Location: Milan (Italy), San Siro (Stadio Giusepe Meaza)
Concert date: 07/19/2005
Attendance: 70
Ticket price: €54.00
Well, I finally made it. U2 live. In the most relaxed and pleasant company, we headed once again to the land of tasty macaroni and excellent espresso. So there was no struggle at all in fighting our way through the traffic jams on the highway. We rolled into San Siro, late, with a gang of hyped-up U2 fans. The tickets had to be picked up, the box-office lines were a mess, and the clock was ticking. Meanwhile Feeder, the first support act, had already started warming up the crowd. We finally made it into the stadium floor. A fantastic feeling took over me, a huge wave of euphoria and adrenaline rush spreading across the stands and from everywhere around. One little problem remained, and it wasn’t exactly small. Each of us was hauling a few liters too many, so we could only watch Ash, the next support act, on the giant screen while shuffling around in line in front of the chemical toilets. We suffered, we really suffered. The ones in the worst shape couldn’t hold out, and a bunch of breathless “Aloooooora!!!” echoed through the lines, full of people barely holding back their excess metabolites. Luckily I picked a line that moved fast, so it all ended happily. Meanwhile Ash wrapped up their rather boring set.
An hour after Ash left the stage, it was time! 9:15 p.m. and Vertigo!!! “Uno, due, tre,” Bono kicked off in Italian. The stadium went through the roof!!! Italians. The sheer energy flux practically lifted me off the ground. 70,000 people!!! Banners and flags of wild fans were waving everywhere, and at times the chanting turned into pure hysterical delirium. U2 ramped the show up fast. During All I Want Is You, Bono, to the crowd’s delight, pulled a girl from the audience over to him and danced a few bars of the song with her. Before City Of Blinding Lights the biggest central screen, stretching across the back, lit up, which of course pushed the show to boiling point. During Sometimes You Can’t Make it On Your Own, a group of Italian U2 fans pulled off a special surprise for Bono and the gang on stage. With a choreographed routine, they used colored cards to spell out “Hi Bob” (Bono’s father), with an Italian and an Irish flag on either side of the message. During the staple Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bono tied on a symbolic white rebel headband reading “coexist”. The C was shaped like a crescent moon, the X like a Star of David, and the T like a cross. The guys stretched the song out and let the crowd “tear through” a few verses too.
The audience participation was unbelievable. They sang along to everything. Even when Bono went off in his own direction, his vocal detours and experiments blended perfectly with the crowd singing, who knew the entire U2 repertoire down to the last detail.
The crowd was waiting feverishly for Miss Sarajevo, which U2 had played before Milan only in Zürich and Amsterdam. Rumor had it that the great Luciano Pavarotti himself might join U2 on stage. Of course Pavarotti never showed, but Bono sang part of the song all on his own “Pavarotti-style,” meaning entirely in Italian. The crowd went absolutely nuts. That was the definitive peak of the show in Milan. Lucky thing there were smaller screens besides the main one in the middle, two on each side. Four altogether. Each was reserved for one member of U2. And on the one showing Bono you could see the man had completely sunk into the song, because he couldn’t hold back his tears during Miss Sarajevo. From here on the main set hit its atmospheric peak, as the classics that can’t be missing from their shows followed. So Pride (In The Name Of Love), “where the streets have no name,” and they closed with a fantastic One that just wouldn’t end. The crowd stayed in a trance and kept singing the melody of One long after U2 had left the stage.
The first encore ended identically to the close of the main set. With the Ooh-ohh-ohs of With Or Withiout You, the 70,000-strong crowd, which wasn’t satisfied even after the first encore. So onto the two mini-stages, pushed about 40 m from the main stage into the middle of the floor among the audience, stepped 10 chamber musicians each, members of the Symphony Orchestra of the Teatro Carlo Coccia de Novara, 20 in total. Together with the band they played Original Of The Species. Either U2 were too loud or the players too quiet, but in short, you couldn’t hear the orchestra at all during the song. U2 finally decided to defuse the atomic bomb, and so in that vein they continued with All Beacuse Of You and Yahweh (played in an acoustic version), and wrapped up with an all-out repeat of the whole of Vertigo, played even more intensely than as the opening song.
At 11:40 p.m. the show was over. That’s 2 hours and 25 minutes for €50, 25 songs, a one-of-a-kind spectacle in a jam-packed stadium, in hellish heat generated by a 70,000-strong crowd that kept the atmosphere at an extraordinary level the whole time, incomparable to any club scene or closed-door “indoor” shows. Italians are simply masterful fans and know how to turn even the tiniest trifle into real drama. The band expected it. To that end the show was recorded, since the Irish heroes were reportedly planning to release a DVD of the Milan concert (that’s the official statement from management). For this purpose the colossal San Siro stand was raised from the standard 65 meters to a maximum of 90 meters. Filming was supposed to continue on 07/21/2005, when U2 play their second San Siro show. The crew included 130 people and 26 cameras. Bono addressed the audience more intensely than at the previous few shows, and often in Italian. He dropped a few hefty lines, including that Milan is the sexiest city in the world, which fired up the crowd even more. That goes to show U2 really felt at home at San Siro and so went at it completely professionally, the way rock stars of their caliber should. The Edge in his chimney-sweep cap and “gray guy” Adam Clayton were rather static all night compared to the unleashed, maximally hyped, spinning acrobat Bono, so U2 left a huge amount of the stage “unused” during the show. But the magic was with us, and that’s what counts. Drummer Larry Mullen kept his ice-cold, grim Irish-island expression throughout the show. The look of a land wrapped in eternal fog and an eternity of violent showdowns. Not once did he twitch an eyebrow left or right, not even a millimeter. The band’s sound and the stage delivery were routine and flawless, with Bono in absolute dominance and the central focus throughout.
Slogans of Bono’s peace philosophy, which he preaches so fervently at U2 shows, kept appearing on the monitors. Of course, this time too, nobody missed his calls for peace and an end to the killing.
A U2 show, then, remains after everything I saw a one-of-a-kind rock spectacle, charged with extraordinary energy, dressed in a stage set that doesn’t bring any particular pomp along with it (no insane laser light show, pyrotechnic effects and so on….). U2 remain a real rock band that, despite the nice fat piles of cash they diligently stack up in their bank accounts, has no frills, glam, or bizarre excess in its image. Despite their super-group status, they keep a modesty on stage through a straight-up rebellious posture, decorated with an eternal dash of arrogance and cynicism, and, what matters most, with their relaxed, swagger-free approach they keep a genuine connection with their fans. So seeing U2 live is an experience worth every sin. Hitting the nail right on the head.
Setlist
1.Vertigo
2.I Will Follow
3.The Electric Co.
4.Elevation
5.New Year’s Day
6.Beautiful Day
7.I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For
8.All I Want Is You
9.City of Blinding Lights
10.Miracle Drug
11.Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own
12.Love and Peace or Else
13.Sunday Bloody Sunday
14.Bullet The Blue Sky / When Johnny Comes Marching Home (Snippet) / Please (Snippet) / The Hands That Built America (Snippet)
15.Miss Sarajevo
16.Pride (In The Name Of Love)
17.Where the Streets Have No Name
18.One
Encore 1:
19.Zoo Station
20.The Fly
21.With or Without You
Encore 2:
22.Original of the Species
23.All Because of You
24.Yahweh
Vertigo
