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It really has been a long project
Bono has been looking for a way
of playing in the round, 360, outdoors for years
Our idea was really
to have the audience be on the stage there with you
We learned that in the mid-80s
\Ne've been trying to figure a way to do it outdoors since.
I remember back on Zoo TV Bono saying that
"The thing about good ideas is they get better by themselves
And really this idea is such a strong statement
And everybody understood immediately why we should be doing this.
I remember very clearly the first time I saw the production,
the 360 production in Barcelona
And it was pretty amazing
It was a kind ofjaw-dropping moment
to see this thing in the stadium
lt's a little on the small side but
I can't wait to get up there and check it out from onstage
lt's very difficult to play in the round or 360 degrees outdoors
cos there's nothing to hang the stuff off
Because so much of the structure is up high, when you're at pitch-level
and it was the first thing Bono said
You look around and there's nothing there because it's all up there."
Willie called me when they'd just built the stage in Barcelona
and they had most of it up
He said, "lf you stand at your microphone and put your hand out,
"you feel you can touch the back of the stadium", which was
He said "l think it's gonna work
Hello!
I remember when I first saw it
Wow
_.it had this very odd feeling because the structure is so big
and it fills the stadium in an odd way
The stadium becomes intimate
because it's looking at this large object and everything else is smaller.
In general, the whole idea of U2 is to engage with our audience.
We've always tried to do it and, in some ways,
the reason we haven't done stadiums for such a long time
was we hadn't quite figured out how to do it
and how to really engage with the audience
and that's what's special about this show
lt's in 360
and the audience was such a big part of what we do.
Dallas, come on, give us a guitar I want a guitar.
Give me a guitar, any
It is impossible engineering
Because obviously you can play in the round easily indoors,
cos you hang everything from the roof
lt's hard to hang stuff from the sky
lt's hard to hang a PA from the sky
Yeah, be careful where you aim
Cos you just might hit
This will work
I remember Bono getting forks at the dining room table,
and like connecting them together to see if there was a way
that we could create a structure for the PA and lighting.
I kind of built how it might possibly work butjust as a sort of...
as an idiot, you know
not understanding the engineering implications
And it was our designer Willie Williams,
who came up with a kind of "Eureka moment
The real breakthrough moment of reverse logic
was realising that instead of trying to make this thing smaller,
what we should do is to make it so big
that it just becomes part of the building
This conversation with Willie
started in sketches which I would take and scan while l'm on the road,
and email to Willie and we'd talk about
Some of the most interesting ones
that show how this thing was evolving were...
they were always coming out with arched feet.
What went on at the top was a subject of a lot of conversation about
ls it decorated? ls it functional?
l'm drawing things where these feet are 60 metres apart on the ground
and the PA is big and hanging up there
Not as big as it became
by the time Joe O'Herlihy finished with it
YOU'I'6 On. YOU'I'6 OI1 - ODS, W.
Oh, Joe, can you hear me? Put up your hand...
Oh, there you are
lt's pretty cool, Joe
lt's cool because you're so close
Based on that, we're expecting the sound to be
50% better than it's ever been before
No pressure. No pressure, Joe, but l'm sure you're
There's an age-old audio gag that says
'They don't go home humming the Iighu do they?"
So, I suppose they have to depend on the sound
The quality of the sound was a kind of unexpected win
that came about again because of the concept of the design
of drawing everything into this central location
and because of that
the sound was emanating from a single point.
The entire stage is ringed with bass and full-range speaker system
to accommodate the people
that are in the immediate barricade area here.
Now, when you go further out into the area
with the rest of the 3,500 people, they are accommodated with audio
directly down from the speaker system itself overhead here.
As the sound comes down
it integrates with the sound that's coming out of here
so that there is a sensation of the sound
actually emanating from the stage area itself,
so people feel at one with the stage
rather than a sound coming from various different locations
l'm not at liberty to put a wattage on it
But it's a lot
The main structure is built in Belgium
There's a company called Stageco who are responsible
for most of the big touring constructions that you've ever seen.
lt's a huge jigsaw puzzle and everything has to fit in exactly the right place.
I mean, there's no room for margin of error
It really does look like the Eiffel Tower at the bottom part.
