Reading Between The Songs in Birmingham
* 'Wow, it's got something going on in the heart here, I like this place, for one of these kind of places, it feels really small, I can see everyone. I'm watching, I can see you, I'm all seeing, I'm omnipotent, I'm Bono, this is Kite'
* 'Hutch, Hutch...' as Gone begins.
* 'Someone's just nose-dived the concrete. You alright mate? Hang on a second,' he explains, reaching down to pull someone from the heart onto the stage as Stuck In A Moment begins. They embrace and chat and the visitor leaves as Bono asks, 'Have you a license to fly?'
* 'So, Edge, whereπs Larry? Adam come on down here. Alright, any punk rock bands in the house, any hip hop, this is a song for you. We came to Birmingham, trying to remember the name of the club, Cedar something, Cedar Rooms, tiny club and you know, it still feels like we don't know what we're doing, it still feels fresh, it still feels alive, and still feels like we've got a lot to prove, when will that feeling go away, Lord?' And U2 play Desire.
* 'I was sleeping on the floor last night and I was remembering sleeping on floors, on concrete, in fields, under trees and in gardens. I think it was 1981, I used to sleep in a van coming up to Birmingham and going back down.
'Being in a van going to Berlin, had to go through the wall, myself, Edge, Larry and Adam were asleep in the back of this van in the freezing cold and it was wetter inside than it was outside...
'I have not thought of that for probably, I don't know 15 years, but I think we even wrote a tune about it on our second album, the going through to Berlin just got to remember why I'm telling you this - I know because this is a song we wrote 10 years later in Berlin and it's called Stay.'
* 'The drugs don't work, they just make things worse', borrowed from The Verve and inserted into Bad, which is about 'addictions'.
* 'Walk out into a sports hall, lights go down, everything changes, light and motion, turn your light on emotion, it's hard to walk away...' before singing The Fly.
* 'Love will Tear Us Apart' borrowed from Joy Division and dropped into With Or Without You.
* 'Thank you for coming out, thanks for giving us a great life, thank you for that. I want to thank Kelis for opening up the show. I want to thank you for following us down the Jubilee Road, with Jubilee 2000, drop the debt stuff, and we will be taking to the streets yes we will, not with bottles and guns but we will be taking to the streets, 'cos we're noisy people and there is an honorable place for civil disobedience sometimes, so this song is a prayer of some kind, a prayer for a continent, the African continent,
25 million Africans are HIV positive ...' and U2 play One.
