By Mark Cunningham
U2: ‘VERTIGO’ TOUR 2005
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Part socio-political crusade, part reclamation of musical innocence, part showcase of dazzling new live production technology... U2's first tour in four years captures the band at its emotional peak. TPi travelled with the entourage through California at the start of the North American leg. Story by Mark Cunningham. Photography by Diana Scrimgeour. There's something a little different about the mood of the latest U2 tour production, and it feels like a natural culmination of the iconoclastic excess that has accompanied the Irish foursome over previous campaigns. Or could it be that the lead singer's increasing extra-curricular activities have had a subliminal influence on our expectations? Like fellow countryman Bob Geldof, Bono has developed a curious ability to make rock fans and serious politicians alike sit up and take note of some of most appalling injustices in today's world. Most importantly, his recent and on-going crusades against racial inequality and third world debt actually look like they will have a positive effect. As Bono accurately observes, whereas Zoo TV in the early '90s saw the singer attempt to reach the White House by telephone as part of his arsenal of on-stage gimmickery, these days the President readily takes his calls. It's no big surprise that the current Vertigo//2005 tour is a platform for much more than promoting U2's latest album, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb — a reclamation of lost innocence that is arguably their most wholesome and revealing effort since 1987's The Joshua Tree. Averaging 22 songs a night, the set is punctuated by a series of mission statements that dovetail neatly with such humanitarian rallying cries as the new 'Love And Peace Or Else' and the classic 'Pride (In The Name Of Love)'. Virtually all of the new album's tracks made it into the pool of around 40 songs from which the band will draw over the next year. Echoes of U2's early days are felt with 'An Cat Dubh', 'The Ocean', 'Gloria', 'The Electric Co.' and the show closer, '40', and many of the band's classic anthems and torch songs find their way into each performance on a semi-rota basis, thus keeping it fresh every night for the band and audience. PREPARATION Numerous factors influenced the band’s decision to rehearse outside of the United States, and in the search for an appropriate location, U2 discovered a 130 x 130 x 40 foot sound stage at Fox Studios Baja, near Rosarito Beach in Mexico, where scenes were filmed for the screen epics 'Master & Commander' and 'Titanic'. The studio provided the ideal environment for two weeks of solid routining prior to the band's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and subsequent full production rehearsals in Vancouver. Production director Jake Berry, currently on his second tour with U2, took up the story: "Fox Studios was one of the biggest surprises ever because I was expecting some kind of third world environment, but this was a very modern, fully equipped film studio with the best dressing rooms and offices we’ll probably find on this tour. It was a bit like stepping into something a bit smaller than Shepperton but finding you’re the only people there. "We immediately saw the advantages of this, especially as there were none of the usual distractions associated with rehearsing in a big city. The media attention on this tour, due to Bono’s activities and the huge success of the latest album, could have resulted in our working time being compromised. However, this remote location meant we got a lot of work done and the successful first night in San Diego owed a lot to it." In order for the band to become accustomed to working with the playing area, the crew installed a mock-up replica of the staging. "That was Edge’s idea and a brilliant one because it saved us an enormous amount of time later in production rehearsals," said Berry. "The band wanted to see a video while we were there and they had a 200-seat screening room, so this place was just idyllic and I’d wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone preparing for a tour." Finding any venue in North America for an undisturbed three-week period is notoriously difficult, but thanks to a National Hockey League strike, U2's crew were able to load into Vancouver's General Motors Place in late February for the first step of production rehearsals. A month later, the entire entourage moved into Los Angeles Sports Arena for a final four days of production rehearsals, with a small audience of fans, friends and family invited to preview the show on the last night. The tour then opened in San Diego on March 28 to consistent rave reviews. The Vertigo tour will pass without the intimate know-how of Steve Iredale who had been at the helm of the production team since the band's early days, however, the message is clear that it's business as usual. Does Jake Berry, who partnered Iredale on the Elevation tour, notice a 'vibe' change this time? "I think the vibe of Elevation was that it was almost a re-launch of U2 and it was probably more relaxed. On this tour there has been such a high expectation from so many quarters that it feels like there’s some pressure on the band to deliver something incredible. Fortunately, they’ve lived up to that challenge and the show is not only incredible, it’s also as innovative as ever." For America, Upstaging has supplied 16 trucks and six buses are being operated by Senators Coaches. The current crew count is approximately 80. It's interesting that despite Berry now taking the reins on his own, little has changed in terms of vendor choice. The only major change has been the freight company, with Berry insisting on Sound Moves. He commented: "It was really all about the relationship I’ve built up with Sound Moves since the end of the Stones’ Voodoo Lounge tour. When you get to this level of touring, there’s very little difference between what companies do and how much they cost, and ultimately a choice is driven by human factors. We get on great and I trust them implicity.” "Mark Fisher [tour architect], Willie Williams [show designer] and I all have long-standing relationships with Tait Towers, Brilliant Stages and Tomcat and each of them have all got their fields which they’re good at. There is no question that Tait builds the best stage there is. And although no vendor can count on a lifelong relationship with any client, Clair Brothers Audio and PRG, as they are now, have been working with U2 for donkey's years and it's a winning formula that you don't like to mess with." SIMILAR STRUCTURE, REVOLUTIONARY CONTENT Having no previous indications of how the Vertigo staging would look, it was an exciting moment when I walked into the empty arena in San Diego to catch my first glimpse. I was actually taken aback by what first appeared to be something not a million miles away from the Elevation concept — a main stage, in front of which was a heart-shaped walkway, with both areas divided by a mosh pit or exclusive club environment for lucky fans. This time, the walkway is an elliptical shape with some very clever LED integration, and although the decoration of the stage area is different, the basic idea — including four I-Mag video screens above the stage — has been retained. Jake Berry commented: "People have asked why it looks the same. But wasn’t Elevation one of the most perfect tours ever? It provided both a huge spectacle and an opportunity for fans to get very close to the band, by way of the center pit. I equate it to being like the manager of a soccer club. If you’re winning, don’t change your manager, and this was a winning formula, so don’t change the basic design." Frankly, although I understood Berry's practicality, I was shocked by this remark as it flies in the face of U2's career-long mission of constant reinvention. In tandem with their recorded output, Zoo TV, PopMart and Elevation represented huge leaps in terms of their live presentation. By contrast, Vertigo appears to be a short hop. I asked Willie Williams, U2's lighting guru since 1982 and now their overall show designer, to comment on this observation. He said: "It's a fair statement, but it’s interesting how some functional elements of a show are never questioned. We had exactly the same backline