This thing didn't exist, it had to be built
And we had to start building it a year before the tour.
We knew that what we had proposed was stupendously difficult
by the standards of even the complicated rock shows we've done in the past.
lt's always amazing when you see
what IVlark and Willie have kind of dreamed up
because not only do you see a shape that you've looked at
for a long time in various forms
and realise that as a piece of engineering it all has to fit into a truck.
Because of the membrane
because of the tensile skin that we wanted to put on it,
it became necessary to build a physical model
Because you're trying to understand how a membrane,
when it's stretched t\/vo ways, will work
So I got the base model made and then spent a couple of weeks
fiddling with this Lycra material
until I got to a shape
which dealt with everything that I knew that we wanted to do
The material that it's made from is this black on the back,
a pleasant shade of green on the other side
lt's a very strong...woven fabric
that is then cut and welded to make this structure.
Popl\/lart, which was the last worldwide stadium extravaganza
Coming off that, we went into really indoor arena presentations
in the US and Canada
while the rest of the world
pretty much maintained its stadium presentation
which required us to create two shows, basically.
An indoor show and an outdoor show
We wanted our American audience to see that outdoor show,
we hadn't played like that since the '90s
but we also wanted the European audience
to get that 360 feeling that we had in the US.
It was much more his vision
You know, he is that kind of a performer
I think probably the rest of us
would be happy to stand on an old beer crate, to be honest
But, you know, he's the person working the stage.
You know, most performers for most of their lifetime,
are playing psychologically to your front of house,
to your sound man and your lights man
And most performers immediately theyjust grab their audience in.
When you walk out here
they're there, there's 30,000 there there's 30,000 there,
there's 30,000 there and there's 30,000 there
So, the head trip
and to get the 360 philosophy is a pretty tough thing.
There's a bit of sleight of hand involved
because by moving all the gear up
away from you and over you
you're just left with a little punk rock band there in the middle.
The idea that, for the first time ever
we'd have to think about the stage
as being a 360-degree area rather than a 180
was the right kind of throw down for us
You know, when you look at it compared to a normal stage,
you think it's a big, physical thing
But in fact, what you do is you get great energy wherever you are
because, you know, the front of stage is
there's so many more people that have access to it.
They often quite like to face each other Just to become a band.
Because they can be so far apart
there are times they need to come back together and they'll face each other.
And if that was in a regular situation
Bono would have his back to the audience
Whereas now, wherever they're facing, even if they're looking towards each other
there's still audience that's seeing them front on, which is great.
Holy cow, Batman!
The screen came about through Frederic Opsomer
who's our LED specialist, he's been around since Zoo TV
And really has been the brains
behind all of our LED adventures over the years.
The answer clearly was
something that's small and minimal when it'sjust there,
and then becomes big
Being small and minimal
keeps the transparency of the structure with the four legs as well,
and then when you expand it, it becomes a monumental piece
a set piece, in fact, that can do its own purpose
I got Chuck Hoberman involved to see
whether we can make something expandable
Chuck's the man who invented these
the expanding and contracting spheres
Frederic said to Willie
'What you do is one of these but you put LEDs all over it."
And so, bingo, suddenly the three of us knew what we were doing
and we had the sketches, we had the whole thing within a few days
Which was very exciting
At that point, it became very much a U2 idea
The easiest way of doing it would have been
if it had been a perfectly round cylinder that expanded.
But l\/lark insisted that, first of all it should be saddle-shaped.
lt's elliptical and it's saddle-shaped
so when it opens, it becomes a cone
But, of course, it makes the whole thing
an absolute nightmare to conceive and build.
You still need video
And we wanted an extraordinary screen
A conical screen is hard to figure
and I believe it was Frederic and his team in Belgium
that called it the "frite sac or "the chip basket."
It all starts with this pixel
Let's make some noise!
Any number of these panes together form a bigger panel
and then 96 of these bigger panels form this entire structure.
LEDs are supposed to run for a hundred thousand hours
which I believe is about 24 hours a day for 13 years or something.
