U2 plays Singapore for the first time. Here’s a report.

First, a little known fact: Bassist Adam Clayton spent part of his childhood living in Singapore. When he was 14, his family had a place in Changi on the eastern part of the island. Two years later, he was back in Dublin in the kitchen of Larry Mullen Jr. for the first rehearsal of what would become U2.

As Bono pointed out to the crowd, “It’s only taken us 42 years go make it here.” (It was actually 43 years, but who’s counting?)

U2 is in the midst of their first-ever SE Asian/South Asian tour. How would that play out? I hopped on a plane to see for myself.

The gig was held at Singapore’s National Stadium, a 50,000 capacity state-of-the-art facility built (as everything in the city-state seems to be) on top of a shopping mall.

The tour through these parts is the Joshua Tree 30 retrospective, the one we in the north saw about 18 months ago. The staging was the same–love that screen!–but with a couple of twists. The band started with a five-song set of hits before moving directly into a front-to-back playing of The Joshua Tree. That was followed by a quick break before a long encore featuring more hits.

A couple of observations:

• Hardcore U2 fans will travel from everywhere to see the band. The audience was insanely international with individuals coming from Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Bangladesh, along with fans from throughout Europe and North America.
• There were no ticket-takers at the gates. You scanned the barcode at an automated turnstile. There were no queues as everyone moved through very, very quickly.
• Each person could buy four beers at a time, which were then conveniently put in a Starbucks-like carrying try. Are you listening, Province of Ontario?
• Foreigners love to sing along with the band. Locals seemed to prefer to listen to the singer. As a result, the usual-call-and-response interaction between the band and the crowd seemed a little muted.
• Singaporeans are the neatest people on the planet. Even though were were thousands in the GA area surrounding the stage, there was a steady stream of people taking their garbage to the bins provided. After the gig there was next to nothing left behind on the field (well, in comparison to a North American show, anyway.)
• Bono made his usual pitches for human rights including those for LGBTQ community. Homosexuality is illegal in Singapore (for men, anyway; women can do what they want.)
• The majority of the attendees took the subway/metro to the gig. Even though everyone left at the same time after the show, the crush at the station was completely manageable thanks to careful crowd control.