last time. We had the same PA last time, and yet no one’s saying, 'gosh, how dull, it’s repetition, have they run out of ideas?' "We really questioned whether we should do something completely different, or whether we should use that format again. But, in the end, the only reason to not do it would be because we did it last time. And to put them in a less successful performance situation, for no good reason, just seemed churlish. Another major factor which prompted those decisions, was the fact that we are actually playing in many of the same buildings." The same approach has governed one aspect of the video design. "The notion of having a video director switching live video as an adjunct to live performance is something I hate because you always end up dividing the attention and getting competing elements in a show. Last time we absolutely cracked it and I’ve done it with other people since. This is just a great way of dealing with letting the people at the back see what’s going on, without it being a competing design element. "This time, we are using the top screen for other things than I-Mag. We’ve made it one long piece, rather than four separate screens, so we can use it as one screen. For me, those things are no more aesthetic design elements than microphones or a PA — they just facilitate U2’s performance. And so I focused on other things, rather than just trying to have a new-shaped stage, just for the sake of it. "The great thing for me is that we're lulling people into a false sense of security. They think they know what to expect when they walk in but the stuff that comes out of this box is very different to what came out of the Elevation box. I was determined that we would go elsewhere, in terms of the spirit of the show. "There’s no fat in this show at all, there's hardly room to breathe — any notion of an acoustic section went out the window some time ago. I was always determined that this wouldn’t be as cuddly a show as the big, giddy love fest that Elevation was, because it’s a different world now." BIRTH OF THE MiSPHERE Certainly since Zoo TV, U2's tours have always been instantly identifiable by at least one visual milestone. Bono's MacPhisto alter-ego and the presence of a myriad of video cubes and flying Trabants were among Zoo's content; PopMart swaggered with its mirrorball Lemon, record-breaking LED wall and towering yellow arch, and then came Elevation's heart and embracing of stunning PIGI projections. Vertigo will forever be remembered for another huge step — a series of 'digital video curtain' roll drops, each containing long strings of tennis ball-sized, plastic-encased, Saco LED spherical modules called MiSpheres. Designed and manufactured by Barco and Innovative Designs (formerly System Technologies and now a Barco-owned business), the MiSphere is a direct descendant of the MiPix modular LED 'tile', only this technology allows a video image to be viewed from any angle — providing an astonishing 3D effect for audiences seated behind the stage. Above the stage hang a total of 189 strings divided across seven roll drops that are retracted and lowered at various points throughout the show. Four of the MiSphere screens fly in across the diagonals of the 360° show, and the other three form a line across center stage, behind the drum riser. Each string contains 64 spheres and measures nine meters long — the total MiSphere count is over 12,000. Impressively, Barco took just six months from initial design to final delivery of the MiSphere strings, which says a lot for the company's commitment to advancing technology when it's most needed. Williams explained how the concept evolved: "At some point in the early design process last August, Mark Fisher and I were comparing notes, and we realized we’d been independently thinking about video pixels on strings. Originally, what we wanted to do was fill the space above the stage with a three-dimensional grid of LED pixels, where panels would be arranged next to each other, spaced as far apart as the balls are from each other. "We imagined that they’d be almost invisible filaments with tiny little LED pixels on them, and so we made a half-sized mock-up in Belgium last October using MiPix. We could only view it at 180° from one side but we certainly got the sense of what something like this would look like. It was one of those days where everyone was saying, 'wow, this is amazing'. The idea, of course, was that you would literally have 3D video running in this 'video cloud'. "Unfortunately, I just wasn’t seeing what I hoped for — I realized that it only looked three-dimensional, like a rather intense two-dimensional sphere and I shuddered at the thought that we were about to dump a ton of cash on a hugely expensive way of making something which would actually look two-dimensional." Furrowed brows and scratched foreheads persisted until Frederic Opsomer of Innovative Designs was asked to rebuild the concept as one large curtain, following a conversation between Fisher, Williams, Richard Hartman and video director Stefaan ‘Smasher’ Desmedt on the return journey from the Belgium prototype viewing, Adrian Mudd, the video animator at Mark Fisher Studio, made extensive and detailed animations of video sequences running on the MiSphere curtains, and the next design phase began. "The overall effect had much more dimensionality to it than the 'cloud'," said Williams. "And, of course, it addresses some vital issues. The band are effectively playing to a 360° audience because there's seating behind the stage, and so you can’t have anything that blocks sight lines, which is always a huge factor in the design. “Whereas most video screens aren’t terribly interesting from the back, this is astounding because this is video that works from the back and can be seen through. It's a huge video surface that just comes out of nowhere, and then rolls up again, and just goes into a truck, and takes no time to deploy. Compared to something like the PopMart screen, this has been pretty healthy out of the gate." Although the individual efforts of Fisher and Williams tend to be blurred by the synergy of their collaboration, Fisher's role as architect is the key to turning great ideas into physically viable creations. He explained: "Rather than just wave my arms about and send the vendors a sketch on a napkin, I create actual dimensioned 3D technical drawings, detailed color illustrations and video animations. The fact that the MiSphere strings would wave on the way down was well known to all, because the 'egg' shaped roll up was shown on cross sections I made in early October to determine that we could get two of the roller trusses (which are the same design for the curtain and the cloud) across a truck. This is why we’re able to get these very ambitious prototype projects together in a very short time.” A BRILLIANT JOB Brilliant Stages devised and built the drum mechanisms for the MiSphere curtain roll drops. After Mark Fisher came up with the original design for the rollers on which the curtains are stored, Brilliant made a comparatively fragile prototype with plastic discs to see how each of the balls would behave when the cable joined the next one. The balls at the top take all the weight and a data cable runs between each ball, and therefore was some concern that the weight would damage the cabling, but the matter was resolved by video crew chief Stefaan Vanbesien, in conjunction with Brilliant. As Tony Bowern of Brilliant explained, they didn’t wrap up as a complete circle as expected, but rather like an egg shape. This meant that when the drums started to roll out the curtains, instead of a smooth descent there was an oscillation of the strings which gave a waving appearance. Bowern said: "When Willie saw this, he thought of them actually moving as they would in the wind, and it wasn’t a problem. We then looked at providing a package that suited Jake’s requirements in terms of the size and length of the truss, the speed that we need to wrap the strings up, how it's physically packaged and how it's all used in the show." The company liaised with Innovative Designs to incorporate the control into the five meter long drums. To prevent the use of slip rings, all the control was mounted at one end of the drum itself with 27 strings sharing 14 control units. "Each control unit controls two strings each, and they rotate with the drum," said Bowern. "They’re hard-wired to each string, so you don’t need slip rings between them, and all you needed to do was somehow get power and data to the control units. Because of the length of the drum, we ran a cable inside it that can twist up to about 10-12 times. At the other end of the drum there's a Control Techniques motor which drives a Lenzer gearbox, and there's also Lenzer safety brake." The overall automation control for the drum mechanism is supplied by Kinesys. The system is programmed to offer top and lower speed levels of descent and ascent, and each drum is individually controlled to enable a variety of roll drop configurations to be used. "It’s the thing
