U2 Elevation 2001 PHILADELPHIA Show One/Two
JUNE 11 2001
What Happened When The Larry Mullen Band Hit Philadelphia
Edge wore his red No. 3 t-shirt.
Larry draped a 'Larry Mullen Band' t-shirt over his drum kit, courtesy of a perceptive fan.
Bono sang Cole Porter's Night and Day at the end of U2's Beautiful Day.
The singer introduced the song Stuck In A Moment You Can't Get Out Of like
this: 'It was 20 years ago, around about now anyway, we played a little tiny club in Philadelphia I think it was called the Bijou. It was 20 years ago, there was 20 people there, nothing much has changed really...
'I mean that in an odd way , it feels like on this tour we've as much to prove as we had on that very first tour...' U2 played The Beatles' In My Life to introduce their song.
U2 played Elevation ('Philadelphia's gonna be lucky this week..'),Mysterious Ways (with a hint of Sexual Healing), Kite, New York and I Will Follow.
'Ring those bells Edge, ring those bells, wrote a love song on only 2 strings,
20 years ago I came walking down these streets,
20 years ago melodies and beats,
lift me up on your shoulder,
let's get to a place we can never get over, Philadelphia, there's luck is in the air this week.'
For Sunday Bloody Sunday, Bono, centre-stage and singing to the audience at the back of the hall, picks up a t-shirt with a shamrock on, smiles and throws it back into audience.'Get Up, Stand Up..'
Desire is dedicated to 'any punk rock groups, rock groups, hip hop, pop groups, anyone starting out in the house this evening, this is for you, it's about blind faith or blind ambition, I'm guilty of both..'
Stay was written in Berlin and, right now, might just be one of the band's favourite songs from their work by the sound of it.
'This is a tune we wrote when we moved to Berlin for a while to make an album there in the early 90ís, Achtung Baby.
'This is the period when people say we got all arty on you, sort of went a bit out there on you but personally speaking I think we found some interesting bits and pieces whilst we were floating out there.
'If you come from the northside of Dublin you can afford to get a little arty on people. Anyway we found this song and it's maybe the most beautiful song we've ever written.'
Stay closes with the local touch: 'London, Belfast, Philadelphia...'
During In A Little While the singer catches sight of a fan holding aloft a Joey Ramone t-shirt. 'This is a song that Joey Ramone really loved.' Bono lifts the girl onto the stage, she puts the t-shirt on, they hug and she gets to sing with Bono, taking the last lines of the song on her own.
'A Ramones t-shirt can get you a lot of places.'
Where the Streets Have No Name, Pride (In The Name of Love), Bullet The Blue Sky, With Or Without You, One. Thanks.
'Thanks for hanging around all these years, if this is your first U2 gig I hope it was the best night of your life.
'Thanks for paying out your hard earned on a rock show, thanks for giving us a great life, thank you.
'Thanks to PJ Harvey for opening up the show and thanks for following us down the Jubilee road, Drop The Debt, it really means a lot to us.
'We met a guy called Andrew Young, he marched with Martin Luther King in the old civil rights days and he said an interesting thing. He said it's hard to really feel free now knowing that our brothers and sisters are in chains in Africa. Chains of not just disease, but chains of money.
'We won't be silent, we can't be silent, we're noisy people.'
