U2

Trying to establish which was a band's greatest show or tour, or the best or worst of all time, means venturing into pure subjectivity, even though "taste is the enemy of art", as U2 once said, borrowing an aphorism from Marcel Duchamp (who, however, was referring to good taste). Still, with a fair degree of impartiality, it's safe to say that the Zoo TV Tour was among the most important shows ever staged by the Irish band, if not the most important of all. Just under two years on the road around the world, starting in Lakeland, Florida, on February 29, 1992 and ending in Tokyo on December 10, 1993, it included two arena legs, one American and one European, and three stadium legs, among them the 1993 European summer leg renamed "Zooropa" after their eighth studio album, as well as a thorough Italian campaign, the longest ever undertaken by U2, their Grand Tour, which marks its thirtieth anniversary these very days.

From July 2 to 18, in fact, Bono and co. brought their phantasmagoric, hyper-technological circus up and down the length of Italy (following the pair of Milan shows in May 1992 with the indoor version of the show). Eight concerts in total: the 2nd and 3rd in Verona, the 6th and 7th in Rome, the 9th in Naples, the 12th in Turin, and the 17th and 18th in Bologna (with a single foreign detour, the stop in Marseille on the 14th). Italy is the most represented country on the list of dates, matched only by Great Britain as a whole, though split across three distinct nations (England, Scotland and Wales).

But the whole Zooropa Tour was conceived as a kind of tribute to the Old Continent, somewhat neglected by the band in recent years in favor of the United States. After all, "Achtung Baby", the 1991 album that gave rise to the so-called "Zoo era", and the aforementioned "Zooropa", the follow-up long-player/companion piece released right in the middle of the Italian leg, on July 5, 1993, are thematically and musically very Europe-centric, unlike in the recent past. So, staying true to that course, the quartet committed to a good three and a half months of shows on this side of the Atlantic, a residency never planned before, except at the very start of their career, when there was a continent still to conquer: from the Netherlands to their native Ireland, from Portugal to the United Kingdom, taking in Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the Scandinavian countries and even Hungary, which until a couple of years earlier had belonged to the Soviet bloc. The list of dates also includes cities never visited before by the band and usually far from the standard touring routes not just of U2: Oviedo, Bremen, Strasbourg, Budapest, Nijmegen, as well as our own Verona and Naples. And it's from the city of Romeo and Juliet that we begin our account of the Italian dates.

Verona, July 2

Stadio Marcantonio Bentegodi, one of the venues used for the 1990 Italy World Cup. Lightning and thunder threaten the crowd packed between the stands and the pitch, kept entertained during the wait, starting in the late afternoon, by the Irish theatre company Macnas (who take the stage wearing enormous masks reproducing the heads of the members of U2), the rockers An Emotional Fish, also Irish and authors of "Celebrate", the song just covered by Vasco Rossi as "Gli spari sopra", and finally Pearl Jam, the Seattle grunge band who for a couple of years have been touring behind their debut album, "Ten", while waiting to release their sophomore record (which will come out in October under the title "Vs."). In short, a good time is had by all, right while, barely three kilometers away, at the Arena, an opera is being staged. But at least tonight, rock beats classical music, Bono & co. are preferred to Mascagni and Leoncavallo, and the nearly forty-five thousand hearts crowding Hellas's home ground beat harder than the roughly thirteen thousand comfortably seated in the amphitheater of Piazza Bra. Among those present at the stadium: model Naomi Campbell, girlfriend of U2 bassist Adam Clayton, as well as Axl Rose and Slash of Guns N' Roses.

Those in attendance find themselves in front of the same stage set that had already dazzled North American audiences during the tour's autumn leg, save for a few small changes. A monster of a stage, hulking and unsettling, like the set design of "Blade Runner" or something along those lines, a giant of plastic and metal halfway between a television station, Zoo Television indeed, and an oil refinery. Antennas as tall as buildings, screens of every size scattered across the stage alongside countless amplifiers, woofers and speakers, a multitude of spotlights, and also, lowered from above and hanging from enormous cables, a handful of Trabants, the compact cars produced in the former East Germany, decorated in street art style and also serving to light up the stage with their headlights. All of it topped by the tour's glowing logo, for one of the biggest productions in the history of live music. A few numbers? A stage 24 meters deep and 76 meters wide, a production team of 145 people plus another 45 working on building the set, 54 trucks to transport the equipment, nearly 5 kilometers of electrical cable, and 40 hours needed both to set it all up and to tear it all down.