that Kinesys have earned a great reputation for and Willie can make
an effect out of how he actually runs them in," said Bowern. The rolling mechanism for each screen is driven by a 4kW servo motor, powered by a Kinesys Velocity variable-speed drive allowing precise movement at between 1mm and 1m per second. The screens can be run out to their full length in under 15 seconds. Said Cave: "We had to give Willie all the flexibility he might need without anyone really knowing what the parameters were." The Velocity drives are Ethernet linked to Kinesys' proprietary Vector control software, running on dual rack-mounted PCs. Kinesys also supplied power and data distribution and a Category 4 emergency stop system. Brilliant's parent company, Tomcat USA built the video whales that encase the Barco ELM G10 and RLM G5 projectors and the projection screens into sealed units, as Bowern explained: "It’s a means of attaching a screen on a frame, having an attachment for the projector behind that, and then masking everything so that no other light can get within the area of the projection." The main whale above the stage measures around 40 feet wide and contains four projectors. These can project either four separate images or one long continuous image. Additionally, there are three smaller video whales, one at the back of the stage and one at each side, delivering similar video information to the audience around the stage. Said Bowern: "Tomcat made all the frameworks for the whales, and Jake’s brief was to keep it to standard products where possible, so they're designed around a basic truss. After some teething problems and tweaking of sizing and the types of lenses used in the Barcos, everything is performing very well." UNLEASHING THE BOMB The U2 members have been considerably less involved in the design process for Vertigo than on previous tours, leaving Williams and Fisher to the task of conceptualizing around the current themes and moods dictated by the new album and the world around them. On the fateful day that Edge had his CD stolen, Williams joined the band in Nice to present some generic designs of how a stage could be placed in an American basketball arena, merely as a starting point for discussion. Williams took up the story: "We started with an end stage — with no B stage, no frills, and then looked at center stages, round stages, modular stages, pod stages, trucks that drove on to the pitch, spherical stages that opened up, and everything you could imagine. I wanted them to grasp that the placement of a stage isn’t necessarily an aesthetic choice. Edge initially wanted to contain the energy to a single end stage, which was really interesting for me. I also showed an idea to Bono which was a bomb that would just sit there throughout the show in the middle of the arena, completely unexplained, and people could graffiti on it. Then maybe it would have open up and become a B stage. Obviously it’s a metaphor for the fact that we’re on the brink of destruction, and no one seems to be particularly fussed about it. "Bono really liked it but Edge didn’t get it at all and said, dead seriously, 'so are you telling me that you think the album title refers to an actual atomic bomb?'. And there was a pregnant pause. I realized, very crucially, that the album title is entirely metaphorical, because actually, all the songs are about relationships. The bomb could be Bono's relationship with his dad, or it could be a dysfunctional marriage, or any of the atomic bombs that we have to deal with in our personal lives. “Understanding this was a real turning point for me and it sowed the seeds for them realizing that using the title literally or changing the shape of the stage just for the sake of it would be shooting themselves in the foot." "The B stage has become an absolute industry standard, and so, even if we went back to things that U2 had pioneered nearly 15 years ago, they’re just clichés now, so that’s what took us where we are. I was much more interested this time in non-visual gags. Maybe there’s a way of doing a rock show where we can move, again, raise the bar, but in a much more subtle way. Video is now where moving lights were in the mid-'80s — it's become so omnipresent that unless it's vastly different, it's no longer pressing an audience's buttons. "This could happily be U2’s swansong from big video, who knows? It’s such an easy fix to think, 'oh, we’ll just make a piece of video, or we’ll show a film'. But they’ve promised that they’ll be disciplined about it, because I think, in order to get away with doing it, we’ve got to be smart about it. For the giant video screen show, PopMart wrote the book and there’s no point in competing with that production. But I did want to remind everybody that not only were these guys the people that introduced it, they're still cleverer than anybody else, when we put our minds to it." MOVING ART
The video background for 'Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own' is a central MiSphere curtain drop displaying an aimless walking man figure, designed by Julian Opie, a high profile artist who had previously designed a Blur album cover amongst his other considerable achievements. Williams commented: "I was interested in using the visuals as a kind of a rhythmic device, and Julian's piece is a very good example of a simple, minimalist portrait." Williams fixed a meeting with Opie, taking with him a copy of the book 'U2 Show' by a certain Diana Scrimgeour, which Bono also recommended to his wardrobe department for similar reasons. "It's a very good visual device for showing someone what we're doing and all the artists we worked with before," said Williams. "Julian was very up for collaborating and the way that he works is he'll film real people and then re-paint each frame so the result is pure animation. He came up with five separate figures and we pared it down to the one we're using for 'Sometimes...'. "This guy walks on at the beginning, and then he just keeps walking. There’s something about this simple motion of the figure that has a great emotional weight. Sometime later, Julian confessed that the figure that we chose to use in the show is actually him. It’s a self-portrait, and I’m very pleased with that piece." One imagines that with Bono having such a strong emotional attachment to this song, any visual idea would have required a very hard sell. "Absolutely," agreed Williams. "In fact, amongst the panel of judges, all the friends of the band, there were many detractors and at one point I didn't think it would survive. But Bono just spoke up, and he said, 'actually I think it has real pathos'. He got it, just as I thought he would. I feel I’m a pretty good judge of seeing the world through his eyes, and I felt like that was something that he would understand." What is interesting is the way that Williams takes hints of sequences for particular songs from previous tours and re-works them for the present. Take the famous word play from the Zoo TV — they appeared in different forms for the relevant songs on subsequent tours, and this time the messages are spat out at high speed across the MiSphere curtains in Williams' latest form of 'production branding'. Williams is loathe to use the word 'abstract', but essentially this would describe the majority of the imagery harnessed for the show. Ed Holdsworth designed the sequence for 'City Of Blinding Lights' — a piece called 'Arrive', which is footage of driving into Tokyo. Said Williams: "The
'driving down a freeway' idea is the most howling cliché imaginable,
but Ed’s really taken it somewhere and it really is an abstraction.
