U2 perform at Fordham University in the Bronx on Friday morning. Photo courtesy Gothamist.
We know: You hate U2! Hate them. Bono, especially. For all the celebrity charity campaigners in the world, he’s one who has actually gotten results, persuading even ultra-right-wingers like Rick Santorum and Jesse Helms to get on board with debt forgiveness and HIV-treatment-and-prevention efforts in the world’s most impoverished countries. Held his band together, sans lineup changes, since 1977. Married to the same woman for more than 25 years, a father of four, and not a single knocked-up supermodel on his resume. What a douche!
And now we’ll all find out whether the rest of the world shares your feelings, because for the first time since their oft-maligned PopMart Tour in 1997, U2 are headed back into U.S. football stadiums. Their prior two U.S. outings, in 2001 and 2005, both included two sold-out nights at the (now) Verizon Center, even as the group continued to book gi-normous soccer stadiums everywhere but in the U.S. But the Dublin quartet are banking that 29 years after their first U.S. concerts, they can still fill the biggest room in town: Tickets go on-sale April 6 for a gig at FedEx Field which will likely be on Tuesday, Sept. 29 (that’s the date the Baltimore Business Journal is reporting, though the band has yet to announce most of its U.S. dates). DCist believes, but isn’t entirely sure, the U2 is the first single artist to headline at FedEx since boat-loving country star Kenny Chesney played there in 2005. FedEx has previously hosted concerts by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in 2003, and the Rolling Stones in 1997.
As in the past, U2 has devised an unconventional stage setup to compress the space of the stadium. Unlike in the past, they’ll be performing (apparently) the entire show in the round. The U2360 Tour stage was dreamed up by longtime show designer Willie Williams and realized by architect Mark Fisher — check out a 3D model here. This team has been collaborating on custom stages for U2 roadshows since the 1992-3 ZOO TV Tour — arguably the most influential concert tour of modern times, in that every big-venue rock show since has borrowed production ideas from it.
