U2: Avoiding the stadiums?
[email protected]
Sun, 8 Nov 1998 23:23:11 EST
U2 would do another stadium tour if they had had more success in the U.S.
last time out. They did ok, but played in a lot of relatively empty stadiums.
When they did the Joshua Tree tour they did what Edge described as a very
uneconomical thing and oscillated between arenas and stadiums during the tour.
The "less is more" philosophy behind the U2 stage set up might have been in
keeping with a theme with the album, but the truth is they had no money to do
much. After the succes of JT, they did have some money, which turned up in
the ZOO TV tour setup, but they wisely decided to test the economic waters by
touring arenas first to find out what kind of response they would get. After
the media hyped it, and the album Achtung Baby sold well, they came back with
the stadium tour. This was their best tour all things considered. With POP
there seemed an almost desperate attempt to hawk tickets (e.g. through VH1)
before everyone discovered that they didn't like the POP album. I even
remember the review of the album in Rolling Stone, that at the end tipped the
fact that the test market for POP was not very good. This is a shame, for the
POP concert is the best an outdoor musical event could be. Those who did not
attend will never know what they missed.
I imagine that no matter what they say, U2 will try and avoided the
embarrassment of potentially playing to empty stadiums next time and do what
they did for the ZOO TV tour. Believe me, if the album does well, and the
arenas are sold out (which of course they will be), U2 will do another stadium
tour. It is in their blood.
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on Sun Nov 08 1998 - 20:24:40 PST