Even on the low-res MiSpheres you do get a sense of what it is; you
get so much depth and it’s so three-dimensional. I was aware that
the MiSpheres, being low-res, would do most things very badly, but there
are certain things that they’re very good at, and that’s
what I had to find.” Williams: "This was an obvious choice because of the shape of the staging and the song title, and although Op Art as a form is quite easy to do, they rarely have any life. Run's pieces, however, have a certain rhythm and magic. So I really didn’t mess with those; he sent dozens of clips, and all I did was insert them in the control system, so I could trigger them when I feel like it. But we didn’t mess with the speed, sizing or tempo, because once you start to do that it really starts to lose something. Run also did the F15 fighter plane which drops in for 'Bullet The Blue Sky'. Again, there’s no narrative there, it just loops and loops, and away it goes." Where the injustices of Africa
are concerned, Bono's assault on conscience cuts deep during the trilogy
of 'Pride', 'Where The Streets Have No Name' and 'One'. 'Streets' has
traditionally been 'the big red moment' but this time, the Africa theme
of Bono's dialogue is underpinned by displaying a MiSphere gallery of
African flags. Williams explained: "It’s all the African
nations and they’re scrolling down, and scrolling up, and the
panels are moving. But the trick is that, halfway through, all the flags
fly out, the trusses fly in, and we get all the blinders for that big
redemption moment... and then the red comes up at the end. So it’s
kind of like, 'ah, we were just kidding you!'. That whole Africa thing
came out of Bono's attempts to find the right way to pitch the One campaign.
He’s so painfully aware of how awful that celebrity charity thing
can appear, and yet at the same time his political work has extraordinary
weight. I’m in awe of him, all over again, just for the energy
that he has in doing it. Recognizing this, Sun Microsystems and a team of IT experts called Geek Squad were brought in to process cellphone text messages from audience members responding positively to Bono's plea for support for his One campaign. "Bono is looking for a million American residents to be part of a pressure group, and the focus of his work is Africa. Sun Microsystems and Google are on board, and by registering your name by texting message you not only receive information, but as a little add-on treat, we display a selection of those names on the screen above the band at the end of the gig. "Geek Squad specialize in IT for rock tours and this is the first time we've ever gone out with an IT guy. I find it hilarious that on Elevation we were thrilled when we got a wireless signal to the mix position, it was a real treat. Four years on, if we don’t have broadband at the mix position, we can’t do the show!" SECRET WEAPON At front of house, on a crowded riser behind Joe O'Herlihy's audio control, the lighting and video directors and technicians are gathered together like bees around a hive. It's one step closer to a goal that Williams is inches away from achieving: "Rather than having separate video and lighting crews, I've been trying to pioneer a uniform visuals team because, to me, it’s just nuts to have one set of guys plugging in moving lights next to another set of guys who are plugging in DL1s. Vendor practicalities meant that we weren't able to take the leap completely this time, but that’s the way of the future.” Visuals producer Sam Pattinson was in an identical role when he worked with Williams on the creation of visual material for the Rolling Stones' Licks tour. He was in charge of the purse strings as the various artists were commissioned to create pieces for Vertigo, and as Williams observed, much of that material ended up being made on site during rehearsals. "The key element was discovering United Visual Artists, and that because of the nature of the MiSpheres and all the LED on the stage, we required a completely custom control system," he said. With Vertigo, United Visual Artists, the trio responsible for all of the impressive video graphics and data that formed the screen imagery for Massive Attack's 100th Window tour, have fulfilled a long-time ambition of working with U2. Williams described them as "the secret weapon in the visuals department". Ash Nehru, who partners Matt Clark and Chris Bird in the London-based UVA business, said: "We’ve been working towards doing projects for U2 for quite a long time. Although we'd met Willie before, it wasn't until we’d worked with [visuals producer] Sam Pattinson that it came together with Willie and he was sufficiently interested in us to visit our office and see a demo. It so happened that Bono had seen a Massive Attack show and it all fell together." So how does UVA as a company fit into this jigsaw? "Our role is to help Willie achieve his artistic vision," explained Nehru. "We’re a multidisciplinary company incorporating arts, technology and production company, and the main reason we're here is to produce the surveillance section. Our visual system, besides just being a video playback system, it’s also a three-dimensional stage visualizer. “We don’t think of visuals as just being a screen with something on it, we think of it very much as a sculptural medium. We’re always interested in what goes around the screen, the shape of the screen, and generally our forte is dealing with really odd low resolution screens. What we're doing here, effectively, is using this system to virtually 'project' our imagery across the whole 3D area of the MiSphere curtains and the LED surfaces of the Ellipse. Because of the way our system’s written, it can handle that without breaking its stride. If the resolution changes or the output map changes, it doesn’t matter - it’s all being rendered in real time." BIG BROTHER SURVEILLANCE One fascinating idea that
has found its way into the show involves covert surveillance of the
audience, resulting in a surprising video ‘gag’. The High
End DL1 fixture, part of the Catalyst system, has an on-board infra-red
video camera in its moving and six of these fixtures are scattered around
