2009-10-23

Sam Boyd Stadium, Las Vegas, NV, USA

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

  • "Breathe"
  • "Get On Your Boots"
  • "Magnificent"
  • "Mysterious Ways"
  • "Beautiful Day"
  • "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
  • "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of"
  • "No Line on the Horizon"
  • "Elevation"
  • "In a Little While"
  • "Unknown Caller"
  • "Until the End of the World"
  • "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:

    "In God's Country" (U2) / "Fix You" (Coldplay) / "Viva Las Vegas" (Elvis Presley) / "All These Things That I've Done" (The Killers) / "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" (Sly and the Family Stone) / "Two Tribes" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) / "You'll Never Walk Alone" (from Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein) / "Amazing Grace" (John Newton and William Walker) / "All You Need is Love" (The Beatles) /

Show Details:

The band continues on to Las Vegas, Nevada. The show is held at Sam Boyd Stadium, outside of Las Vegas, where the PopMart tour opened in 1997. Tonight however, there are none of the problems of that 1997 show, and the band put on an amazing show, described by some working the tour as one of the best shows to date. The Black Eyed Peas open the show in Las Vegas.

The entrance to GA is in a bit of a shambles tonight. As fans enter from the parking and drop off area, they are met with a moving line into the stadium, and not realizing it is a line to get in, fans are just joining at the front as they walk up.

Ahead of the show in Norman, Oklahoma, the band and their production team had spent some time in Mexico. A working vacation, where they came up with new ideas for the show ahead of the film that they will be making at the Rose Bowl concert. Returning from Mexico, the crew worked on the ideas and tonight they have started to appear in the show.

“Unknown Caller” uses some of the new footage of fans singing the song, gathered by U2.com in the previous weeks. Terry Lawless, who plays beneath the stage can also be seen in the footage now being used on the screen. “In A Little While” now has a new ending which features Frank DeWinne speaking the final verse of the song from the International Space Station, similar to what had been done earlier in the tour with “Your Blue Room”.

A young boy is pulled onto the stage for “City of Blinding Lights”. Bono walks him around the stage, and hands him his glasses at the end of the lap.

The encore uses the newer Cosmo / Space Baby encore video. Some parts of the performance were filmed tonight for use as back up shots for filming done at the Rose Bowl (which will be the next show.)

Snippets tonight include “In God’s Country” and Coldplay’s “Fix You” during “Beautiful Day”. During “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” Bono gives his best Elvis impression singing “Viva Las Vegas”. During “Vertigo” Bono includes a snippet of “All These Things That I’ve Done” by Vegas’ own The Killers. “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” and “Two Tribes” both make an appearance in “I’ll Go Crazy” tonight. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” appears at the end of “Walk On” and “Amazing Grace” and “All You Need is Love” both appear during “Where the Streets Have No Name”. Bono also includes the extended “Hear Us Coming” verse during “One”.

In the Las Vegas Review-Journal Jason Bracelin writes, “Perhaps U2’s greatest skill is their ability to take big ideas and even bigger venues and render them something much more intimate and approachable than their surfaces might suggest. At Sam Boyd Stadium, they shrunk the football field in half with a giant, cylindrical video screen that eventually descended down in a flashing cone of color. Similarly, they did their best to minimalize the distance between themselves and the audience, with Bono pulling a young boy up out of the crowd at one point and running around the stage with him in a sort of victory lap before sending the kid back to the floor with a pair of his sunglasses in hand.”

“In A Little While” was part of the sound checked songs earlier in the day.

Bill Clinton, Bobby Shriver, Jonny Ive of Apple, Paris Hilton, Sean Penn, Jessica Alba, Elizabeth Shue, Kate Bosworth, Chris Martin of Coldplay, Brandon Flowers of the Killers, Larry Mullen’s family including his father are all present at the show. Earlier in the day Clinton put in a round of golf with The Edge and his dad Garvin.

After the show there is a mess getting fans out of the venue. The number of cabs is insufficent and there are only a handful available, and public transit has stopped running to the venue. Although late in the night, the transit authority in the city eventually dispatches buses to the stadium to help clear the fans after being flooded with calls asking for help.

Related News

Officially Released Tracks

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