The tech of U2’s Songs of Experience tour
When U2 hits the road, it’s not just a matter of loading up some instruments and a PA in a van. Things are substantially more complicated than that. GeekWire.com gets into the guts of the matter.
The crew, which includes 90 people traveling with the band and another 120 locals, can set it all up in 10 hours and break it down in four. Once it’s packed up, the set travels to the next gig in 27 53-foot semis. And when the production goes overseas later this year, the gear will travel in 37 ocean containers or four 747 freighters.
It is probably an unintentional irony that “Experience + Innocence” begins with another Bono injury projected on the band’s most high-tech screen to date. Bono wrote portions of the “Songs of Experience” album after suffering a yet-unspecified near-death experience. As audience members poured into The Forum, the LED screen glowed with a purple, alien-looking image: a close up of Bono’s MRI from the incident.
It’s the first hint that the night may well become wonderfully strange. Open a U2 app on your phone, point it at the screen and the MRI image turns into a melting iceberg, with water gushing out — a metaphor for consciousness, the band says.
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