the arena, concentrating on different areas of the audience. The basis of the surveillance idea came out of a conversation between Fisher and Williams while they were “trapped together” during ‘We Will Rock You’ rehearsals in Las Vegas. Williams commented: “U2 have always been about their audience. But the absolute rule with any of the video directors I’ve ever worked with is you do not shoot the audience. As soon as you do, they will inevitably start waving and yelling ‘Hello Mum’. However, if you collect the images for later use, they have no control. They see themselves on the screen but it’s too late — its already been recorded. Capturing little snippets of video of people, when they’re completely off guard, is really beautiful. “Ash had written this program where he can take a live video image and pixelate it, but each pixel can be a different video input. I can take an image of Bono and gradually break it up, zooming in until we see that it is composed of moving images of the audience members. I've recently started shooting surveillance footage of the band during the show as well, which has a very interesting quality. “It’s also a comment on the ‘Big Brother’ era in which we live, where most of us are on camera whether we like it or not. If you’re out and about in central London, you’re on camera about 90% of the time.” The UVA team have also been instrumental in creating abstract imagery to feed to the LED panels set into the outside edges of the Tait Towers-built Ellipse stage. Nehru explained: “One of our big things is not relying on video. We tend to write software modules that do the rendering; it’s possible to very quickly create a package that’s not possible with video. “The floor LED [again manufactured by Saco] has such a weird resolution, and there are quite a lot of software modules that drive that, such as the ‘radar’ module which does a sweeping effect, and then there are the ‘gloopy’ patterns that another module produces. At times those LEDs are so bright that little more in the way of localised lighting is required.” As anticipated, working with Williams has been a very rewarding experience for UVA. Nehru commented: "He’s very calm and collected, and doesn’t lose his rag at all. There are lots of things that normally we’d be worrying about but he's a master at taking everything in his stride. It’s sometimes difficult to take a subordinate role, especially in the creative department because we have our way of doing things and he has his way of doing things. But it’s also a really good learning experience for us; we come from the electronic music side, and the rock'n'roll world isn’t really our area. It's been fascinating to see how our two worlds can interact." EXPLAIN ALL THESE CONTROLS... XL Video’s UK and Belgium offices supplied the wealth of video equipment for the tour, with the MiSpheres rental handled by Guido Ruysschaert in Brussels and the remaining cameras, projectors and control coming from Hertfordshire. Not surprisingly, UK Sales Director Chris Mounsor described Vertigo as “the toughest show, technically, I’ve ever been involved with”. In order to provide a central control platform that would handle this huge pool of computer-generated imagery and other artistic footage prepared for the tour, as well as the live camera images, XL supplied the Barco Folsom Encore show control system (Folsom was acquired by Barco last year) along with the cameras and screens. The Barco Folsom Encore provides source selection, advanced windowing features, seamless switching, video effects and integrated control. Its modular, scaleable architecture allows the system to support a wide variety of show configurations and efficiently support anything from one to 32 screens with any combination of independent display or seamless wide-screen display elements. In short, an ideal system for this tour. Video director Stefaan 'Smasher' Desmedt believes it's arguably the most powerful video control instrument deployed on a concert tour to date. He said: "The UVA feed comes into me and on top of that I can fade in and out the I-Mag if I want to. The Barco Folsom can take any signal, whether it’s a composite SDI or whatever, and it will display it in any way you wish. If we had to do this with conventional DVEs [digital video effects] and normal equipment there would be equipment racks forever! It would take a lot of effort just converting signals." Smasher's touring life began on Zoo TV for which he worked on the electronic maintenance of the projectors — "a pretty good introduction to touring video!" he said. “Our area of technology has probably been the fastest moving one in the concert business. Just look how far it’s come since Zoo, 12-13 years ago. I mean, without the Encore, it would have been virtually impossible to achieve what we have here, in the conventional way.” LIGHTING The first hint of any lighting
on this show occurs without any form of control at front of house, when
the four U2 members emerge to stroll around the Ellipse, waving flashlights
into the audience, before assuming battle positions. Then it all kicks
in… "They’ve done a lot of work on the software and I’m running a Beta version of their latest build, after all, U2 tours tend to be full of prototypes so I thought I’d join the crowd! On this version of software they’ve really sorted out a lot of the network problems that they had earlier on. Before, there was quite a weak link between the processors and the console but it seems much more stable now. I'm really pleased with the performance." Although Ramus is taking the reins of the lighting direction and at the Wholehog III, the situation is also set up for Williams to informally interject at any moment and run cues as he sees fit. To facilitate this, he has a Hog wing at his disposal as well as a Playstation-type joy stick device — together they allow him to govern the integration of the lights and video. Said Ramus: "He’s got a lot fun toys, and if he wants to do the cue for 'Where The Streets Have No Name' or hit the blinders in 'The Fly' then he can. Obviously we both know what's coming up and I might just flash him a look that says, 'do you want to take this one?'. We did the R.E.M. Up tour like that and it’s really fun to have that ability because it just mixes it up for us." Another familiar face on the tour is John Lobel of lighting supplier PRG, who can count himself among the small executive club of veteran U2 vendors. He said with a smile: "On the night of the first show, Roy Clair, Michael Tait and I were all standing upstage right, and Paul McGuinness came over to say hello. We realized that the three of us had been supplying equipment to U2 for a combined 70 years — and I was the new guy who'd only been doing it for 18 years!" Was there much time for programming? "A decent amount," said Ramus. "I put in about four days pre-programming with the ESP Vision system at PRG's shop in Las Vegas, the company's primary touring location these days. It's an enormous place in contrast to Newbury Park where we prepped the last tour. I then constructed the rest of the job during production rehearsals, and a lot of the time has been spent putting together the video system so I was waiting for the rest of it to catch up." Lobel is rightfully proud of his seven-person crew and PRG's ability to balance the team — a grouping of Australian, British, American and Canadian talent. "We have a pool of about 25-30 people who we were looking to shortlist for this tour," said Lobel. "Bruce knows a lot of these guys and he made suggestions for who would be best suited, and I worked with him to come up with the right balance of age, experience, temperament and national origin.” It’s the third U2 tour for Aussie crew chief Garry Chamberlain, taking over from Kes Thornley who is again out with the band. Lobel commented: "Kes is so over-qualified, for the stuff that he does on this tour, that it’s one of the things that makes this crew so good. To use a baseball analogy, it’s like having a really great pitcher in your bull pen, because if things get hectic he can just deal with anything."
