Bono and Me

I first heard the name U2 spoken aloud in a high school gym class. The band was playing at a local university, on the War tour, and a friend asked me if I had ever heard of them and had any interest in joining a little group getting tickets. I hadn’t, and didn’t, and immediately regretted that decision when reports of the show and these talented guys from Ireland not much older than us made their way back to school.

I quickly caught up on the early albums, and then came The Unforgettable Fire, songs with textures and a delicacy I hadn’t heard before, to go along with the anthems. By the time Under a Blood Red Sky and the accompanying film from Red Rocks came along, not to mention a riveting performance at Live Aid, U2 had comfortably moved into “favorite band” territory, I loved everything they did. Bono’s words and voice, a world class rhythm section and a guitar that only sounded that way when Edge was playing it.

In the spring of 1987, I was studying abroad in London and quite literally counting the days until the release of The Joshua Tree. I bought the cassette tape at the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street on the day it came out and popped it into my Sony Walkman. Hearing the opening notes of Where the Streets Have No Name remains the most profound and memorable listening experience of my life. I think I played and rewound that intro 50 times before ever moving into the rest of the song.

The video for the first single, With or Without You, played in heavy rotation on the TV jukebox in our local pub, while we managed a light load of classes and a heavy load of pints. I listened to the album more times than I can count that spring, walking the streets of London, in rotation with Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde, and Rock ’n’ Roll Animal (Live) by Lou Reed. It was perfect. I wish I could bottle what it felt like walking around that city, at that age, and listening to that music.

The band announced a Joshua Tree tour and seeing them perform at Wembley Arena before leaving London would be my first live U2 experience. We were students and the seats were not great, slightly behind the stage, but it didn’t matter. We were there, with them, and those gorgeous songs. As they moved around the world playing that album it was incredible to witness my favorite band becoming the Biggest Band in the World.

Then came Rattle and Hum and the corresponding Phil Joanou film, by that point I was out in the world and working as a cub reporter. Sunday nights would typically find me in a dingy police precinct, drinking strong coffee and spending hours reading something called the blotter — a rolling list of every single call or incident — to mine for stories. On the Sunday night of the film’s opening weekend, I stopped off at a local theater to see it before heading to the precinct for 2+ hours of monotony and it was everything I hoped it would be, everything I needed. The recording sessions, the Americana, the behind-the-scenes footage of my heroes, in a pre-social media, pre-TMZ era when getting to experience those moments felt precious and rare. I got chills when the lights came up in Sun Devil Stadium during the intro to Streets, that sweeping aerial shot. Still do.

More albums, tours and shows followed. Zoo TV in Anaheim with a new group of LA friends who are now my best friends, watching the upper deck of the stadium bounce in rhythm to the music, from better post-graduate seats below. The first time I ever clicked a computer mouse to buy and download an album was How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, at midnight, on release day. U2 moved me into the age of digital music, before Tim tried to give everyone that experience. Multiple shows at The Garden, even better seats, including an Innocence + Experience stage design unlike anything I’d ever see before. MetLife Stadium for the return of The Joshua Tree, this time with my wife and daughters, almost 30 years to the day of that first live experience at Wembley. 30 years. Same songs, same band.

My love of music has transferred to my kids, and there has been a *lot* of listening over the years, and core artists like Radiohead, Pearl Jam, Oasis, Counting Crows, Green Day, The Killers, more recently Adele, Khalid, Post Malone and Taylor Swift. But U2 has been there the whole time, in first position the whole time, the unquestionable headliner for the soundtrack of my life.

All of which led, on Saturday night, to Las Vegas. Back to U2. To Sphere.

I bought the tickets in the April presale, originally for the final show in the run, before they added more dates to an engagement that that is now scheduled to end in February. I saw all the coverage and the social media posts from opening night and the performances that followed and it was all extraordinary. Word of mouth from those I knew who were lucky enough to have seen the show was similarly effusive, affirming everything I imagined from what I’d seen and read.

Then I got there, and Sphere had me at hello. Actually, it had me months before hello, when its exterior first lit up on July 4 and stunned anyone close enough to take an image or video and share it online, and then it stunned everyone. It was a funky combination of mind-blowing and endearing, this largest spherical structure on earth thing.

There is nothing like walking up on that venue to elevate your anticipation of what’s to come. The buzz of the crowd has the communal feeling of a group of people who feel incredibly lucky, getting ready to have a shared experience they already know will be special. Once inside, it’s all slick and cool and futuristic, and then you enter the actual arena and it takes your breath away.

The show itself defies words or description. This isn’t intended to be a concert review, but the combination of that band and that canvas, you see things you’ve never seen before, things you wouldn’t have believed possible. It feels like a true before/after moment in the history of live performance. Like maybe a 2023 version of how Romans must have felt first wandering into this big new building called the Colosseum. Photos don’t do it justice, video is closer but doesn’t remotely approach how it looks and sounds inside.

The ability of the wraparound screen to take the audience anywhere U2 wanted them to go, and then make the structure holding you, them and more than 18,000 other humans quite literally disappear. The audio, not from massive stacks of fixed and hanging speakers blaring in your face, but integrated into the venue itself, invisible, part of the organism.

When they took the stage, the first thought that crossed my mind was “40 years with these guys.” A quick mental note, profound and true and full of lived experiences and so much listening. From a bad decision and missed opportunity in high school gym class to college, first show, first job, marriage, kids and everything in between. Not dusty records pulled off the shelf, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but an active band, still together, making music and delivering stunning live experiences as part of an uninterrupted body of work. All those years and all those great songs, which got all of us to Sphere on a Saturday night in Las Vegas, with hosts who understood the assignment.

Early in the show, noting the location, Bono said, “We’re not gambling men, but we have bet our whole lives on this band, even before we could play.” When I think of this weekend and everything that came before, the thing I feel most is grateful. Thank you, U2. Thank you for finding each other as kids. Thank you for making that music and bringing it forward in such a dynamic and inviting way, always. Thank you for staying together, and holding your position in this world with such dignity and grace, for being rock stars in the absolute best representation of the term. I can’t go back 40 years and do it all over again and neither can you, but I’m so glad we had each other while it was happening. And we still do.