Spaceships, LED Screens, And Political Activism: U2 Plays Baltimore

The night of June 22nd, the first full day of summer, was almost unbearably hot and humid in Baltimore. But that didn’t stop nearly 80,000 fans from packing into M&T Bank Stadium to see U2 on the latest stop in their 360° Tour.

Although the stadium doors didn’t open until 5 PM, eager fans began filling the parking lot early in the afternoon. The show began at 7 PM with  a lively hour-long set by Florence and the Machine, which ended on a high note with their hit single (and fan favorite) “Dog Days Are Over.” Florence, like the fans, was undaunted by the oppressive heat; she bounded around the stage barefoot for the full hour, to the delight of the crowd. The band was clearly better known among U2’s younger fans, but the end of the set brought enthusiastic cheers from the whole audience.

The hour between the end of the opening set and the time when U2 took the stage left the audience plenty of time to contemplate the stage itself, which, as one Baltimore Sun reviewer put it, “looked ripped from ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind.'” Indeed, the massive, four-legged outer structure, which changed color throughout the performance, looked like a bizarre spacecraft, ringed with speakers and complete with a 150 foot-tall, disco ball-topped central antenna. The outer canopy supported a seven-story-tall cylindrical LED screen, which, true to the name of the tour, displayed magnified views of the concert 360° around. The screen alone weighs 74 tons and is made up of over a million parts.

The stage underneath the canopy was equally elaborate. It consisted of a central oval underneath the screen, surrounded by a circular ring around the edge of the canopy, with space in between for a sizable (and lucky) portion of the crowd. The band members traveled back and forth between the central stage and the outer ring via two moving bridges, which swung around in all directions over the audience in the center.

For the hour between the end of Florence and the Machine’s set and the beginning of U2’s, the giant screen displayed statistics about the world, Maryland, and the tour, from the number of days remaining before the end of oil to the number of crew members on tour with the band. At 8:56 PM, the screen and the football stadium floodlights suddenly went dark, and the crowd went wild. True to the spaceship theme, the band members emerged onto the stage one by one to David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. came first, followed by bassist Adam Clayton, The Edge, and finally lead singer Bono, who flashed a peace sign to the audience as he bounded up the stage steps.

The band launched immediately into “Even Better Than The Real Thing,” from the 1991 album Achtung Baby. They followed with two more Achtung Baby songs, “The Fly” and “Mysterious Ways,” during which Bono and The Edge ventured out to the outer stage ring for the first time. The band continued the streak of  early hits with “Until The End Of The World” and “I Will Follow,” venturing into newer territory with “Get On Your Boots,” from their 2009 album No Line On The Horizon.

To the audience’s great delight, the band continued with a fantastic rendition of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” from 1987’s The Joshua Tree. The crowd, conducted by Bono, sang the second verse, and then the band took it away. It was a stunning vocal performance by Bono, who, at the end of the song, added a few slow, wistful bars from another song, familiar to some in the audience: “Mister, I ain’t a boy / No, I’m a man / And I believe in a promised land / And I believe in a promised land.” At the end, he added, “Music lost one of its great souls this week. That goes out to Clarence Clemons.”

The band continued with a slow, almost acoustic version of “Stay (Faraway, So Close!),” from 1993’s Zooropa. The next number, fan favorite “Beautiful Day,” which the band dedicated to Representative Gabrielle Giffords, featured a special guest performance: a video recording of Giffords’ husband, astronaut Mark E. Kelly, reciting some of the lyrics from the International Space Station. Kelly introduced the song by holding up signs, one by one, in zero gravity to spell out “It’s A Beautiful Day,” and then spoke the lines, “See the world in green and blue / See China right in front of you / See the canyons broken by cloud / See the tuna fleets clearing the sea out / See the Bedouin fires at night / See the oil fields at first light / And see the bird with a leaf in her mouth / After the flood all the colors came out.”

Of course, it wouldn’t be a U2 performance without some political activism from Bono. After “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” which was performed to images of the Arab Spring on the giant screen, Bono dedicated “Scarlet” to Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese opposition leader who was recently released from house arrest. During the song, Amnesty International volunteers carried paper lanterns around the edge of the circular stage. The band then left the stage, returning for an encore that began with another recorded video introduction, this time by South African human rights activist Desmond Tutu, for the song “One.”

After an a cappella snippet of “Amazing Grace,” Bono continued with a lovely rendition of “Where The Streets Have No Name,” a laser-lit “Ultra Violet (Light My Way),” and the classic “With Or Without You.” The most moving moment of the show, however, was the last number, “Moment of Surrender,” which Bono dedicated to E Street saxophonist Clarence Clemons. Appropriately, the band ended the song (and the show) with a few bars of “Jungleland,” the Springsteen song with the longest and most soulful Clemons solo.

The concert, which lasted approximately two and a half hours, was a great one for Baltimore, a city traditionally skipped over by big-name groups in favor of Washington, DC or Philadelphia (the last time U2 played here was 2001). With spectacular, visually stunning performances of new songs and time-tested fan favorites alike, this show was certainly one that Baltimore U2 fans will remember for a long time to come.

A full setlist for U2’s Baltimore show can be found here.

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