For Vertigo, a significant amount of the Vari*Lite presence on the last tour has given way to Martin Professional products — namely MAC 2000 wash lights augmenting VARI*LITE VL3000s. PRG purchased a large amount of new equipment — mostly spotlights — specifically for this tour. Said Lobel: "The spotlights are probably the most important element throughout the whole show, and I think that one of the ways in which Willie and Bruce make it more dramatic is by keeping it really simple for a large percentage of the show and making a massive contrast with the very active, bigger looks. “It’s really
simple: there’s a color wash from the MAC 2000s wash lights and
some very bright and beautiful beams from the Lycian M2 spots. It’s
a great quality of light that comes out of them and that’s really
important, because they carry so much of the show." Lobel commented: "They've hardly ever used hard-edged lights in U2 shows, it’s not their kind of thing. The only hard-edges on Elevation, for instance, were the PIGI projectors — everything else was a wash light or an effect light. Aside from these and the Martin 2Ks, the biggest pure lighting looks are created by the 67 four-way molefays. Over the years, we’ve had a lot of different configurations of audience lighting. For Joshua Tree and Zoo we had nine-lites and some 12-lite units. On Elevation, we used linear four-way lights, now we’re using two-by-two four-ways.” The lighting rig is marginally larger, but Ramus observed that the big difference is that the current choice of fixtures has a notable increase in channels. "We have something like 75 moving lights and a big bunch of DWEs as always, plus a lot of Atomics." Thirty-seven Martin Atomic strobes contribute to one of Ramus' favorite looks in the show. "They perform fantastically on 'Vertigo'. They’re working great with the color scrollers and we bumped that number up during rehearsals by getting a dozen more of them. I’ve found a way to basically confuse the Atomics, where I tell them to do two separate things at once and they go off on this beautiful random pattern. "I did something similar on Elevation with Diversitronics D3000s. It looks programmed but it's not, and it’s not in the manual! I basically tell the strobe to come on randomly but to ramp up with full intensity, and then I tell the fader to be at zero intensity. Consequently, they just get all confused and do these things where there is no facility to program them unless you do it wrong." Although Lobel is thoroughly impressed with the new show, one could detect a little disappointment that the majority of the technical risk and experimentation with this tour has rested with the video department. When one considers the challenges that Lobel has risen to before, especially for Zoo TV and Elevation, for which he personally devised some outrageous, one-off lighting effects, it's not surprising he feels as if video is stealing some of his thunder. "The great thing was
that this allowed us to really concentrate on just doing a really well
prepared and presented lighting system, and I’m really proud of
the way it came out," said Lobel. "I think it’s a remarkably
efficient deployment — for the amount of stuff it really doesn’t
take a lot of time to set it up. Part of that is due to an idea that
Jake had for Elevation. While they’re building the grid we build
all the trusses out in the arena, and pre-hang all the lights, pre-cable
them on some wheel brackets, and then we roll it in. On this occasion, the only bespoke fixtures visible to the audience are the so-called LED 'factory lights' made by Saco. Although at the early stages of designing the show, Williams had assumed he would not be heading down the LED lighting route, discussions with Frederic Opsomer, Barco and Saco inspired him to consider certain potentials. Said Williams: “In Montreal, Saco have been making low power factory lights for industrial installations to replace metal halide fixtures. One of these things looks like a sports lighter, but it’s completely full of white LED, instead of having a metal halide fixture inside it. I saw one without its cover on, and the inside was this wonderful skeletal mass of screws, aluminium rings, LEDs and lenses, and I thought that it just looked so beautiful. So I had one made that was about 10 times the size of the original, but I felt like it needed to do more. “Taking some inspiration from the ripple drum that John Lobel made for Elevation, I asked Saco to include an incandescent fixture inside it and a little revolving vegetable strainer that goes around it, that moves the light around. It’s one of those lovely looks that I hope will be remembered.” There are three levels of
trussing involving five different moving trusses, with two diagonals
that are separate. Ramus said: "We have 30 moving points on this
for things like the factory lights and the roll drop frames, and we’re
using Vario-lifts for all of those. We’ve got a couple of 18kW
HMI Fresnels on this show — one of them is suspended with a dark
blue gel on it, it’s bright enough to fill the entire stage, and
it just comes in with an appropriate look for one of the early ‘80s
songs. The other 18kW lives under the stage and it works like a shuttering
lighthouse effect in 'Love And Peace' when Perhaps the most profound lighting effect of the show occurs when Bono asks the crowd to get out their mobile phones; the crew turn the lights off and as if the night sky fills with stars. “It’s the 21st century Woodstock,” said Williams. “The sight of 18,000 cell phone screens surrounding the stage is an effect money couldn't buy.” EMBRACING DIGITAL SOUND One of the biggest diversions from the U2 touring template has been audio director Joe O'Herlihy's move from his long-time choice of the Midas XL4 analog console, to the DiGiCo D5 Live digital board — a highly significant decision, given O'Herlihy's previous, almost religious, belief in the analog medium. This move was announced informally last September at PLASA during TPi's Designing For U2 seminar. "I was quite shocked by the reaction to the bluntness of my announcement," said O'Herlihy, U2's FOH mix engineer since 1978. "With any new format or technology that becomes available, it’s wise to wait until everybody else has driven it on a few tours here and there. “The D5 has now travelled across the world, it’s been bounced up and down, it’s been in and out of trucks and planes and boats... and it still ends up doing its thing. That’s why I've chosen the D5. There are other platforms that do a great job, such Digidesign's Venue. But, for me, the Venue hasn't had enough of a chance to prove itself yet and a U2 tour of this significance is not a place to be testing it out." Of course, the common link between the D5 and the XL4 is Bob Doyle, and the famous Doyler charm was once again a key factor. "Well, I’ve had quite a substantial relationship with Bob Doyle in his various guises down through the years. When we were starting PopMart we were among the first to use the automated XL4s, and it was technology that was essential to the craft of presenting the show with a level of technical expectation. The XL4 was the console of choice because it was the best technology available at the time. To be fair to Bob, we got two brand new consoles and quite substantial technical support. "If somebody is willing