When the lights go down and the "monster" comes to life, it feels like stepping straight into a dystopian novel. Images fired off the screens follow one another at a dizzying pace. On the largest one run a few frames from "Olympia", the Nazi documentary film about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, while in the darkness The Edge, Adam and Larry Mullen Jr. take their places on stage one by one, each picking up his own instrument. Suddenly the black-and-white footage vanishes, giving way to a rapid-fire sequence of video fragments set to Beethoven's Ninth, the anthem of the European Union, before the central screen turns entirely blue, with the twelve yellow stars arranged in a circle, as Bono's silhouette appears against the "pro-European" backdrop. As soon as the pre-recorded backing track stops, the menacing guitar intro of "Zoo Station" kicks in, the opening track of the aforementioned "Achtung Baby", and the frontman revels in it, mimicking the goose-step of Hitler's memory.

The show's concept looks back at history, but it's also thoroughly of the moment, sounding like a warning against today's nostalgia for disastrous totalitarian experiences, especially in light of the resurgence of neo-Nazi and neo-fascist movements and parties across the Old Continent. It's no coincidence that the countries where U2 settled in longest during the Zooropa Tour were precisely Italy (as mentioned, 8 dates, half of which — ironically enough — in stadiums inaugurated by Benito Mussolini: Rome's Stadio Flaminio and Bologna's Renato Dall'Ara) and Germany (6 shows, including the one in Berlin on June 15, held in the very same Olympiastadion that hosted the aforementioned Third Reich games). All this while, amid a thousand difficulties, the technocratic architecture that would govern the continent for decades to come was being born. The signing of the Maastricht Treaty on February 7, 1992, which would formally come into force on November 1, 1993, marked the birth of the EU as we know it today, but judging by the disillusioned, decadent mood of the show, the horizon didn't look so bright to U2. True, in the title (and opening) track of the album "Zooropa" they sing ⟦Q1⟧, but a few tracks later they also say ⟦Q2⟧. After all, this is the realm of contradiction and strangeness that defines this artistic phase of U2, and the stage show follows suit, portraying the confusion of the times, the so-called global village, staging the present-day paradoxes of the world of communication.

The new U2 are ironic, sharp, vague and elusive. A studied ambiguity that marks their new course and with which they are distancing themselves from their messianic image of the 1980s. Here, their "evangelical" past is banished. The first part of the show is, as throughout the rest of the tour, given over to songs from the album that kicked off the quartet's acid/electronic phase, the "Berlin" one from 1991. The first six songs (after "Zoo Station" come "The Fly", "Even Better Than The Real Thing", "Mysterious Ways", "One" and "Until The End Of The World") are all drawn from there, the rationale being, as ever, to promote "Achtung Baby" to the point that not a single song from the soon-to-be-released record will make the setlist. Another oddity.

But it's the technology that makes the show unique, since what unfolds feels more like a piece of theatre than a rock concert. A futuristic, avant-garde piece of theatre, "vorsprung durch technik". The audience is bombarded by a flood of video fragments and nonsense phrases mixed in with the equally overwhelming music of the band. The images numb the onlookers, and the written messages that appear and disappear on the monitors at the speed of light are often slogans borrowed from the language of marketing, or propaganda, or the mass-manipulation techniques of Le Bon-ian memory. Somewhere between George Orwell's "1984" and John Carpenter's "They Live". And these U2-esque mottos are also inconsistent with one another — no sooner have you absorbed one than you're forced to disavow it. And all this while the band, sly and unbothered, grinds away on songs charged with electricity that seem to strip the skin right off you.

There isn't a moment's respite, the show is relentless, physical. The one emotional break comes with the ballad "One", dedicated to the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina: "Five hundred kilometers from here, people are dying", Bono says, referring to the war in the Balkans, before launching into the song. Zoo TV is machine and man, coldness and warmth, detachment and humanity.

