Inside U2’s Arena Vision
As you might well imagine, the transition from the massive 360 outdoor spaceship to the relative intimacy of an arena show must be daunting. Of course, U2 had a lot of time to work this out. It still can’t have been easy.
I guess the challenge when creating a tour like this is to do something different. It must have been hard to think of something new and fresh.
The Edge: New, fresh and affordable was the thing we wanted to try and do. At some early meetings we really were pushing the envelope of what was possible. We had all kinds of inflatable rooms floating around the arena, some crazy ideas. It’s funny how it always seems to work for us that we allow ourselves to think without any constraints, and slowly in the process of trying to get more practical, more tight with everything, you end up with some of the same ideas. For instance, the bedroom is still there. It’s not a floating bedroom. It’s now part of the divider screen that we use.
The first thing was to allow the imagination to run wild and then start reigning it back in. Then practical things start to apply like, “How much weight can the roof of a venue take?” We’re flying all the PA, we’re flying this big screen. We’re going to the absolute nth degree of what’s possible.
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