With millions sold, can U2’s ’PopMart’ be a flop? By Jim Sullivan, Globe Staff

Is U2’s "PopMart" tour the Hindenberg of the summer rock season?

Entertainment Weekly, the layman’s pop-culture/industry bible, certainly thinks so. In the current issue, cartoonist Barry Blitt has U2’s "PopMart" topping his "Obit" List, beating out the Macarena and Soundgarden. In Boston, the last stop on the band’s North American tour, U2 played two shows to more than 100,000 people - but three shows were projected. In Los Angeles, Bono and the boys took to KROQ-FM for five hours to sell the concert. This week, Billboard’s sister publication, Amusement Business, printed sales figures for eight dates, including three at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. The tally: 308,741 tickets sold of a possible 355,444, or about 87 percent. This is failure?

It’s certainly a perceived failure. This is a country consumed by numbers, by dollars, by knowing who’s making what. Reports of first weekend box office movie grosses are published Tuesday in many papers, this one included, as if the sales figures, not the quality of the movie, were what mattered most to the general public. You don’t want to see a movie your fellow countrymen have rejected, now do you?

Now, it’s the music business’s turn in that public spotlight and, specifically, U2.

U2 has sold more than 2 million tickets worldwide, and the Bermuda-based promoter, Next Adventure, put up a $115 million guarantee.

U2 is about a quarter of the way through its 14-month tour, which resumesin Europe July 18 and extends through the spring of 1998. On this 27-date North American tour, U2 grossed $48 million, beating Metallica as the 1997 leader to date.

"We have always been satisfied with the tour," said Susan Rosenberg, tourmarketing director tour worldwide and spokeswoman for Step Entertainment, the company handling marketing and production for The Next Adventure.

"We’re in it for the long haul," she added, stating that she had no fears that they would lose money.

U2 stands to make between $50 million and $80 million. According to theAtlanta Journal and Constitution, Peter Conlon, an Atlanta promoter, accused U2’s tour of being "a lightning rod for everything that’s wrong withthis business and they’re reaping the seeds of greed." Conlon claims the band’s advance money and production costs forced the tour’s high ticket prices (over $50 at Foxboro), and when shows are canceled due to poor ticket sales, the promoter loses money on those shows because he’s already paid for those shows’ production.

U2 is not the blockbuster act it was during the "Zoo TV" tour in 1992. Theirlatest album, "Pop," has sold 1.2 million copies, but has not dominated the charts. (By contrast, 1987’s "The Joshua Tree" sold more than 10 million copies.) Since the group has played fewer shows - one in Los Angeles instead of three, and scrapped an early date because of "technical problems" rumored to be sales problems - the notion has spread that U2’s days as stadium kings are winding down. Maybe. Keep in mind, 1997 is a soft summer - a lot of acts and multiband packages are competing for the same dollar, and some are suffering. Even the H.O.R.D.E. Tour, with Neil Young and Crazy Horse as the headliner, is struggling in some markets, not even booked in others.

U2 has "nothing to do with failing in this market," says Dave Marsden, of theco-promoting Don Law Co. "They had $5 million-plus gross. We’d like to have a whole bunch of failures like that.

"This tour came in with huge expectations," Marsden continues, "but I don’t know who might have grossed as much for an engagement in this market. Their only competition might be the Eagles’ five nights at Great Woods."

But, if U2’s days in the stadia are coming to an end . . . so be it. Going to seeU2 this week at Foxboro Stadium likely entailed massive traffic jams, distant or packed parking lots, semi-distant seats, a minimum comfort level, a $52.50 (plus service charge) ticket, and a $15 or $20 parking fee. While U2 has an ability to create intimacy in the largest of spaces, it’s no secret that the bond between the performer and crowd dissipates as the band climbs the ladder from club to theater to arena to stadium. Veteran U2 fans recall the band’s Paradise set, opening - yes, opening - for the long-forgotten Barooga Bandit and its fiery shows at Metro, the club that is now Avalon. Reporters recall the band’s sincere trepidation about moving to larger spaces and losing that sense of communion that is so integral to their art, and finding inspirationin how Bruce Springsteen managed to pull it off.

It is possible that the next time around U2 may scale it back to, say, Great Woods, the FleetCenter or the Centrum in Worcester. Sure, you might not get the sense of spectacle "PopMart" provides, but is spectacle what brought you to U2 in the first place?

This would really be no one’s loss.

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