to go the full nine yards with you in terms of back-up and technical
support, then that becomes a huge motivating factor in your choice of
who to do business with. And Bob was quite charming at delivering all
that on both occasions." "The preparation that’s gone into this tour, rehearsal-wise, is huge. I'd estimate that 99% of what I do now involves the preparation. So it’s fantastic to have a console like the D5 that gives you that whole access to functionality, and basically lets you do what you do best: mix the show. You don’t have to worry about missing cues, because in the context of the song it’s all confined in the snapshot. “Programmed cross-fades, fader moves and rides have in the past been synonymous with the studio domain, but it’s now equally available and relevant to live sound reinforcement domain, and it's a wonderful thing." To a certain extent, O'Herlihy, like many D5 users, is relying on the console's internal effects processing. "I use the six available aux sends for drum treatments and a couple of acoustic guitar and piano parts; I certainly use the various different reverbs that are on board. But for all of the vocal treatments and everything associated with the dynamic value of the vocals between Bono and Edge, I use external treatments and effects. Those decisions are based on both the sonic value of those particular items and an element of familiarity. "The Lexicon 480L has a particular sound that we get — it’s a treatment that has to basically make the transition from the studio to the stage, and the best way to do that is to replicate what we do in the studio, and the 480L does that for us. I’m sure there are other programs within the D5 that can give me a similar alternative to that, but rather than have an artist who is wondering if it’s the same thing as the studio, you just provide that comforting reassurance." For Bono's vocal compression,
O'Herlihy is using a Manley Voxbox. "I find it very transparent
and smooth, and it gives me the added de-essing feature. There’s
also a parametric in there so I have immediate access to another chain
of EQ. I’ve found that if I increase the compression ratio on
the Voxbox, we gain greater intelligibility. The lead guitarist's amplification and effects rig — known as the Edge Orchestra — has spread it wings substantially for the Vertigo tour, growing from a pair of Vox AC30s to a system that also incorporates two vintage Fender amps and a 'Vox in a box'. The microphones selected by O'Herlihy have remained fairly consistent over recent tours, with few changes. Shure Beta 58A wireless mics are used for Bono's vocals and for Edge at the piano position; a wired model is used for Edge at the static guitar position. Crown headsets are used by Edge and Larry Mullen Jr. during walkabouts. For drums, there are Audio-Technica 4050s on overheads, a Shure SM81 on ride cymbal, AKG 463 on hi-hat, an SM91 and SM52 on kick drum, Sennheiser MD-421s on toms, and an SM57 for the tambourine and cowbell. The main snare has a Beyer M88 on the top and an SM57 on the bottom, with an SM98 fixed to the drum with Velcro to pick up rim shots, while the piccolo snare is miked with an additional SM98. The small tom and cymbal set-up used on the Ellipse walkway have an MD-421 and an SM81, respectively. Edge's guitar rig and Bono's Vox AC30 are all miked with 58s, and Adam Clayton's Ashdown bass rig has MD-421s. For all DI applications, Countryman 85-FET boxes are used. CLAIR SYSTEM For the second time, U2 are touring with Clair Brothers' JBL-loaded i-4/i-4B line array system, processed by the Clair iO wireless system control that was co-designed with Lake Technologies. Powered by Clair-modified Crest 9004, QSC 9.0 and Carver 2.0 amps, this system required some adjustments at San Diego Sports Arena, because of the venue's low ceiling and O'Herlihy wasn't best pleased with the poor acoustics of the arena either. "It's not doing me any favors!," he laughed. "Where we did production rehearsals in Vancouver, the arena is a full-on 20,000 capacity facility with the proper trim height. So you get the full value of your system from a distribution perspective, and you get the aesthetic value of it locking in with the rest of the production. Fortunately, once we leave San Diego we'll mostly be playing venues that compliment the sound design." Flown on a custom 360° indoor hanging system, the PA is divided into a main left and right front system, a left/right side fill system and rear fill, with 12 Showco Prism ground sub-basses. "On this particular occasion we’ve come up with a very interesting way of distributing the rear fill," commented O'Herlihy. "We’ve got, left and right, two clusters of eight P4s per cluster. We have an up tilt and a down tilt, which basically gives us incredible distribution and dispersion so it’s extremely even across 180°. There's no cross-referencing, no hotspots, and when you walk the length of the back of the bleacher section behind the stage it’s very transparent. It’s all down to a clever usage of rigging, and it’s helped hugely because you need something that’s going to throw immediately rather than require distance for it to be functioning at its best." The central pit — variously described as Club Atomic or the Bomb Shelter — benefits from Clair FF2 front fill speakers which are attached to the entire stage perimeter and are also attached to the ellipse perimeter. This results in a club-style atmosphere where the sound has a close, intimate feel in contrast to the general arena ambience. Although it's a similar system to Elevation, O'Herlihy pointed out that things had in fact moved on. "The general placement of loudspeakers and the rear fill are all completely different because of updated technology. Also, the front fill and all of the stage perimeter and the ellipse perimeter equipment has all been specifically designed for this tour." SUBTERRANEAN MONITORS Dave Skaff shares monitor engineering duties with Niall Slevin and Robbie Adams, all of whom have enjoyed a long and fruitful association with U2. For many years, the band's monitor world has been a 'subterranean' environment below stage left, with a