The first leap back in time is "New Year's Day", then back to the present with "Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World" and an accompanying dance with a girl from the audience along with the popping of a champagne bottle, after which the band eases off a little and allows itself its first bit of divertissement: the drummer's solo vocal turn on a classic Irish folk song, "Dirty Old Town", before the mostly acoustic middle section in which the four "unplug" and make their way to a small stage in the middle of the crowd, connected to the main stage by a long walkway. Here it's the catalog's more unplugged-friendly "numbers" that dominate, from "Angel Of Harlem" (capped with a nod to the Temptations' "My Girl") to "When Love Comes To Town", to a disorienting virtual duet with Lou Reed, whose face suddenly takes shape on the main screen, over the strains of "Satellite Of Love". Then the band "re-plugs" and launches into the final stretch before the encores, the most cathartic part, devoted to the older songs, or rather to those from the 1980s found on "The Unforgettable Fire" and "The Joshua Tree": here then come "Bad" (with a snippet of "All I Want Is You", from "Rattle And Hum"), "Bullet The Blue Sky", "Running To Stand Still", "Where The Streets Have No Name", the redemptive "Pride", another lifeline amid so much chaos, and finally "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", which flows into Ben E. King's legendary "Stand By Me".

But it's after the break that Bono unleashes the best of his histrionic talent. He returns to the stage in an extremely elegant gold suit, heavily made up and wearing a pair of horns on his head: now he's MacPhisto, his European alter ego (who supplants his North American counterpart, Mirrorball Man), a boastful, washed-up rock star well past his prime, an aged Ziggy Stardust in lamé who loves entertaining the crowd with theatre-of-the-absurd monologues and... prank calls. Usually, after introducing himself by half-singing, almost spoken-word style, a very Einstürzende Neubauten-like version of "Desire", he has a phone brought to him and calls the first person who comes to mind, be it a head of government or the switchboard of a local taxi company. In Verona, though, that devilish vocalist is in the mood for anniversaries, and the number he dials belongs to Clannad, a fellow Irish band and friends of U2, to whom, in a live link-up with Irish television, he offers birthday wishes for their twenty years of activity, singing "Happy Birthday" together with the amused, complicit crowd.

The final run of songs is then entrusted to "Ultra Violet", "With Or Without You" and "Love Is Blindness", closing with a voice-and-guitar-only rendition of "Can't Help Falling In Love", the classic Elvis Presley song, closing the circle between rock's past, present and future. "Elvis is still in the building", Bono says at the end, and in a way U2 will stay in the building too, if only because the stage certainly won't be dismantled: in 24 hours they're back for round two.

Verona, July 3rd

Same again, another lap. The second show in the Veneto city, with the same opening acts as the day before, is even more electrifying. Once again it's a showdown between rock and opera (tonight the Arena is hosting Bizet's Carmen), and once again it's "Star Wars" at the Bentegodi, with the usual Babel of messages and winks in the first half, followed by a soft interlude and an almost religious final rush before the encores. In the afternoon Bono was interviewed by Bill Carter, an American filmmaker working in a refugee camp in Sarajevo, and during the concert, before "One", the singer tells the crowd that in the Bosnian capital, under siege for more than a year by Serbian/Yugoslav troops, a nightclub has been set up in the basements where, three days a week, people gather to dance to rock and dance music at full volume to drown out the sound of bombs and forget, even if only for a few hours, the horror of war.

As for the concert itself, there are a few changes to the setlist, such as no "Tryin' To Throw Your Arms" and its accompanying champagne ritual, plus a handful of other tweaks (Larry's "folk act" is dropped, "Satellite Of Love" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" are moved up a few slots, and "I Will Follow", the Bob Marley-esque "Redemption Song" and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" are added to the set played on the B-stage).

The changes mostly affect the central part of the show, the least rigid section and therefore the one most open to improvisation. Not that it's really improvisation at all—everything is planned down to the smallest detail, every single note, every movement, every speech, every word, and even the most relaxed-seeming moments are actually pieces of a schedule timed to the second. July 3rd, incidentally, is the anniversary of Jim Morrison's death, so Bono slips a snippet of "The End" into the tail of "Running To Stand Still", while tonight MacPhisto's phone call heads straight for the Vatican: "Can you picture the Pope going on a world tour?" the singer asks the crowd ironically. "Let's see if we can wake him up", he adds, dialling the number for the Vatican switchboard, which rings out unanswered. "I just wanted to ask him if he needed any bits of our stage, once Zoo TV is over", Bono finally says, looking crestfallen.