So we're kind of pretty up to speed on the new technology
but this was a real first
A dynamic screen that could change shape, move and
Particularly in that kind of conical shape
This is a big prototype. Never been done before
We'll just make it and see what happens
And so it's a bit of a scary moment to see if all the calculations are right
and if everything fits as we planned
U2 fans know that U2 are interested in production
they've always done a big show
from the very early days when it was just a backdrop
We did whatever we could to make the show visually exciting
and a couple of times, like with Zoo TV and Popl\/lart
and the more recent shows
we really changed the game for everyone
ls the audience getting something out of this?
Yeah, they're coming to a rock and roll gig and watching television.
What more can you ask for?
When we did PoplVlart, it was the start of the LED revolution
in big stadium and arena rock shows
that has now been so commodified by all the other bands taking it over
that every show you see is video
Now the tradition is that you have your big art screen
and then side screens for what they call ll\/IAG
which is image magnification
So, you have the band on side screens and all the art is going on in the middle.
Whereas what we've done effectively is reduce it to one screen.
lt's a very big and clever screen but it is one screen.
Which for me, moving the goalpost like that
really made it much more interesting
Because your line of sight was the same
you weren't constantly doing this
which is the experience most people have at stadium shows
when the screens are out left and right
Pretty soon into the tour we realised
that it was just a wonderful way
for people at the back of the stadium
to really stay in tune with what we were doing
Clearly video remains a very important part but it couldn't be the focus of this show.
With the conical screen
you can create the illusion of something going all the way round
So, for video artists like Run Wrake
he could actuallyjust get lost in it
For Catherine Owens it was just a different kind of canvas.
Before with screens we could make independent content
that could be used or not used
This is a lot more choreographed
There's concepts that come from the band
and these are all elements
that then will be translated into this scale and format.
We still want to continue on our conversations
that we have developed over the last couple of tours
especially the more political, socially aware conversations
that we like to bring to everybody
Rather than where Bono would actually
be the campaigner for the 'One' campaign
we are now integrating that more from a video point of view
rather than from him
This time it's a lovely, personal message from Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Because our voices were heard
millions more of our brothers and sisters are alive
thanks to the miracle of AIDS drugs and malaria drugs
A lot of the video content has been stripped back
but there are moments, big video moments and interactive moments.
So there comes a point
when itjust becomes this giant art experience
that does what you've never seen any other screen do before in your life
Because we saw this as a kind of space station
we had these ideas about using it
to connect with the international
the actual, a real space station
And, especially touched by Frank De Winne
Commander Frank De Winne
reciting the lyrics of 'ln A Little While
lt's just a
It was a strange coincidence that the lyrics in that song were
A man dreams one day to fly
A man takes a rocket ship into the skies
He lives on a star that's dying in the night
And follows in the trail
The scatter of light
lt's one thing out of my mouth
Hearing it out of his mouth, that's a very touching moment
Thank you. Thank you for joining us this evening
Safe home
I wasn't holding my breath that we would actually do it
because there were a few major hurdles to overcome
One of the most practical ones being whether this thing was tourable.
And Jake Berry, our production manager
went out and did a site visit
to all of the major stadiums that we were likely to play
to talk to them about how they felt about having t\/vo 100-ton cranes on the field
And I was quite surprised that he came back with a clean bill of health
It all seemed like it was possible
That little piece here is just gonna have to be tighter
Everybody says how they feel about the first show,
l'm more nervous about getting this thing to IVlilan, which is the second city.
Look, we've all undertaken to do it, we've got to dig our heels in and go for it
If you think about a rock show like 360
as the same scale as a gigantic action film
except you're moving location every few days,
you're building a whole town, a whole city
then you're knocking it down
putting it into trucks and moving the next day
it's quite something
This has to be dismantled and transported to the next show
So a travelling 360-degree outdoor show this is a world first.
Everything starts with a big carbon footprint
I think the goal here, that we've all come to a conclusion of
is how to reduce that
Live Nation Global Touring as the producers of this tour are fully committed
to ensuring that this tour becomes a carbon-neutral footprint tour
We have a lot of different ideas and plans in place,
and we'll combine that with carbon credits
that will eventually balance out the entire footprint
over this entire 18-month world tour
I mean, I think wherever you were you got a great show,
but quite a different show
And that was another interesting aspect of this production.
