By David Smyth, Evening Standard 17.08.09
Star power: Bono (left) is criticised for believing he is the centre of the universe but he knows how to make fans feel they have joined him somewhere very special
Not content with being the biggest band on Earth, U2 now seem intent on bringing outer space into the equation, too.
At the first British show of their first tour in four years, they came on stage to the sound of Space Oddity and left as the mobile phones of the record 88,000-strong crowd turned Wembley’s bowl into a galaxy of tiny stars.
Although they didn’t phone up the International Space Station, as they did on the first night in Barcelona, they did perform beneath a collossal contraption that might have just landed from Mars.
“The Claw”, the tallest stage ever built, looked as if it would either kill us all or snap shut and win a teddy bear.
Beneath it were four tiny toy soldiers playing songs that matched the impossible scale of the surroundings.
They could be viewed from all sides while they circled the stage’s discs, rings and rotating bridges like joggers doing laps of the park.
Though visually unparalleled, musically there was too much emphasis on recent album No Line On The Horizon, which looks like becoming their least popular release over here since Pop in 1997.
Of the four consecutive new songs that opened the show, the robotic riff of Get On Your Boots was the only one to get a significant reaction.
Overall, only Unknown Caller’s stirring chorus sounded as if it would survive to appear on future setlists.
Classics were also plentiful, however, from Mysterious Ways to Beautiful Day.
Saint Bono even kept the politics to a relative minimum for him, showing clips of the Iranian election protests during Sunday Bloody Sunday and dedicating Walk On to Aung San Suu Kyi.
He is regularly criticised for believing that he is the centre of the universe but in concert he knows how to make the fans feel as if they have joined him somewhere very special.
Those in U2’s orbit this weekend won’t come down to earth for a while yet.
thisislondon
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