The trucks are all parked and the crew is working on the finishing touches for Saturdays show. Which we have posted all the details on what, where and when so check that out. Memphis Mullen was spotted last night, we are still looking for someone to snap a photo with her and send it to us. Of course we would like it if we saw our name around town. In case you have not been a U2TOURFANS member for long here is an update of what is needed to make this show happen.
- A Small Army: U2’s 360° Tour travels with 132 technicians for every show, in addition to 30 staging people and 47 truck drivers.
- Extensive Staging: The entire production typically takes nine days to pull off: one day for production, one day to lay the custom flooring, four days to build the stage and two days to tear it down, in addition to the actual show.
- It All Starts In Denver: The Mile High City is the first stop of U2’s current North American tour.
- Supersized: 360° has the largest and heaviest video screen ever to tour; it weighs nearly sixty tons
- The Object of the Claw: The idea was to create same sort of in-the-round vibe with 360 as they did in the arenas on their last tour, while also creating a certain intimacy in a stadium environment. “Their idea,” said Jake Berry, Production Director of the 360° Tour, of architect Mark Fisher and show director Willie Williams’s original concept, “was that if we build something big, we’ll make the stadium look small. So if you make the stadium look small, then you get the more feeling of intimacy, and it brings the crowd closer to the band. That was how it started it off, and The Claw was just the name that it got as we dragged it around the world.”
- Big Tour, Big Goals: “We’re going to try to get more people in the stadium than the Broncos,” said Berry, pointing out that 80,000 people are expected. “That’s our aim. I bet we succeeded, actually. If we can outsell the Broncos, we’ll be pretty good. Also on this tour we’ve outsold the Pope in East Rutherford, New Jersey. We’ve broken some pretty big records. This is will probably be the biggest ever to tour. I don’t think anybody can tour with a show this size again.”
Video by Mahala Gaylord.