U2 comes through
BOSTON --The 16 spotlight operators were in place, having scrambled up ladders and taken their seats in the lighting truss at various angles above the stage. The entire, wraparound lighting system looked like a space station ready to take off. So what happens? A sudden power failure and voila, no stage lights just as the band hits stride on its third song.
Enter Bono, lead singer of U2 and a leading candidate for improv entertainer of the year.
"Our lighting rig has broken down. Let's turn the house lights on!" he said promptly. "Rock 'n' roll doesn't need all these expensive lights and smoke bombs! Why? Because we have the spirit of Larry Bird with us tonight!"
When the spirit of Celtics star Larry Bird is invoked in the Garden, good things usually happen. Bono pushed the right button, for the 15,000 fans were won over quickly and didn't seem to care that the house lights were on for an hour (about half the concert) before power was restored on stage. The poor spotlight operators might as well have gone back to their hotel.
A cagey bandleader, Bono got more mileage out of the Bird man before the night was over. "I bet Larry Bird can play better harmonica than I can!" he said shyly, before blowing a perfectly decent harp solo on "Trip Through Your Wires." And during the encores, he was handed a No. 33 Celtics green t-shirt (Bird's number, natch) and maneuvered around stage as if ready to join a layup drill.
This was not -- as you may gather -- a typical U2 performance.
It was more like seeing a club band trying to finesse its way through an awkward situation. Although Bono recently reminisced that U2 had been "a lousy club band," the evidence last night was to the contrary.
Where other superstars might have fallen flat without their lights, U2 carried on like troupers, forging an even closer bond with the audience (something Little Steven could not do with his overly anthemic opening set). Bono was infinitely more chatty, while still managing to convey the spiritual power of the band's music as the crowd spurred him on with long, majestic singalongs.
The set list had been shaken up since the band played the Worcester Centrum only four months ago, but still was drawn mostly from the group's last album, ''The Joshua Tree." The group boldly opened with the album's most vehemently antiwar protest song, "Bullet the Blue Sky," preceded briefly by a biting touch of Jimi Hendrix's "Star Spangled Banner," which Hendrix had played at Woodstock. U2 guitarist The Edge did justice to Hendrix and was a mainstay all night with his intricate chordal leads interrupted by wallops of feedback. Dressed in a Navajo vest with a wide-brimmed hat, he also looked like a psychedelic medicine man.
Numerous "Joshua Tree" anthems drove the crowd into hysterics, including the heavenward plea of "Where the Streets Have No Name" and the gospel passion of "In God's Country." But it was a surprise version of "One Tree Hill," a tribute to band employee Greg Carroll (who died in a motorcycle accident last year), that really touched the crowd. Only recently has the band started performing the song, since Bono always maintained it was too painful to do on stage. The arrangement sputtered -- part of it had to be on tape since there was no electric viola player to duplicate the middle solo -- but the sheer emotion of the song compensated.
The rhythm section of bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen were occasionally obscured in a muddy sound mix (Larry Bird couldn't do anything about that), but everything clicked midway through -- as did the stage lights at last.
If there was one problem, it was the band's insistence on doing cover versions of several songs. Frankly, they added nothing to a snippet of Bob Marley's "Exodus," nor much to Curtis Mayfield's "People Get Ready" and the Beatles' "Help," which plodded along roughly. It would have been preferable to hear more songs from U2's early career, which was shortchanged last night.
Quibble aside, this was still another victory for the gutsy Dubliners, who return to the Garden tonight and to Sullivan Stadium next Tuesday. Hopefully their lighting system will be back on the beam -- and Larry Bird's spirit can get some rest.
