U2 stop London traffic with a gig on Broadcasting House
U2 played Get On Your Boots, Magnificent, Vertigo (with snippets of Substitute and She Loves You) and Beautiful Day on top of BBC’s Broadcasting House in London’s Langham Place tonight while about 5,000 fans watched from below. Police closed Portland Place in Westminster to divert traffic away from the area.
The short set was broadcast live on BBC digital TV (‘red button’)
U2 at Croke Park: ‘What’s Irish for 14, Larry?’
Bono is serious. For their second performance of ‘Vertigo’ of the night, he walks over to the drum kit to ask Larry Mullen how to say 14 ‘as Gaeilge’.
Misunderstanding, Larry shouts: ‘A h-aon’! (‘one’) Bono asks again and this time the drummer gets it right: ‘Ceathar déag’. Three times he tells Bono how to say it.
‘A h-aon, a dhà, a trì, a ceatharmmmmmfrgh!’
Close enough. With an apology to the venue’s local neighbours because the show ran 10 minutes past the 11pm curfew, the band tear up the song something wicked. (They might as well skip the first time they play it at the start of the show.) The place is alight, and all around us kids’ faces are in ecstasy. Croke Park sings along as they have done all night.
The European leg of the Vertigo Tour has officially got lift off. While the first two shows in Brussels and Gelsenkirchen left us a little indifferent and having missed the reportedly better gigs in the U.K., Croke Park I has it all. Drive, energy, emotion and fun – this time the boys were truly back in town.
There were, as expected, few real surprises in the setlist (Wild Horses, With or Without You, I Will Follow), but the passion, the Irish banter (Bono mentioned the Irish poet John Keats when he noticed a banner in the audience that said ‘see you in Rome’) and various ‘new’ snippets like Thin Lizzy’s ‘Jailbreak’ and an improvisational ‘Northside in the Rain’ well made up for that. Talking about the rain… Bono sang some lines of it, twice during the show.
‘Oh, you look so beautiful tonight,’ Bono told the Croke Park audience. Absolutely gorgeous, yes.
Permanent Hiatus
Archives
U2 News Links
- Bono Honors Queen Elizabeth May 24, 2012Bono was in London Wednesday for a Diamond Jubilee celebration of the arts for Queen Elizabeth, who's in her 60th year on the throne. As the Belfast Telegraph reports, Bono praised the Queen about her visit to Ireland last year: "I wanted to take this opportunity to acknowledge the extraordinary magic that you made on your trip to Ireland last year […]
- U2 Fan Survey 2012: Third Set of Results Available May 23, 2012The third set of results from the 2012 U2 Fan Survey is now available, and it takes us through your votes on U2's albums and songs. As a reminder, the survey was open from April 5th through April 30th. We received completed responses from 3,530 fans in 79 countries this year, both of which are down from 2010. We think that's likely due to the band […]
- A Look at My U2 Framed Album Cover Wall (PHOTOS) May 22, 2012How would you like to have a wall in your house covered with perfectly framed U2 album cover art? You could just have your favorite U2 albums on the wall or, like me, you could go all the way and put every U2 album on display in order — like this: That’s one of the [...]This is a post from the @U2 blog.A Look at My U2 Framed Album Cover Wall (PHOTOS) […]
- The Resource Miracle May 22, 2012[Note: This essay appeared in the May 28, 2012, edition of TIME magazine.] It's become the go-to cliché of modern economics. Natural resources are a "curse." When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly […]
- Bono Pays One More Tribute to Steve Jobs May 22, 2012Bono made an appearance via video tonight at the Webby Awards, contributing to a tribute to Steve Jobs. A host of tech legends and celebrities each paid tribute to Jobs in five words or less, a Webby Awards tradition. It looks like Bono’s contribution was recorded within the past week, but that’s just a guess. [...]This is a post from the @U2 blog.Bono Pays […]