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  1. Hi guys

    This is a wee spot of self-promotion.

    I'm self-publishing a couple of books I've written about the grand, exciting but often very challenging adventure I had following the U2 360 tour.

    Part 1 is about the 2009 European leg and Part 2 is about the 2009 North American leg.

    A few U2 fans / friends who have proofread the books have said they're very well written, engaging, funny, insightful, moving. However it's quite possible they were too polite / intimidated to dare say anything else

    I'm taking pre-orders until Sunday 28th June. I'll add the name of anyone who orders before then to the Acknowledgements section at the back of that (or those!) book(s).

    You can read more about the books and order a copy here:

    Me & U2 Around the World

    You can read some extracts from both books here:

    Extracts

    I really think U2 fans will very much enjoy both books - but I concede there may be a little bias in this view

    Thanks!

    Here's a mash-up of some of my videos from following the tour:

  2. an extract from Part 1 ...

    The Most Spectacular Moment of the U2 360˚ Tour
    Chorzow, Poland
    6th August 2009



    Śląski Stadium was situated in a lush, woody park. The roads surrounding the stadium were dense with trees in full leafy flourish.

    …

    Ania arrived from Gliwice after work. We entered the stadium during the sunny, warm evening. The Claw had been set up across the length of the pitch, not along the width as in other stadiums. We bought two beers, drank them, then found our seats on Adam’s side to watch the end of Snow Patrol’s set.



    The stadium was like a low, flat bowl, with a single tier of seats in a low, flat gradient with no roof covering the seats. When the sun set, I noticed that there were no emergency exit lights anywhere in the stadium. In fact, there were no lights in the stadium at all apart from the stage lights, which added an atmospheric murkiness to the show. When the stage lights were off, the stadium was in near perfect darkness with no distracting, residual glow. All eyes had to be on the stage, until the Polish *special song* that is – New Year’s Day.



    U2 had played their second ever koncert in Poland in Śląski Stadium during the Vertigo tour in 2005. (Their first Polish concert had been in Warsaw during the PopMart tour in 1997.) The Polish U2 fan club had prepared a very special surprise for the 2005 show. Assuming that U2 would play New Year’s Day, a group of fans had organised a campaign on the internet suggesting that when Adam started playing the intro to the song, the audience would transform Śląski Stadium into a massive, seething Polish flag. Fans on the pitch held up red paper, fans in the stands held up white paper. The cumulative effect, even on video, was stunning.


    Moments like that surely could not be comparable when repeated, so I struggle to imagine the adrenalin rush that must have surged through the crowd and through the band in 2005. In 2009, in a numinously dark arena under a Frankenstein full moon, seven songs in, when Adam started thumbing New Year’s Day, the Polish audience repeated the old trick. It still worked. A tangible, scintillating rush of energy coursed through the stadium as soon as Adam began playing the unmistakeable bass line. “O mój Boże!” There was a palpable intake of breath when a tribe of sixty thousand people simultaneously lifted up their colour, their pledge of allegiance in response. I lifted up a white T-shirt I had brought along especially. I pledged. And I gasped. “O mój feckin Boże!” The stadium underwent a transfiguration, becoming alive, astoundingly, self-consciously alive. “Look at us! Look at all of us!” Everyone was participating in and revelling in a moment of shared wonder that they had created themselves. Hands everywhere were holding up colour as heads everywhere were looking at the accumulated result of what all the other hands were doing. It was a simple individual gesture that created a profound collective result. This wasn’t like a coordinated display by fans of a football club. This was much bigger and much deeper. This was memory, celebration, patriotism. It was a fervent demonstration of Polish solidarity, a jubilant but reflective communal expression of a proud and recently trodden-upon identity. During centuries of adversity under expansionist empires and belligerent nations, Poles had developed solidarity. In the early 1980s under a puppet government in liege to the Soviet Union, some Poles had founded a movement to challenge the communist status quo, Solidarity. All this history, trauma, repression, release and hope of a people were implicit in the New Year’s Day display. And even though the display had been expected, it still had fundamental, implosive intensity. It was utterly magical, far, far and away the most visceral, electric, spectacular moment of the entire tour. I was absolutely moved by it. I’m getting goosebumps and a lump in my throat recalling it.

    The moment visibly affected Bono. He was singing to his “Polish cousins”, his favourite non-Irish tribe. During New Year’s Day, with an image of the Poland flag translucently combined with live footage of U2 on the video screen, Bono received a Solidarność banner from the crowd and draped it over an amp on the stage, where it remained for the rest of the show. He effusively complimented the Polish audience in Chorzow like he did for no other country or city. “EUROPE. NEEDS. MORE. COUNTRIES. LIKE. POLAND,” he staccatoed ardently before the following song, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. And before the second verse of this song, when the crowd had finished singing the chorus, he declared softly, “This comes close.” Then during Walk On he appeared to choke up momentarily.


    Chorzow was a concert where singer, band and audience were in deep communion. And the religious metaphor, sometimes overused with regard to U2, was particularly apt for this show. During New Year’s Day, Bono fell to his knees and bowed down in homage to the audience. Before Moment of Surrender, the final song of the show, which Bono dedicated to Karol Józef Wojtyła, Pope John Paul II, the Polish pope with whom he had traded a pair of shades for the set of rosary beads which he habitually wore under his shirt, he fell to his knees again, with his head lowered to say a prayer. Although prayers are private and it’s inappropriate to intrude on and speculate about them, it looked like Bono, so humbled by his audience, was publicly praising and thanking God for the blessings that had been bestowed upon him to experience such a profound response to U2’s music, and asking for blessings for the audience. He stood up and blessed himself with the Sign of the Cross, the ritual gesture used by Roman Catholics across Ireland and Poland. Rock-star super-egos were not usually moved to openly pray onstage at the end of gigs, perhaps for blessings for their audience. They chose cute girls to invite backstage by chucking sweaty towels to them. They stormed offstage quickly to display their emotionless detachment. They picked up their beer and sauntered offstage nonchalantly. In Chorzow, Bono dropped to his knees to pray, palpably consumed and moved by the fervid emotion of the event. I was consumed and moved by the fervid emotion of the event. Only an asbestos soul would have been untouched.
  3. ^ That was a neat story Haven't had the time to check it out yet but its definitely a neat topic!
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.
Contribute to the U2 community with uploading photos or by telling us which shows you have visited.