Review - U2 at Wembley

I’m not a big fan of stadium gigs and unless you’re in the first few rows you could be forgiven that for thinking that you were watching a DVD of the band on the big screens while body doubles prance around on the stage. If that was true I’m sure somebody would have blown the whistle by now but the sheer enormity of Wembley reduced the band to distant figures from where we were, but having said that the video screens did do a great job of providing video of the band and multimedia content through the show and had a neat trick of extending downwards in a honeycomb fashion almost to stage level. In addition to that the immense stage, the excellent lighting effects and the constant twinkling of camera flashes gave the stadium an almost magical quality.

It’s advertised as being a 360 degree tour and while the stage is circular in shape there’s definitely a “front” and a “back”, and we were more facing the back, but the band members did stroll around to our side enough to feel like were weren’t bein ignored and the drum kit did turn around a couple of times to face our way.  I’d rather have been around the “front” though.

The set itself was excellent with the first few songs being new ones but then the classics started coming out with “Beautiful Day” ,”New Year’s Day” and “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” drawing the casual U2 fans in and then on to true classics like “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” and “Pride (In the name of love)”. If you’ve ever liked any of those songs then hearing them sung with tens of thousands of voices joining in with the choruses would certainly move you and I found the hairs on my arms standing up on end. Great stuff.

Two hours seemed to go by in no time and when it was all over I almost had to pinch myself to remind myself that I’d seen a truly legendary band play legendary songs in such a great setting. An unforgettable evening.