Photograph: Richard Isaac/Rex/Shutterstockīut more striking still is how commanding and confident their performance seems, particularly given that it’s not without risks. And there are ruminations on long-forgotten London venues, old band associates and the late Kirsty MacColl.
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There is the usual hokey but effective between-song rabble rousing – Bono persists in addressing the audience as “rainbow people from the streets of London”, the knowing smirk of the Zoo TV era now a distant memory.
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You’re occasionally struck by the sense of old material being given a lick of contemporaneity – the lyrics of Pride are amended to reference Alan Kurdi, the three year old Syrian whose body washed up on a Turkish beach Exit, a song about the mind of a murderer, is preceded by a clip from a 50s TV series called Trackdown, featuring a shyster called Trump who claims he can save a small town by building a wall – and, disdain for nostalgia or not, a certain reflective mood prevails. It seems to be an article of faith within their ranks that they are not a heritage rock act – the kind of band who’ve come to an accommodation with their past, realised their greatest work is behind them and pragmatically opted to give the people what they want – even though they must know in their hearts that only the most die-hard fan buys tickets to see them play latterday material: you suspect that the proportion of the vast crowd in Twickenham with their fingers crossed for Get on Your Boots or The Miracle of Joey Ramone rather than New Years’ Day is pretty slender.īut if U2 see the show as an uncomfortable compromise, it isn’t apparent on stage.
But none of them have appeared as openly conflicted about the idea as U2. “It’s important for us that this doesn’t rest on any kind of spirit of nostalgia,” The Edge told a heritage rock magazine in May.Įver since Brian Wilson minted the idea a decade and a half ago, virtually every artist imaginable has opted to perform a classic album live: looking at the current gig schedules, which feature amiable Brummie also-rans the Twang playing their debut album in its entirety, it’s hard not to feel the vogue may now have reached some kind of saturation point, where the definition of “classic” is being stretched to its elastic limit. But U2 have been warily banging this particular drum since announcing that their latest tour would involve them playing in its entirety their 25m-selling 1987 album. It seemed a slightly odd way to describe a gig that centres around a complete performance of a 30-year-old album and that, from the opening Sunday Bloody Sunday (from War) to the final encore of Oasis’s Don’t Look Back In Anger, complete with support act Noel Gallagher on vocals, features only one song that isn’t well into its teens: The Little Things That Give You Away, from Songs of Experience, the forthcoming, delayed follow-up to 2014’s Songs of Innocence.