walkway that allows reliable communication between the band and crew. In here, mixes are divided between three consoles — Skaff's ATI Paragon II, another D5 Live shared by Slevin and Adams, and a Yamaha O2R which generates communications mixes for the stage crew. On the eve of the second San Diego show, pulses raced as the Paragon broke down, forcing some quick thinking on the part of Skaff who rescued the situation with a Yamaha PM4000. "We carry an old PM4000 for the band to use with a couple of wedges in a backstage rehearsal room for when they occasionally might want to work out parts in private,” he said. “We hadn't set that up just yet, so the console was just idle and it provided a quick solution." It was to Skaff's credit that the band were able to function on stage, with the minimum of background fuss, but it also helped that U2 are sensible professionals who share an understanding of what is going on around them, technically. "The hardest part was attempting to cross-patch everything," said Skaff. "There were a lot of things that had to just get triaged; there were no effects and the on-stage sound for that show was pretty dry, but workable. The band were really professional about it and they just needed to know how to work around the shortcomings. They were part of the same team dealing with the same problem, not someone standing over you demanding that things are just right. "They place an enormous
amount of faith in us guys and trust our judgement. When Adam walked
in he just said, 'you seem to know how to get around this, just carry
on', and Larry really liked the sound of his toms, so it was a kind
of relief!" "I chose the Paragon II firstly because I know it back to front, but also we're not doing things much differently,” said Skaff. “The ATI has got an incredible amount of outputs and routing options, and we use pretty much every bit of it. I didn’t use a digital console for several reasons, one of them being that I send mixes out to several other mixers on stage, and things then come back to me, so latency was an issue." Several years ago, Larry Mullen Jr. expressed concern that because monitor world was going beneath the stage, the crew might not react quickly enough to an immediate band requirement. This led Skaff to design a system whereby he can send click tracks and other audio information to Sam O'Sullivan — Mullen Jr.'s drum technician and backline crew chief — via a set of ATI 8MX2 mic pre-amp mixers. This allows O'Sullivan to make instant adjustments whenever the drummer gives a signal. Skaff: "It evolved through working in the studio. I send stereo pairs of the drums, keyboards, guitars, vocals and a bunch of separate click tracks of percussion loops. So they’re all available there for him, but they all come back to me as the final arbiter of the mix. We do something similar for Terry Lawless [the programmer who contributes keyboards from beneath the stage]. "And there’s another situation, I think, with Terry where we do something like that as well. If I was using digital consoles for that calculated conversion time, it would put me way out of time for a click track, or just enough to get us in trouble. So, rather than even go there, I’ve mixed this band on an analog console for years." Robbie Adams' main task is to record every show using the combination of a DiGiCo D5 Live and a Pyramix digital multitracking system. Joe O'Herlihy explains: "It’s like an iTunes snapshot of a particular week. Robbie is a studio engineer who worked on Achtung Baby and a few other records with us down through the years. His role during the day is to track everything that we’ve recorded, listen back and select stuff for the band so that they can decide which songs are strong enough to offer as downloads. The Pyramix technology is another advantage of the D5 and, again, another selling factor when it came to choosing the console." Whereas Adams and Niall Slevin look after the personal mixes for Bono and Edge, Skaff concentrates on Larry Mullen Jr., Adam Clayton, Terry Lawless and the so-called '911' emergency back-up mixes. Skaff is using an astonishing 38 of the 40 mixes available to him on the Paragon II. One notable progression in U2's monitor world is that Adam Clayton has finally conceded to using in-ear monitoring. Skaff commented: "Adam's really giving it a shot this time and he's doing OK. Our issue at the moment seems to be with click tracks, how much is musical and that kind of stuff. We're doing what we can to make those click tracks musical and enjoyable to play to." The IEM systems in use are a Sennheiser combination of new G2 series and older 3000 series transmitter/receivers. "After some A/B comparison, the vocals and guitars seem to sound better with the older units, and the newer units seem to have a much cleaner, punchier sound for the bass guitar," said Skaff. "Larry is also on a new G2 system when he’s wandering around the stage and he has a hardwired one when he’s sitting at the drum kit." Future Sonics Ear Monitors are worn by Bono, Clayton and Mullen Jr., although Edge has been experimenting with some unidentified consumer ear pieces given to him by producer Steve Lillywhite who, like Brian Eno, Flood and Daniel Lanois on previous tours, has been travelling with the band to offer his own advice on approaches to replicating studio sounds in the live domain. Skaff adds, "But Marty Garcia from Future Sonics, who has worked with us for some time, has been out on the tour and after discussion with us, he's come up with some new custom ear pieces that we hope might offer a better solution for Edge for the length of the tour." [I tried these out myself on my iPod and I immediately noticed an incredibly smooth bass response.] Despite the in-ear activity, wedges are still in evidence but the stage count is considerably smaller these days. On a previous stadium tour, the band used around 65 wedges. For Vertigo, there are two Clair 12AMII wedges for Bono, two 212AMs for Edge, one 12AMII by the piano, two ML18 subs for Mullen Jr., and a 212AM, a P4 and two ML18s for Clayton. So the on-stage sound is
a lot quieter then? "A lot quieter, yeah," replied Skaff.
"The wedges are basically there for some localized low end support,
and what you mostly hear onstage is coming from the house. A lot of
that house stuff coming back in the microphones is very usable and it's
become a big part of the mix I’m doing for Larry and Adam. I’m
just mixing slightly into or behind the guitar levels coming back from
the room. The drum kit overheads are very hot, it’s very open
and I only have gates on the kick drum. Sam does a great job with Larry's
kit and it's sounding excellent." FROM
AMERICA TO THE WORLD |
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