2009-10-25

Rose Bowl, Pasadena, CA, 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:

    "God Only Knows" (Beach Boys) / "The Maker" (Daniel Lanois) / "Stand By Me" (Ben E. King) / "It's Only Rock and Roll (But I Like It)" (Rolling Stones) / "Two Tribes" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) / "You'll Never Walk Alone" (from Carousel by Rodgers and Hammerstein) / "Amazing Grace" (John Newton and William Walker) /

Show Details:

The Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California is the next stop of the U2360 tour. It is the second to last show of the tour leg, although the band had previously announced shows in Europe, and tonight will announce their plans for additional North American tour dates as well. The support act for tonight are the Black Eyed Peas. A surprise guest shows up with the Black Eyed Peas, Slash from Guns ‘n’ Roses appears to perform “Sweet Child O’ Mine”.

The show is being filmed for a home video release tonight. The band have been putting a lot of work into fine tuning the show, adding additional video content, and making sure they are at the top of their game for the filming. Not only is it being filmed, but the concert is also broadcast live on YouTube while it happens, announced to be happening on October 19. It is the first concert of its size to be streamed live on the internet, and it is available worldwide. The band are also breaking a record tonight, for the largest audience at the Rose Bowl for any event. It is also the biggest show of the tour to date.

Of the YouTube broadcast, Paul McGuinness shared, “The band has wanted to do something like this for a long time. As we’re filming the LA show, it’s the perfect opportunity to extend the party beyond the stadium. Fans often travel long distances to come to see U2 – this time U2 can go to them, globally.” The stream itself probably breaks some records. 188 countries tune in with over 10 million fans watching the show as it happens from home. (Initially it was announced only 16 countries would be able to view the streams.)

The show itself is the same set list as the previous three cities. Those shows were acting as rehearsals for the filming tonight. The only differences between shows are the snippets that Bono includes. There is no new video pieces or other additions. The team agreed that Las Vegas was the cut off to add new material to the show, so that they are all trialed before filming.

Snippets included tonight include “In God’s Country”, “God Only Knows” and “The Maker” in “Beautiful Day”. “Stand By Me” ends “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”. “It’s Only Rock and Roll (But I like It)” pops up in “Vertigo” and “Two Tribes” appears in “I’ll Go Crazy”. “You’ll Never Walk Alone” makes an appearance during “Walk On”. “Where the Streets Have No Name” starts with “Amazing Grace”.

Also during the show Bono includes the longer version of “One” singing the “Hear Us Coming” parts. Bono also includes the longer rap in “Moment of Surrender” that he also used at Saturday Night Live.

Of the show, Willie Williams shared in his U2.com Tour Diary, “Here at the Rosebowl it’s all seating and the seats are small and jammed together meaning you can get a huge number of people in here (96,000 I heard). Perhaps it was this mass proximity, but for some reason tonight’s audience was as far from the traditionally cool ‘L.A. crowd’ as you can imagine. They really went off and looked great too which was a huge bonus.”

The celebrity list is long for the show. Present for the show is Paris Hilton again, who had been at the Las Vegas show as well, this time she’s with her sister Nicky. Buzz Aldrin is also at the show, one of the men who walked on the moon taking in U2’s own space station. J.J. Abrams, director of Lost and the new Star Trek film is also present at the show. Orlando Bloom is spotted posing with an Aung San Suu Kyi mask. Other celebrities present include Ewan MacGregor, Stewart Copeland from the Police, Dave Stewart from the Eurythmics, Pierce Brosnan, Demi Moore, Alyssa Milano, Ryan Phillipe, Brecklin Meyer, Christian Slater, Kellan Lutz, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jamie Kennedy, Cindy Crawford, Chris O’Donnell, Colin Farrell, Ginnifer Goodwin, Zachery Quinto, Ben Stiller, Olivia Wilde, Demi Moore, Eliza Dushku, Colin Farrell, David Beckham, John Cho, William Fichtner, French fashion designer Christian Audigier, director Michael Bay and Barbra Streisand. Also present are a number of Hollywood executives including Tom Freston, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and long time U2 collaborator, Jimmy Iovine.

In the Los Angeles Times a review shares, “Plenty of artists have played in the round, built multi-tiered sets and spent time roaming through the crowd on ramps or trapezes. But the Space Station (Bono’s preferred term these days) changes the architecture of the live concert. It not only puts the stadium audience closer to the band, it cuts holes in the fourth wall between star and fan, creating a feeling of immersion and communal connection that’s startling in such a huge venue, and that translated differently in person than it could have on YouTube, where the concert was streamed live.” They also share, “The Space Station allows U2 to make those musical and lyrical preoccupations physical in a new way. At the Rose Bowl, it created a new experience even for the most jaded concertgoer. U2 concerts have often included moments in which raised voices build goodwill, or shaking hips stimulate joy. But for the first time, perhaps, this band’s noise resulted in a kind of silence and stillness — not a literal one, but the rapture that comes when nearly 100,000 people relax together, as if held within a gentle, open hand.”

During the day the band soundcheck “Magnificent”, “Elevation”, “In A Little While”, “Unknown Caller”, “Until the End of the World” and “Breathe”. While played in the show, “Breathe” isn’t included in the eventual home video release as part of the main film.

As the show finishes on YouTube, U2 announce the third leg of the U2360 tour, with 12 dates announced in June and July 2010. (That third leg ends up being cancelled, at the last minute when Bono injures his back. The shows are later rescheduled for 2011.)

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Officially Released Tracks

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