U2 Plays Live at The Sphere in Las Vegas!

U2 plays live at The Sphere – review and photos by Todd Johnson

Everyone has a favorite band. My favorite band, for as long as I can remember, is U2. U2  are very unique band in some ways. They are obviously a rock band, but one of the members , Dave Evans (more commonly known as  “the Edge”) is a master of minimalism. The Edge and the rest of the band made a conscious effort to shun the type of hard rock guitar they heard back in high school and embraced the minimalism type of playing that the the Edge became known for. In a documentary called “It Might Get Loud” the Edge played two notes on one string on the song “Elevation” and those notes became the basis of the entire song. The lead singer of U2, Paul Hewson (also known as “Bono”) is the iconic singer of the band.  He is a very charismatic front man. Adam Clayton plays bass in U2 and he is known as the posh one, the guy with all the style.

I’ve been lucky enough to get his autograph a few times and the last two times I met him I asked him ‘where is your kimono?’ (there was a famous and hilarious photo of Adam in a Kimono after a gig with a cop outside of a Whataburger. After I mentioned that to him he said “That photo got around a lot, didn’t it?” And before the band even existed there was future bombastic drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., who is the one who actually put up the original sign many, many years ago to start a band which eventually became U2. However, Larry Mullen Jr  has had some back problems in recent years and has had to have some surgeries for it so during the residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas Larry is being temporarily replaced with Dutch rock drummer Bram van den Berg. U2 was slightly controversial at one point for the absolute dumbest thing imaginable. They were criticized back in 2014 for putting their latest album (at that time) “Songs of Innocence”  for FREE on every single iPod and iPhone out there. And people actually complained about this.

The Sphere is a 2 billion dollar marvel of engineering. It consists of 1.2 million  small pucks that . It seats 18,600 people. I’ve heard it is very steep in the upper levels, but I’ve also heard it wasn’t as steep as people make it out to be. They also have “robots” that interact with people and other things somewhere in there, but when me and my friend got there they brought us right to the general admission area so we didn’t get to see any of that. We didn’t even see the merch area except for the one that was outside. According to Wikiepdia, it is 875,00 square feet and the Sphere is 366 feet high by 516 feet wide. It is an engineering marvel, we were trying to figure out if you could see through it or if that was an optical illusion too.

One of the people who works at the Sphere called the experience ‘Virtual Reality WITHOUT the goggles’ which I totally agree with. When U2 was playing “Even Better Than the Real Thing” it truly lived up to the song title because for a little while it seemed like the stage was raising higher up in the air. However, it was a total optical illusion because the stage did not move at all but the random Vegas themed objects in the background gave the illusion that the stage was getting higher. I started feeling vertigo which is a bit ironic since that is one of U2’s biggest hit songs and that wasn’t the one they were playing (at least not yet.) It was very appropriate since this concert happened to be on Friday the 13th.

Most of this U2 residency at the Sphere revolves around the album “Achtung Baby”, but they had a lot of other songs in there too. They also played their new song “Atomic City” which is an homage to Las Vegas and during the concert they play it in front of a digital version of Las Vegas in the Sphere. It is SO detailed and amazing.  The one I was looking forward to the most was “the Fly” since they resurrect the different words and phrases they had during the original ZooTV tour back in the early 1990’s and that did NOT disappoint. Everything You Know is Wrong’ and other phrases pop up like an information overload and it is fucking amazing.

The opening song “Zoo Station” made the Sphere look like the walls were coming apart with fake digital dust and everything. During one song they have a very, very long ribbon going up to the ceiling that is “attached” to a digital balloon for another song. Sometimes they have a gal swinging on a swing under it, but this night they didn’t. If you have the chance to go to the Sphere, DO IT! It is an amazing technological marvel,  but somehow the technology melts away and grabs you by the heart and makes you feel the emotional experience and it is a “and there’s a big one on tonight.”