The Locusts are Coming

 I read a multi-tour review from a lifelong u2 fan recently, and it was interesting to read how during the October tour, other than Adam’s ‘fro, the most memorable part was how mild-mannered (quiet) Bono was. This was all gone, of course, by 1985. But what really interests me is what happened with Achtung Baby and later.

U2 shows are now part rock concert, part art, and part theater, and I don’t think the latter two descriptors applied until the 1990s. Yes, Sir B had a flare for the dramatic from the beginning. Yes, he was a champion of human rights from the mid-1980s forward. But you go to a show now, and it’s just so obvious what u2 is all about. Almost every tour since ZooTV honors, celebrates, and revisits ZooTV in some way, no matter how small, and often times, builds upon it.

Take the latest version of Until the End of the World.

A song originally about Jesus and Judas now enjoys a digital depiction on a giant HD board. If there were any doubts about the significance of the enormous bulb hanging over Bono’s head on stage, they should be removed by the digital representation of an even bigger bulb on the HD board stretching across the length of the arena. We witness that bulb swinging to and fro across the screen (a clear reference to the light bulb in the song Ultraviolet Love), until it explodes into a flood of biblical proportions.  The flood, then, is released by the hands of God (the light bulb). Brilliant. Jesus, Judas, and the biblical flood (and, yes, there is some Creation-related connectedness going on here from Adam to Noah to Jesus).

But the 2015 version of this song gets better still.

Edge has rewritten the concluding guitar solo. It now sounds like something Jimmy Page might have invented in the 1970s, a painful, grinding end to a song we’ve listened to 500 times and never once thought of Led Zeppelin. . . but can’t help but hear the overtures today. As the Edge works us through End Times on his guitar, we are greeted by a shower of printed word flooding the arena from above, a scene not unlike various terrorist attacks (Twin Towers as a recent example) replayed on television again and again.

As the screen fades to black, we see what appear to be insects crawling across the bottom of it. Might these be the only living things to survive this end of world cataclysm? The infamous Locusts from Revelation? Even scientists have said that insects are more likely to adapt and survive global catastrophe than are we. The band combines sounds and images to create a 3D level of mental, emotional, and spiritual stimulation that is almost overwhelming, if you allow yourself to go there.

No one doubts that Achtung Baby changed everything.

But the fact that Achtung Baby begat ZooTV which begat an entirely new multi-dimensional live performance that u2 has made a permanent part of shows is something else altogether. I sat in the pit, inches from the band for two shows this year and missed most of the drama.

I won’t let that happen again at MSG on 7/31.