Rome, July 6th

As mentioned, on the eve of the first Rome show "Zooropa" is released, an album U2 have yet to preview live in any way. Almost everyone expects it to happen in the capital, but in the days leading up to the show the talk is more of bureaucracy than music. The Flaminio dates are in fact preceded by a row over decibel levels. Neighbourhood committees are up in arms against the event's organisers, still remembering U2's previous visit, back in 1987 with The Joshua Tree Tour (their last time in Italy before the current tour), when the high sound amplification caused damage inside apartments in the Parioli and Flaminio areas. Bono and co. are left hanging by a thread, so much so that right up to the last minute it's unclear where the stage will even be set up, whether at the Viale Tiziano venue or elsewhere. Between endless meetings at the prefecture and bizarre technical tests carried out by council engineers using sound-level meters, both at the stadium and in a sample of homes near the venue, the back-and-forth between authorities, organisers and local residents' associations drags on until just a few hours before showtime. Those opposed to holding the concert at the Flaminio propose the Olimpico stadium as an alternative, which would mean turning the two nights into just one, on July 7th; but Coni refuses to allow the use of the stadium where Roma and Lazio play their home matches, for fear of ruining the pitch. In the 1990s, rock concerts in stadiums are a hot-button issue in Italy.

It's probably more a matter of culture, and in 1993 that shift in mentality hasn't happened yet. One possible compromise is a special plastic sheeting to be laid over the pitch, tried out for the first time precisely at U2's Verona show, but in the end, as often happens here in Italy, the solution is a non-solution: U2 will play quietly, meaning they'll be given a maximum decibel limit (80), beyond which severe penalties could kick in. The law in theory sets a cap of 55 decibels, but on June 22nd Vasco Rossi, also at the Flaminio, exceeded 160. But the controversies don't end there. Another one concerns the number of spectators at the two shows. The promoter announced that 35,000 tickets were sold per date, as agreed, but the number of people actually in the stadium turns out to be 42,000 per night, and the band's management suspects the extra tickets were put on the market illegally.

Finally, once the gates open on the afternoon of July 6th, the music takes centre stage again. Once more it's An Emotional Fish and Pearl Jam warming up the crowd. As for U2, once again there's no song from "Zooropa" in the setlist, an album that is, after all, very electronic and hard to reproduce live. Among the few variations from the setlist of the first Verona date, which is almost identical, is the first (and last) appearance in this leg of the tour of "Van Diemen's Land", a song written and sung by The Edge, released in 1988 on "Rattle And Hum", a tale of emigration and injustice. "Rome, it's hot", Bono says before "Even Better Than The Real Thing", then, during the usual phone-call segment, the glam/glitter-clad frontman tries the Pope again, this time attempting to call Castel Gandolfo to ask—as he tells the crowd while dialling the number—whether the Pontiff supports Roma or Lazio. To the staff member who answers, though, he only says he has a dear friend named Giulio Andreotti who wants to go to confession. Indeed, this is the height of the Mani Pulite scandal, and there's no shortage of material to poke fun at Italy's current political affairs.

Rome, July 7th

During "Even Better Than The Real Thing", the winner of an MTV contest is brought up onstage to take the place of one of the onstage cameramen and film the band for a few seconds. As for the songs, the setlist is similar to that of the second Bentegodi show (the alternation between a "regular" and a "backup" setlist, which are anyway quite similar in their broad structure, will remain a constant from one show to the next), but finally it's "Zooropa"'s turn, making its live debut in the "The Edge moment" (replacing "Van Diemen's Land") with the lead single "Numb", a wonderfully original track written and sung solely by the guitarist (who also stars in its video), which, over a heavily effected backing of guitars and electronic sounds of various kinds, delivers lyrics with an almost rap-like cadence, made up of individual lines all introduced by the negation "Don't". A total blast. Just as entertaining is MacPhisto's phone call, this time to the Hotel Raphael, where Bettino Craxi is supposedly staying, and where, back in April, the same, widely despised former Socialist Party secretary was pelted with a shower of coins thrown by an enraged crowd over the Tangentopoli scandal. To the receptionist who answers, though, the frontman leaves only a message for the disgraced leader: "Tell him Antonio Di Pietro is looking for him".

