U2 at Live 8
This was not just another U2 gig. That U2 never do “just another gig” is evident by looking at the variety of set lists on the current Vertigo Tour, especially in those places where there are three concerts in a row. However, Live 8 adds yet one more dimension to U2’s plethora of dimensions. You could see it in Bono’s face; you could hear it in his voice. For Bono this is the day, like no other when all his passions united in one 20 minute period. More of his life rested on these moments than they ever had before and possibly ever would again. These moments were a culmination of the best part of the last 5 years of his life. Off stage he has sacrificially campaigned for the three things named above the Hyde Park stage – TRADE JUSTICE, DROP THE DEBT, MORE AND BETTER AID. Now here was all the campaigning coming down to a hoped for, prayed for, lived for moment. To add to his agitation the band were not going to be here for the day but had to fly to Vienna to keep a scheduled date in their European Tour. They had to make the most of it.
Bono is even more pent up than usual and then he finds himself singing Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band with Paul McCartney. I guess U2 are the Beatles for a few minutes but more insane than that in the dreaming of Bono he gets to be John Lennon, singing duet with McCartney. Lennon is his hero, the one who he feels used rock n roll to change the political world. To launch Live 8 which you helped organise and play the part of the dreamer that helped you imagine the possibilities for change has to be one of Bono’s dreams come true. “The twenty years ago today” line could be a tad contrived and thankfully McCartney didn’t sing “Let me introduce to you the one and only Bono Vox” but it was a great kick off to a great day. It can’t be very wrong at this point to see U2 as at least the second biggest band in history behind The Beatles and here was a coming together. A unique moment; follow that…
Well, I was disappointed to hear the U2 three song set. Of all the songs they could have used to look at injustice they chose the hits. One was an obvious choice but Beautiful Day and Vertigo? And then… being U2, who do nothing without hours of discussion and debate, they turn their two most recognised anthems into something more than the usual radio chart fodder. Of course I knew about U2’s content driven hits but somehow I was still taken by surprise by that moment when again the Biblical reference ups the spiritual and political ante. Cue “a bird with a leaf in its mouth, after the flood the colours came out” and even without the symbolic release of hundreds of doves at that moment there was a sense when the hopefulness and belief of the entire day was captured with a Scriptural image. At this point in the U2 journey Scripture and faith has never been so important or prominent. The hit took on new layers of depth and joyous celebratory power.
Vertigo was another surprise to me. As the tour, that gets its title from the song, goes on the band have been starting and finishing gigs with the first explosive single off How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. In desiring the spiritual I had loved the Yahweh/40 close and had felt the prophetic U2 message that a rock band should ask for their hearts to be broken had somehow been lost in place of a rock out. Of course I should have known better having exegeted it when the single was released. In the Live Aid context, though, I was brought to see that actually Vertigo has the same ending as Yahweh, the believer on their knees, humbled and broken before God. There is also that crucial little throw away line of the girl with Jesus around her neck giving salvation palpable presence in a night club or at the greatest concert of all time in Hyde Park maybe. Then they change the devil’s temptation of “all of this could be yours” to a request to the G8 leaders. The Making Poverty History can be theirs if they give us what we want. Subtle shift in direction and meaning is another sweet ability of the U2 live setting.
And then the flags. As someone with a love for Africa, particularly my friends on the townships of Cape Town, I am ever moved by the African flags descending behind U2. At Live 8 there is was during One. This is a song that simply gets more and more mature every year you hear it. Today it has never seemed so distinguished, the universality of its soul finding a perfect home. Bono as now traditional led into the song with his most explicit preach saying that this is our moment, our time, our chance. “We’re not looking for charity, we’re looking for justice. We can’t change everything but what we can we must.” It is the moment that Live Aid grows into Live 8, throws down the gauntlet for this Long Walk To Justice which takes Mandela’s Long Walk To Freedom and takes it another step. The Edge’s guitar is so raw that familiarity gets shaken off. In Cardiff the week before Bono asked Edge “to take us to Church…a Presbyterian sound.” Oh how I wish!
In the end in the quieter hush, a congregational Unchained Melody played the band out ‘til that last, “God speed your love to Africa.” God again! Africa again! Love again! It is everything this band believes in. Amen!
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