In the aftermath of the death of Michael Jackson (self proclaimed King of Pop), certain quarters have drawn a parallel between his demise and that of the King (proclaimed by everyone except Chuck D)... Elvis. The final days of both men found them surrounded by a bevvy of low-rent lackeys whose sole priority it seems, was to maintain their place on the payroll by catering to their employer’s every needs. I well remember footage of Presley surrounded by his ‘good old boy’ cronies, all of them deferential, all laughing at every quip, comment or supposedly witty aperçu from the man in the studded white jumpsuit. Jackson’s entourage was yet more invidious. The doctor who allegedly pumped him with anaesthetic to get him to sleep (and how!) had been previously bankrupted while working in Vegas. Who wouldn’t take a job with the most famous man in the world to pay off your debts, even if it did mean bending the rules? The choice was his. Take it or leave it. If you don’t like it, go back to your lawsuits and debtors. No wonder Conrad Murray, the doctor in question, opted for the gig at Neverland.
I was reminded of the corrupting effect of power while standing on a raised platform last night, filming the second of U2’s two night’s 360˚ show at London’s Wembley Stadium. How I ended up there is a story in itself. I had gone to meet an old friend who is directing the filming of the show. He had graciously given me an extensive tour of the stage and the production area, and five minutes before the gig was about to begin, led me to a viewing area where he felt I would best enjoy the performance. On arrival at the designated spot, we discovered I lacked the particular wristband required, and entry was politely barred. Attempts to to locate the relevant wristband proved fruitless, but my friend, ever the host, had a better idea, and led me to another platform where he said I could stand behind the cameramen shooting wide angle footage of the show. This cameramen was however, nowhere to be seen, and despite frantic efforts by my-friend-the-director, it transpired no one knew of the person’s whereabouts. Now, only minutes from showtime, my friend turned to me and said. “You know how to operate one of these things don’t you?” My eyes widened. I’m a director not a camera operator, but I know how to compose a shot, and I know the kind of footage a director would want from wide-angle coverage of a rock concert. So I replied, “Sure,” not knowing how to change tapes, batteries, or even how to turn the damn thing on or off. That’s how I found myself filming U2. My greatest fear was that I would see my hastily-composed efforts, as I tried to familiarise myself with the camera’s dynamics, beamed across Wembley for everyone to see. Luckily for me, and for the audience, the footage I was shooting was for the archive, possibly to be released at a later date. Everything, as ever, could be fixed in the edit. Nevertheless, as I pressed my one good eye to the viewfinder, something odd struck me.
During the preceding hours while I had loitered backstage, enjoying the hospitality of the band, eating and drinking their food, being shown - up close and underneath - their extraordinary stage-set, marvelling at the calm efficiency of the production team, I had found myself, almost unwillingly, certainly unknowingly, being drawn into - if only for a brief moment - their own special world. Hence, finding myself perched with an extraordinary view of the performance, and being tasked to capture it as best as I could, it felt only honourable that I should try and deliver the best I could under the somewhat surprising circumstances. I say this because of what I am about to write.
My position of de facto crew member immediately compromised my ability to be wholly objective about what I was about to witness. Usually when I go to any event, I am unencumbered by any specific relationship to the proceedings I am enjoying (or not as the case may be). The worst that can happen is that I know people involved. If the performance stinks, I just blather something meaningless at the time, and wait for a few days to pass before letting slip my true thoughts, and then only if my friends swear on their mothers lives they really want to hear them. Luckily after last night’s gig, I didn’t find myself in any such compromising position. Besides - from what I could tell - I enjoyed the performance. I had allowed myself the occasional moment to stand back and appreciate ‘the whole’, but for the most part I was checking framing, and making sure to respond as best as I could from sound cues to songs, many of which I had never heard before, and if truth be known, some I will probably never want to hear again. Those I did know, for the most part, were delivered with aplomb. Stand out tracks were ‘Beautiful Day,’ ‘With or Without You’, ‘Stay’, ‘Walk On’ and surprisingly ‘Vertigo’ - a song I had always dismissed as somewhat throwaway but turned out to be explosive live. (I am still convinced the lyrics are about the Saudi bombers that flew into The Twin Towers but no one believes me...) However, some of U2’s classics which I have previously seen performed brilliantly - ‘Streets Have No Name’ and ‘One’ - felt almost tossed away as if the band are bored with playing them. Nevertheless, overall, it was a more-than-efficient show, musically speaking at least. The crowd were delirious and sung their 30-something hearts out. They forgave the band for their new album (more on that later) and drifted away into the night, light on merchandise - it seemed to me - but thoroughly satisfied by the evening’s entertainment. Yet as I joined them on my way home, I felt that the abiding memory would not be the songs, would not be the sometimes emotionally-chaotic Bono, or the ever-grumpy Larry, would not be the plea for the release of Burmese freedom-fighter Aung San Suu Kyi, or even the message of brotherly love beamed from the screens by Desmond Tutu, looking like a character from the TV show Banzai - “Racial Harmony Now? Place your bets!” - No... what the audience would be talking about over the water-cooler on the following Monday morning is the extraordinary stage set.
