2009-08-06

Stadion Śląski, Katowice, Poland

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

  • "Breathe"
  • "No Line on the Horizon"
  • "Get On Your Boots"
  • "Magnificent"
  • "Beautiful Day"
  • "Elevation"
  • "New Year's Day"
  • "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
  • "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of"
  • "Unknown Caller"
  • "The Unforgettable Fire"
  • "City Of Blinding Lights"
  • "Vertigo"
  • "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"
  • "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
  • "Pride (In the Name of Love)"
  • "MLK"
  • "Walk On"
  • "Where the Streets Have No Name"
  • "One"
Encore:

  • "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)"
  • "With or Without You"
  • "Moment of Surrender"

Additional Music

Pre-Recorded Intro Song: "Space Oddity" - David Bowie
Pre-Recorded Intro Song: "Soon" - U2
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "Rocket Man" - Elton John

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

    "Mazurek Dąbrowskiego" (Jozef Wybicki) / "Blackbird" (The Beatles) / "Stand By Me" (Ben E. King) / "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (The Beatles) / "Birthday" (The Beatles) / "I Don't Want to Join the Army" (Traditional, World War I) / "Two Tribes" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) / "Rock the Casbah" (The Clash) / "You'll Never Walk Alone" (from Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein) / "The Whole of the Moon" (The Waterboys) /

Show Details:

The next stop on the U2360 is at Stadion Śląski, in Katowice, Poland. This is the 10th city to see the tour since it started. The tour is supported by Snow Patrol tonight. The stadium is built so that the show is a true 360 show, with a large bank of seats behind the stage.

U2 performed “New Year’s Day” tonight in Poland. The song was written about the solidarity movement in Poland, and is close to the hearts of Polish fans. Additionally it’s now making its debut as the soundtrack to a TV ad celebrating the 20th anniversary of free elections in Poland, put together by The European Commission. To make the evening special fans organized a fan action during the show. The fans throughout the stadium hold up coloured paper, flags, and other materials to make the Polish flag in the stadium. The floor is red in colour, and the stands are white in colour. The display is amazing.

Gary Lightbody, lead singer of Snow Patrol wrote about the event, “Red cards held aloft by the people on the floor and white cards in the seats to make a giant Polish flag you could probably see from space. It took the breath clean out of me. By the end even Bono was speechless, for a few seconds anyway. The things he said next are lost to me verbatim but what I won’t forget is the tears that came to me then. In floods. And when I turned to check if anyone had snared me for blubbing I realised that every single person around me also had tears in their eyes. We were sharing something that simply never happens at rock shows anywhere. A collective emotional and spiritual surrender of epic proportions. This was majesty and tenderness married and that is a rare thing indeed.”

Willie Williams in his tour diary for U2.com shared, “Of course what took it into stratospheric proportions was seeing the flag performance in the 360 configuration. The entire floor of the stadium became a sea of white fabric, whilst all the way around the grandstand seating turned red. It was a moment of such great joy it’s hard to capture it in words.”

The audience sings happy birthday to The Edge tonight. His birthday is not for a couple of a days, but this concert is the closest to the August 8 date. The audience, lead by Bono sings “Happy Birthday” with the audience singing mostly in Polish prior to “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”.

Snippets included tonight include “Mazurek Dąbrowskiego” (also known as “Poland is Not Yet Lost” in English, the national anthem of Poland) and “Blackbird” during “Beautiful Day”. A long snippet of “Stand By Me” finishes off “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” appears in “City of Blinding Lights”, and the birthday celebrations continue with a snippet of “Birthday” by the Beatles appearing in “Vertigo.” “I’ll Go Crazy” has snippets of “I Don’t Want to Join the Army” in a couple of places, as well as “Two Tribes” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” has “Rock the Casbah”. During “Walk On” Bono includes “You’ll Never Walk Alone” and during “Where the Streets Have No Name” he includes a bit of The Waterboys’ “The Whole of the Moon”. And while not a snippet, the extra “Hear Us Coming” verse is included in “One” tonight.

Speaking of the show in general, Gary Lightbody shared, “I have never in my life seen a crowd reaction like that of Katowice last night. Right from opener Breathe there was a daft magic in the air. Insanity everywhere you looked. People’s faces clothed in the kind of joy I’ve only seen in gospel churches and then only on the TV so to see this religious fervour up close was overwhelming. The city outside the stadium could have been under heavy fire from alien spacecraft and I don’t think anyone would have heard, saw, or indeed cared that much.”

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