Elizabeth Platt ([email protected])
Sun, 6 Dec 1998 15:36:30 -0800 (PST)
[Was Re: Also about about the Rockline interview]
> [snip]
>
> I wouldn't be suprised if U2 do like they did with AB when
> they tour the next album. They were on time with AB and had
> the chance to see how the album was doing before they started
> the tour, they played some arenas to test out the water
> in America and wet people's appitites and when the resopnse
> was so great, the came back and played stadiums here.
Actually, Robbie, I hate to contradict you here, but the band were _late_
with "Achtung Baby". The day they were supposed to turn over the entire
album to Island, they had five tracks finished. The original release date
was supposed to have been in (early) October of '91, and Island even
released a promo/sampler CD called "U2 in October" to help hype the
scheduled October release!
And, although nothing "official" has ever been said to confirm this, it
was rumored that U2 were going to do a "quickie" stadium tour late in '91,
doing a one-night-per-city schedule of only 10-12 key cities in the US, to
help promote the album. A key member of U2's crew told a friend this,
_and_, just by pure coincidence, I heard (directly) from someone in the
music biz that Irish singer/songwriter Luka Bloom was set to play the
opening slot for a short-but-important "stadium tour" late that year.
Now, think about it--in 1991, how many bands were able to play stadium
tours? And how many would even think about having an artist like Luka
Bloom play as an opener? (:
Never being one to beat around the bush, I said something alone the lines
of "Cool, Luka's opening for U2's quickie stadium tour, huh?" There was a
sudden silence on the other end of the line, followed by that funny
whistling/sucking sound a person makes when catching their breath. They
suddenly got nervous, promised to send on the comp CDs, blahblah, and got
off the phone. Never got a chance to explain that a friend of mine had
gotten the inside skinny from one of U2's own crew a few weeks earlier.
Oh well...
Anyways, as it turned out, AB came in late--so late, in fact, that there
were fears that it wouldn't make it under the wire for the
Christmas-season releases. The band themselves have spoken about how much
was done at the crunch, and how draining it was to do so. No surprise,
then, that the "quickie stadium" tour idea was scratched, though the
one-night-per-city concept did carry over to the first leg of the "Zoo
TV" tour. But it seems that, far from sitting back and allowing the
album to sink in, etc., U2 and Island were initially prepared to hit the
ground running to hype it! Nor would this have been unusual, since "The
Joshua Tree" hadn't been out very long before the '87 tour began.
> I also think that the fantastic sales on the Greatest Hits
> album (already double platanium here and more sales than
> any other band's GH album ever) will finally get the always dense
> American media to realize that U2 is one of the legendary rock
> groups like the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Who and Led Zep. The fans,
> most of the rock critics and the media in the rest of the
> world have know it for ages, but the American media in general
> seems to be wandering around in a fog of ignorance, as usual.
> It'd be nice if U2 would get a little respect form them
> ocassionally :(
Why bother? I know that some fans want to see U2 get in People's "500
Most Bodacious Celebrities" list each and every year, but why should they?
Do we need to see their mugs on the magazine covers at the check-out line
when we go out to buy cat food? Does the "Oprah" nation need to know
Bono's personal stats, do we need to have the band's taste in clothes and
interior design profiled in "In Style" magazine? When I go into
Walgreen's to buy, um, feminine protective gear, do I need to hear a Muzak
version of "One" being piped into the store? Uh-oh, that last one really
happened...
Anways, let the media stay comfy in their "fog of ignorance". U2 have
never been a mainstream band, yet have been able to "keep it up" both in
terms of their music and their audience, as well as critical acceptance
(with some notable exceptions!)
> I bet U2 do stadiums again in America (I'm sure they will everywhere
> else). The resopnese to the GH album proves they can do it and
> I'm sure it's picking up many new young fans for them who'll be
> all hopped up to see them on their next tour.
If they're wise, they won't go straight to stadiums again. Aside from the
economic realities of stadium tours, the band members themselves have
already expressed a reluctance to go all-stadiums, all-the-time. This
isn't to say that they'll _never_ play anywhere bigger than an arena ever
again--certainly, if they play outdoor shows in Europe, they're going to
be playing to festival-sized crowds.
> Besides, I didn't think that Popmart was as "fancy" as everybody
> else seems to. They had to have a stage that big for a stadium,
> every big show has screens now even in arenas (they just got a
> really large one ;), and the arch was really a functional part
> of the stage.
Oh, and look up the definition of "arch" in the dictionary. I'm surprised
no one caught on to that earlier...now, whether this was _deliberate_ on
the band's part, or just coincidence, I can't say. But after all the
"irony" talk on the Zoo tours, could the band have decided it was time to
be...arch? ;-)
Slan,
Elizabeth Platt
[email protected]
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