Designed by a man named Willie Williams, and realised by the architect Mark Fisher, the structure had been in the making for over three years. By now, many of you may have seen photographs of it in the media. But nothing can quite prepare you for the ‘real thing’ when it is in full modus operandi. I had been to other large-scale U2 concert tours before; Zoo TV in 1992, PopMart in ’97, and Vertigo in 2005. They all had memorable stage sets, but they were all operating essentially within a proscenium arch (even the Vertigo tour with it’s semicircular walkway). What this means is that one is essentially dealing with a facade. However impressive the structure facing you, a quick look behind and everything is revealed as cladding, essentially a series of screens hung from scaffolding. With the four legged claw built for the 360˚ tour placed, not directly centre of the Wembley pitch but two thirds of the way down, the audience can see everything. It hovers much like the giant spider built by the artist Louise Bourgeois and exhibited in the great turbine hall of Tate Modern when it first opened - perhaps this is where Williams found his his inspiration. It is an impressive structure when at rest. When lit up and moving, it is at times, absolutely breathtaking. To walk away from the show and not have marvelled at the spectacle would be an act of sheer bloody-mindedness, bordering on stupidity. If one saw the stage in any other context, say as a piece of contemporary urban sculpture, the response would be unanimously positive. It is quite likely going to be the most visually exciting piece of man-made machinery that I, and the five million or so other people, will see during the coming year. Whatever one’s thoughts on Bono and his band, the degree of creative ambition and licence they are happy to grant in order to present their audience with an everlasting theatrical memory is not something to dismiss.
Indeed, most of the reviews of the show have been positive. One that was not, and that caught my eye, was written by The Independent’s Simon Price, a man so unhappy with his lot that he still walks around in his late thirties dressed as a teenage Goth. Each to their own. But his beef with the show rested not on the staging, which he admitted was ‘quite cool’ (high praise indeed), but the band’s new material which peppered the set. The album, despite an extensive marketing campaign (the week of its UK release it felt as if U2 had moved into your living room) has sold relatively poorly. But this is as much due to the downturn in general CD sales as anything particularly wrong with the record (which debuted at number one in 30 countries including the UK and The United States). But reviews were mixed, and repeated listenings have not done it huge favours. The lead-off single failed to crack the top ten in the US, UK or Germany, two follow-up releases (‘Magnificent’, ‘I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight’) fared notably worse, and received wisdom was that apart from the band’s core-audience the public at large was really only interested in seeing them live. As this was the only real way to make a living out of music nowadays, it was surely no skin off the band’s nose. Despite this relatively lukewarm reaction the album definitely has its merits, most of them captured in the more melancholic and contemplative songs. The best of these and in my opinion the stand out track on the album, is the lament ‘White As Snow’. But the song illuminates the dilemma in which I feel the group now finds itself.
Bono is fifty years old next year. The band has been together for thirty-three of them. The rabble rousing of the past, the flag waving, the intentionally grotesque posturing (The Fly, Macphisto), the grand gestures, not only feel a little worn, but sit uncomfortably on the shoulders of older and wiser men. Mercifully the proselytising was reigned back on Saturday night; hell, there’s little wrong in bringing to the attention of a captive audience what it really feels to be a captive, especially if it only takes up five minutes of their time. But the pontificating of the past, the back-slapping with presidents, has left the band vulnerable to easy jibes. The eco-friendliness - or not - of schlepping 180 trucks worth of gear around the world twice, has predictably opened the band up to accusations of hypocrisy. It seems they can do no right. I mentioned this to my friend, suggesting the band come up with a range of T-Shirts. They could read ‘Blame U2’, ‘Blame Bono’... and one for Bono himself reading, ‘Blame Me’. Perhaps then people might lay off, though I doubt it.
However, more interesting that any of this, and something the media tends to forget amongst all the hoopla, is the music. Where does a band go as it moves into the third stage of its life. Where does a man go? This is something I felt Bono himself was grappling with as he stood looking out over the vast London audience.
U2 have been the earnest young punks, figuring out how to define themselves, making mistakes along the way (Adam’s haircuts being a prime example). They ended up the biggest rock band of their generation, and fair play to them, have managed to hold onto that position for twenty years. They have seen off REM, Guns & Roses, Nirvana, The Stone Roses, Oasis, and a host of others. Only Springsteen and Metallica can be seen as competitors when it comes to animating vast crowds around the world - Radiohead having willingly thrown in the towel - while still making number one albums perceived to be of artistic worth.
But U2 can’t be the U2 of old forever. There is nothing more embarrassing than watching a man pout and gurn as he shimmies from pillar to post in the quest for eternal youth. As former dinosaur-hating punks, U2 will know this. There’s an art to growing old gracefully while remaining as potent as ever; look to their former mentor BB King as a perfect example. But finding a means of expressing that evolution is a complicated task. This is made yet more complicated when all your audience wants to do is fix you in aspic and use you for a trip down memory lane. Look at The Rolling Stones.
That is not to say that it’s time for unplugging the Fender and setting up a Céilidh. There’s a way of staying angry and aggrieved, noisy and boisterous. But it can only work if one is able to express what was once a sense of tumultuous sexuality, a teenage call to arms, in a manner that still feels honest and genuine to the individual you are now. Bolting on grooviness in the hope of staying hip is always patently see-through, and undermines the true essence of who you are (the song ‘Get on Your Boots’ reeks of this).
U2 have to find a new way of expressing the anger, love and passion of old, but in a way that makes sense to the men they have become. It’s an exciting challenge. To fail would leave them in two equally arrid places. The stadium oldies band, cranking out hits, slipping in one or two new songs while the audience goes off to pee. Or worse still, evaporating into the ether like Bowie, mojo lost, the increasingly desperate efforts to redefine himself since a decade of continued brilliance, failing time and time again, leaving nothing but a sad pantomime husk.
It seems scarily apropos that the tour which precipitated the end of the Diamond Dog, is also remembered for its vast spider-like structure whose grandiosity eventually suffocated all who stood beneath. Let’s hope that the Irish can learn from their Heroes, while keeping at bay the battalions of Yes Men who live only to expedite your demise.
© Simon Fellowes 17/8/2009