By the end of the two nights, though, it's the residents around the Flaminio area who aren't having fun. U2 didn't fully respect the volume limits, especially on the first night, slightly exceeding the decibel cap set by the council, much to the "delight" of the so-called pariolini. And, inevitably, the controversy has taken on political overtones: on one side the rock crowd, associated with a left-wing image; on the other, the wealthy residents of one of the city's notoriously most exclusive areas, obviously linked to the right. Bono and co. are reported to the authorities, but by then it's done, and they're so heartbroken about it that after the second show they go off to dance on the beach at Fregene.

Naples, July 9th

The first and, so far, only time U2 have played Naples. The show at the San Paolo stadium, another "world-class" venue as of 1990, on a par with Turin's Delle Alpi and Bologna's Renato Dall'Ara, where the band is expected in the following days, wasn't a gift from San Gennaro but, more prosaically, partly the result of an all-night vigil organised by fans in early February, when the date was still uncertain, with the council's final go-ahead not arriving until the following month. In front of 50,000 fans at Fuorigrotta (oddly, it's not a sellout), after the usual An Emotional Fish and our own Luciano Ligabue (reportedly chosen by Adam himself), the support slot is filled by none other than the just-reunited Velvet Underground. In an ideal world it would have been U2 opening for Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker, but such is life.

"Numb" is once again in the setlist and, during the unplugged set, Bono once more dedicates "Redemption Song" to war-torn Yugoslavia. And once again it's Italian politics that inspires the frontman's irony in his MacPhisto guise, as he tries to phone Poggioreale prison to speak — he announces to the crowd — with Nello Polese. Naturally he can't get through to him, since the former mayor of Naples is under house arrest at his villa in Massa Lubrense; instead, the prison switchboard operator picks up and dismisses the devilish caller with a "vatt' a cucca', guaglio'" ("go to sleep, kid"). Another colourful anecdote playing on Neapolitan stereotypes, to be taken with a pinch of salt, of course: while the stage was being built, someone forced open the door of a warehouse holding the crew's equipment and made off with a forklift truck.

But even this time U2 enjoyed themselves so much that the day after the show they hop on a coach to Positano: first an aperitif at a bar with a nice glass of Caruso from Ravello on a gorgeous terrace overlooking the sea, then lunch at a beachside restaurant (menu: linguine with prawns and seafood, mozzarella hearts and mixed grilled fish), and finally a boat trip to Li Galli, with plenty of swimming and diving thrown in, of course. And that's not all. The day after that, a visit to Sorrento. Such is the rockstar life.

Turin, 12 July

Three days later, U2's multimedia circus arrives in Turin. The four of them arrive in the late afternoon, incognito, in a small van. Nobody notices them. Half an hour earlier they had landed at Caselle airport, flying in directly from Naples-Capodichino. Their sunburnt skin (calling it a tan would be a stretch for such pale, freckled Irish complexions as theirs) suggests some serious sunbathing during their days in Campania. Before the show, Bono, The Edge, Adam and Larry tuck into king-size steaks freshly served up by a strictly English chef.

At the Delle Alpi, An Emotional Fish and Ligabue open again, but not Velvet Underground. In the Italian capital of the car industry, MacPhisto can't help but take aim at Gianni Agnelli. "Do you see these Trabants hanging up here?" he asks the fans, who by now have already got ahead of him with a chorus of "vaffanculo" aimed at Villar Perosa. "I've only got three left — do you think Fiat could help me out?" The frontman then dials the number for Mirafiori, but the voice that answers hangs up immediately, and Bono just has time to hum the chorus of Stevie Wonder's "I Just Called To Say I Love You", to the crowd's laughter.

The next day the band heads for Saint-Tropez for another day of relaxation, before making their way to Marseille for the 14 July show, the only foreign detour of the Italian leg. They'll be back in Italy on 17 and 18 July for the final two dates, in Bologna.

