2009-09-16

Rogers Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

"Breathe"
"No Line on the Horizon"
"Get On Your Boots"
"Magnificent"
"Beautiful Day"
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
"Elevation"
"Your Blue Room"
"Unknown Caller"
"Until the End of the World"
"Stay (Faraway, So Close!)"
"The Unforgettable Fire"
"City Of Blinding Lights"
"Vertigo"
"I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"
"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
"MLK"
"Walk On"

Encore One:

"One"
"Where the Streets Have No Name"

Encore Two:

"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:

"On Yonge Street" (Gordon Lightfoot) / "Far Far Away" (Wilco) / "Alison" (Elvis Costello) / "Stand By Me" (Ben E. King) / "Pump It Up" (Elvis Costello) / "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" (Michael Jackson) / "Oliver's Army" (Elvis Costello) / "Amazing Grace" (John Newton and William Walker) / "All You Need is Love" (The Beatles) /

Show Details:

U2’s second city in North America during the U2360 tour takes them North to Canada. They play the Rogers Centre in Toronto. The domed building has a closable roof, and it is only the second time in the building’s history that a concert is staged in the dome with the roof open, allowing for amazing views of the lit up CN Tower next door from within the stadium. The last time an artist had performed with the roof open was Bruce Springsteen in 2003. Snow Patrol join the band as the opening act for the Toronto concerts.

The first concert in Toronto is identical to the second show in Chicago, no changes are made to the main set. Like that show, a break is introduced prior to “One” introducing two encores to the show. “Your Blue Room” makes its second appearance in a concert by U2, this time with Space Station commander Frank DeWinne reciting the final verse of “Your Blue Room” in a pre-recorded piece. Like the second show in Chicago, U2 return to the digitized voices encore piece instead of using the new Maya Angelou piece that debuted at the first night in Chicago.

Bono makes references throughout to Toronto, naming off TTC subway stops in the city, referencing street names in the city, as well as calling Canada the “half-continent that you call a country”. During band introductions Bono mentions that without The Edge none of the band would be there, but without the band, The Edge would still be “in his bedroom twiddling knobs.” Adam Clayton is mentioned as the only man in U2 who uses face cream.” Asked about the claim in the local media, Adam claims “As it happens, I don’t use face cream. I’m very lucky. I have quite oily skin, which means that you don’t need to moisturize that much. So he obviously just attributes me as using a lot face cream.”

Snippets include “On Youge Street”, “Far Far Away” and “Alison” during “Beautiful Day”. Bono and The Edge had taped an appearance on Elvis Costello’s TV show the night before, and had performed “Alison” during that show as well. “Stand By Me” appears at the end of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. “Pump it Up”, another Costello song that Bono and Edge had performed the night before appears in “Vertigo”. “I’ll Go Crazy” gets “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough”, and “Oliver’s Army” appears in “Sunday Bloody Sunday”. “Amazing Grace” and “All You Need Is Love” appear in “Where the Streets Have No Name”. And during “One” Bono does the extended verse in “One”, “Hear Us Coming”.

Asked about the difference between Canadian and other audiences Adam Clayton shares, “It’s most notable if you happen to be in the U.S. for six or eight weeks and you really need a bit of sorbet and a bit of freshening up. You come up to Canada ‘cause people, they’re just that little bit cooler. And their musical taste, it’s a little bit more rounded, it’s a little bit more European. I think radio is still much better up here. I think the MuchMusic channel always plays much riskier, edgier stuff.” Adam called the Toronto show “Fantastic” and shared he had a great view of the CNN Tower from the stage (it’s actually the CN Tower). Larry Mullen also commented on the Canadian audience after the first show, “Before we were big in the United States, we were big in Canada. Canada has always been huge for U2. And Canada traditionally has been very open to new music and, particularly, to U2. So we know this audience and they know us. Does it mean we don’t have to work hard? No. Because it’s a discerning audience because they know music, so we gotta work hard … I’m not exaggerating and I’m not blowing smoke. Canada sustained us through some difficult periods of time. (Canadians) always supported us and, again, were music savvy, so they were always, on a musical level, an educated audience. So it was very important to us. So I love coming back here.”

In an interview with Jane Stevenson from Sun Media The Edge said the first show in Toronto “was really one of the best shows we’ve played for a long time even though, yeah, it was challenging (set-list wise). I just think everyone played so well. Adam and I, the swing of us, everyone gave everything, and musically, it just sounded really top. And on a great night like Wednesday night when the music is really coming together, you get a great buzz out of that.”

City News in Toronto share, “You combine the monster stage – referred to by Bono as “the spaceship” – combine it with crisp clean sound – and throw in over 60,000 people in the Rogers Centre with the roof open and you get a journey that leaves you physically and emotionally spent, but still wanting more when it was all said and done.” The National Post carried a review by Brad Frenette, “As Bono thanked the crowd for ‘giving us a great life’, he also made sure it was clear that the band was ‘just getting going now.’ And as they closed the night with a spot-on, soulful rendering of Moment of Surrender, it definitely seemed so.” Also in The National Post Mike Doherty writes, “And in truth, this is what the best stadium shows do – they flabbergast us with special effects, but they also create a feeling of intimacy by bringing everything, and everyone, closer together. In Toronto, U2 offered a few such moments: as Bono backed off the mic for the first verse of I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For and the audience sang spontaneously along with the Biggest Karaoke Back-Up Band of All Time; as Bono and The Edge cut back on the bombast and hushed us with a unexpectedly moving acoustic duet version of Stay; and at the very end, as all the lights went off and Bono suggested, “Let’s turn this place into the Milky Way.” Hoisting our own video-screen props – our cell-phones – we created a stadium full of tiny stars while the band played the hymn-like Moment of Surrender. Commander Bono may have been resorting to a hoary big-concert cliche, but his strategy worked – it’s a safe bet that everyone in the stadium, at that point, felt as though they were not alone.”

Hockey players Tie Domi and Claude Lemieux are present at the show as are a large contingent of people from RIM, the Canadian company which builds the Blackberry, who are sponsoring the tour. Toronto is also a big base for Live Nation and their staff are present in large numbers as well. Elvis Costello is also present in the stadium tonight.

During an afternoon soundcheck the band are heard performing “Elevation”, “Your Blue Room”, “I’ll Go Crazy”, and pieces of “Walk On”, “Moment of Surrender”, “Your Blue Room” and an instrumental full version of “Moment of Surrender”.

Officially Released Tracks