I was at the mix desk for Snow Pah'oI 8 few EITIBS,
and I was out a little bit higher up for l\/luse and for Black Eyed Peas,
and it is a different experience
But again, there is an intimacy to the way that stage works.
The people right up close in the ring
were, you know, seeing us really close
And probably closer than ever before
But they weren't really getting a sense of what the screen was doing.
And then the people at the very back
really saw this amazing show
The seat at the back, cos l've sat on it
l've sat in every seat, pretty much
Every single one? - Nearly.
l've been busy sitting down, while you've been up there playing
But, honestly, while they're playing l've walked around and tested...
And it is even better, right at the back
Because of the way the sound system was developed
I think Joe did a really good job
the sound was immaculate for everyone that I heard,
and I think we were getting great sound as well,
and I think that's what you get in these bigger places.
From that very top tier
the sound was the best sound you probably ever get in a stadium
And the visual was incredible
It was probably the best visual perspective
of any\Nhere in the stadium
There's some cameras which are on tracks
that go around the stages, which Tait
the people who built the stage, designed a very ingenious little system
around the B stage and the A stage
And then we have these Televator cameras
which allow the cameras to be up at head level or higher
There's so much kinetic movement not only in 360 but vertically,
the screen expanding and contracting
And we have to cover a lot of area
and give them, the band the freedom to move.
When you're showing camera pictures of the band
it's that connection that you give the audience
which is so crucial
but it makes the medium itself become almost invisible.
lt's like when you're watching TV at home or you're sitting in a cinema,
you cease to be aware of the fact that you're looking at a screen,
because you're so engrossed in what's going on.
l'm very, very happy about that mirror ball on the top
Not least cos it's the world's first lightning-conductor mirror ball,
and it actually does function as a lightning conductor.
Cos apparently that's one of our most likely dangers we have
I mean it's unlikely but they have had to consider lightning
Commerce has to be creative to make this stuff work,
it's notjust art and science
it's culture and commerce
Live Nation really went the distance for us in making this work for our audience.
It was a very long and complex budgeting process.
A lot of it was unknown, really
and it's not uncommon in these large processes
where all of a sudden it's "Oops!
And those "Oops" can be significant in terms of cost.
From the 'Unforgettable Fire' this is 'Wire
In the mid-'80s, a lot of bands would not sell seats behind the stage
U2 always did, and there was obviously an economic benefit to that,
for the audience as well as for the band
in that you had a bigger capacity, you could have a lower ticket price
This in a way is the logical extension of what we started doing then.
We decided to have a minimum of 10,000 tickets
at 30 dollars at every show
and I think it's given everybody the opportunity that wants to come
the ability to come
When you put those tickets on sale
you're at the mercy of the public
If they don't want to come they don't buy the tickets.
Had it have flopped on the first night
you know
we were in some deep some deep doo-doo.
Obviously, I worry a lot That's myjob.
Touring on this scale is like, financially a huge roll of a dice,
you know, it's majorjeopardy
But to us, artistic risk is the thing that we think about first,
and that's like, in a sense
the worst sin would be not to take any chances
I would put it in the following perspective in terms of the cost for this production -
there's never been anything this expensive
Edge
You ask yourself, How much time do you spend each day
when you're not thinking about either the future or the past?"
You spend very little time in the present moment.
And a live show is an opportunity to do just that.
lt's an unusual situation for people to be in
where everyone is looking at the same thing and we're all in the same place,
there's an energy there which becomes much bigger than the sum of its parts.
You can't repeat yourself
you can't rely on things that have been done before
by anybody else, you just got to find new territory
and so every time we go into the studio it's the same thing we're looking for,
and every time we sit down to start talking about a live production
we ask ourselves the same question which is, "What's never been done?'
You want to see the person that you're going to see taking a little bit of a risk
to give you something unique
And I think this whole production has captured the imagination of people
lt's more than just a stage
You've got to try and give them at the very least something they've never seen before,
or maybe, more importantly, something they haven't felt before
Because in the end, for all this architecture and sci-fi stuff
if you don't feel the songs and the band
what is the point?