U2 Concert: Los Angeles Forum May 31, 2015
(Above: Bob Dylan and Bono. Photo displayed on Forum wall, lower level.)
Still riding high from Sunday’s U2 concert at the Forum.
I hadn’t seen U2 live since 1987 when they played the Los Angeles Coliseum on The Joshua Tree tour. 1987! It was my first concert ever. I told my parents I was attending some innocuous teenage outing and went to the show instead. My partner in crime was Julie F., a redhead from perhaps the only Mormon family in all of Wilmington, California. We went with a couple of her friends who had an Alex Turner look about them. I remember we sat in nosebleeds.
Here it is 28 (!) years later and the band has a five-night stint at the Forum. Tickets are expensive: $125 for second level (”upper bowl”) and twice that for first level (”lower bowl”). While it’s true that there aren’t awful seats in the house, not all seats are created equal. I was determined to sit on the first level or the floor.
Trolled Craigslist for days. People were asking crazy prices for tickets: floor for $500+, first level $400 and up. Forget that. Not in my budget. The only option was to go old-school: I’d go to the venue when doors opened and try to hustle a ticket on-site. Counterfeit tickets were burning people left and right on Craigslist, making the task all the more challenging.
At the venue, I started asking for extras as soon as I stepped into the overpriced parking lot. No luck with the tailgaters, no luck with the people at the front of the GA line. Nervously I continued along the GA line, “Anyone have an extra?” A man walking in the opposite direction stopped me with great news: he had an extra and his asking price for a GA floor ticket was the exact amount I had set aside in my pocket ($150) for the purchase. Hooray!
(Above: My ticket! Thanks Keith!)
The gentleman, Keith, and his two pals had flown in from Dallas and New York, respectively, for both the Saturday and Sunday night shows. Hard core U2 fans. They gave me the lowdown on the set design and the best places to watch the show. Not wanting to be clingy, I parted ways with them when we entered the venue and tweeted them a thank you. Saw them again before the show where they had staked out spots. This was it. I was seeing U2.
The Innocence and Experience tour weaves tracks from the band’s Songs of Innocence album with the hits from albums past. I had forgotten how deep the U2 catalog is. But then “The Electric Co.” happened. And “I Will Follow.” I had, after all, grown up in ‘80s Los Angeles, where KROQ championed U2 early on. These songs were ingrained in my brain. Bono introduced the less-familiar-to-me Songs of Innocence tunes, which held their own. A slower, more deliberate “Sunday Bloody Sunday” was played with Larry Mullen on a single snare drum. Beautiful. Then, after “Raised By Wolves,” came what is probably my favorite U2 song, “Until the End of the World.”
It was at this point that I lost my mind. Hearing a song that I loved dearly, that I first encountered on the Until the End of the World soundtrack given to me by a now-deceased friend, was all too much. I loved every second of it – the visuals, the drama, the torn pages from “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” floating from the rafters at the song’s conclusion. Brilliant! It was everything I ever wanted from a live performance of that song.
(Above: The “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” passage that landed at my feet after “Until the End of the World)
My favorite U2 is early ‘90s U2 – the Achtung Baby and Zooropa U2 – so I happily sang and pantomimed along to the video interlude of The Wanderer featuring a digital Johnny Cash. The big guns came out one song after that: “Even Better Than the Real Thing” (take me higher!!!) and “Mysterious Ways.” Late ‘80s U2 is right up there too, so “Angel of Harlem,” “When Love Comes to Town,” and, later in the set, “All I Want Is You,” hit all the right notes. Bono said kind words about B.B. King prior to “When Love Comes to Town.” How many other mainstream bands besides U2 recorded with the late great during the Rattle and Hum days? My guess is not many. The same goes for Johnny Cash in the early ‘90s, before he became a hipster icon.
The band moved from one end of the stage to the other throughout the show. This tour is truly a production. No wonder tickets were so expensive; I’m guessing there’s a crew of at least 75 people getting the logistics right night after night. And so well-executed for fans like me - because I was in GA, I was able to move when the band moved, always securing a decent spot on the floor. When they straddled the ginormous cage-like screen, I faced them straight on. I swear Bono and the Edge looked right at me. Made sure to have my arms in the air ‘lest they think LA crowds are lame.
Whether it’s the forgotten dead from Irish conflicts of the early ‘70s or AIDS medication in Africa or the U.S.’s trigger-happy border patrol, U2 raises awareness about issues. But I didn’t feel preached to, I felt inspired. As Bono says, “Peace is an action, not wishful thinking.”
And then there’s “Bullet the Blue Sky,“ a song is as searing today as it was nearly 30 years ago. But now instead of El Salvador, America has its bloody hands in the Middle East, “Droning the Blue Sky” of Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I spent hours on YouTube the day after the concert searching for previous live shows. What was Zoo TV tour like? Did the Zooropa tracks translate live? I even found a video of the 1987 Coliseum show of my youth, albeit with better views.
Bono introduced the individual band members early on in the show. And rightly so – U2 is nothing without all of its parts. Have you ever observed how ferociously Larry Mullen keeps the beat during “Where the Streets Have No Name”? Or considered that Adam Clayton’s bass lines drive “Bullet the Blue Sky,” “Mysterious Ways” and “Until the End of the World”? The Edge, well, they’ve made a documentary about his next-level skills and it’s thrilling to hear him play live. Long live U2!!!!