Bologna, 17 July

This time the fun gives way even more to the horror of war. For the first time, U2 link up via satellite video with Bill Carter, whose account of the grim days in Sarajevo is so harrowing that, once the live link ends, it's genuinely difficult for the band to start playing again. "We're about 500 kilometres from a very different place to this one," Bono announces just before Carter appears on screen, "we're going to try to reach the people of Sarajevo using this crappy technology we've got here." Then comes the filmmaker's report: "An hour ago two bombs killed a child and wounded five people. People are eating grass, and to find water you have to walk two or three hours. Today I went to the hospital to see a friend of mine," the correspondent continues, "and while he was fetching water a shell exploded near him and a piece of shrapnel lodged in his head. He has two daughters. Who's going to fetch water for them now? You know, I'm less than an hour's flight from Bologna — if I caught a flight right now, I'd be there with you before the last song." Bono is stunned and doesn't know how to respond, managing only to stammer out a "we're thinking of you and praying for you," before adding, referring to the people of Sarajevo: "Europe should be taking you far more seriously than it is. We're letting you down."

A moment like that, dropped right in the middle of a show, really is a gut punch. Some might think that death, fear, suffering and devastation are being reduced to mere entertainment, so much so that Bono, a little later, before launching into "Redemption Song", feels compelled to admit: "There's something obscene about this, something doesn't add up." But sadly not even that is enough to lift the weight, which continues to hang over the rest of the show. It's MacPhisto who lightens the mood a little, calling up his friend Luciano Pavarotti, a true son of Modena, who is of course expecting the call and, on picking up, asks how the show is going. "Great," Bono replies, "the people of Bologna are wonderful tonight. How's the Maestro's voice? I hear you've been losing weight lately, but I like you just the way you are." Big Luciano, however, lets the invitation to sing slide, simply wishing everyone health and happiness.

Bologna, 18 July

"Zooropa" is the best-selling album of the week in Italy, and Bono says he's thrilled by the news. Even so, "Numb", played at the Dall'Ara as well as in Naples and Turin, will remain the only song from the new record performed in our country on this tour. Although the previous night's Sarajevo link-up hasn't been fully digested, the band do it again at the second Bologna date. "On TV you never know whether what you're watching is real or not," Bono states. "You can no longer tell the difference between an advert and the CNN news. You can't ask television any questions. But here at Zoo TV, we're going to try." In today's update, Carter reports that there has been some fighting in Sarajevo today, but twelve kilometres away, fifteen thousand refugees have come under artillery attack and now have nowhere to go. The filmmaker also reveals that his friend who was hit by the shell died this morning. But this time it's not just him speaking live on video — also appearing is a Sarajevo resident named Darko, and it's the first time in 17 months of war that a Bosnian has been able to speak live to the world: "Thank you all," the man says, "tonight we feel less alone. Personally, I think the saddest thing about the war is being separated from your own family, from my wife and my children. They're living and growing up somewhere abroad, without me, and we can't even hear each other's voices. But the most terrible thing of all is that my parents live four kilometres from here, and for a year now I haven't been able to get in touch with them." The Dall'Ara breaks into moved applause.

As for the Bologna stadium, it's worth noting that it was inaugurated in 1926 in the presence of Mussolini, and it was in Bologna, the following day, during the presidential motorcade's passage at the corner of Via Rizzoli and Via Indipendenza, that the anarchist Anteo Zamboni attempted to shoot the then prime minister, only to miss and be lynched in the square by fascist squadristi. Bono is probably unaware of this, but, in his devilish MacPhisto guise, he has fun talking about Il Duce: "Do you think he'd have looked good in a suit like mine?" he asks the crowd. "I miss him — don't you?" he insists. Naturally the crowd roars back no. "I do think he has a rather pretty granddaughter, though," he adds with a wink, before dialling the number of Alessandra Mussolini, at the time an MSI member of parliament, to leave her a message on her answering machine: "I was a great friend of your grandfather's, you're doing a fantastic job. Tomorrow morning I'll be leaving Italy, but I'll carry you forever in my heart." Indeed, in the heart — the very same place where the more than 350,000 lucky fans who attended the Italian dates will forever carry U2, these U2.

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