by far their finest hour.
27.11.19
Optus Stadium, Burswood
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