2010-12-13

ANZ Stadium, Sydney, Australia

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

"Return of the Stingray Guitar"
"Beautiful Day"
"I Will Follow"
"Get On Your Boots"
"Magnificent"
"Mysterious Ways"
"Elevation"
"Until the End of the World"
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
"Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of"
"Bad"
"In a Little While"
"Miss Sarajevo"
"City Of Blinding Lights"
"Vertigo"
"I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"
"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
"Scarlet"
"Walk On"

Encore One:

"One"
"Where the Streets Have No Name"

Encore Two:

"Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me"
"With or Without You"
"Moment of Surrender"

Additional Music

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

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

Carousel

Show Details:

U2’s next stop is the first of two shows in Sydney, Australia. Jay-Z opens the show.

Oprah Winfrey is at the show, and gets a shout out during “Beautiful Day” – “Oprah Winfrey right in front of me”. She’s not the only one to get a shout out from the stage. Bob Geldof is also in attendance, and it being just before Christmas, U2 play a snippet of “Do They Know It’s Christmas” at the end of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”.

The band play “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” for the second time on this leg of the tour. The song is dedicated to Michael Hutchence. Bono also includes snippets of both “Need You Tonight” and “Never Tear Us Apart” during “Bad” this evening for Hutchence. Following “Bad” Bono pulls a young girl named Jana on stage during “In A Little While”.

Other snippets added to the show tonight include “Blackbird” during “Beautiful Day”, “Anthem” during “Until the End of the World”, and snippets of “Miss You”, “Relax” and “Two Tribes” during “I’ll Go Crazy”. “Get Up Stand Up” appears in “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” appears during “Walk On” and “Amazing Grace” and “All You Need is Love” appear as part of “Where the Streets Have No Name”.

Jay-Z joins the band on stage for “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and Bono attempts a little rap during the song. Later during “One” Bono includes the extended verse, “Hear Us Coming” during the song, for the first time on this leg of the tour.

During thank yous ahead of “One” Bono once again mentions Bob Geldof, saying “Your being here means a lot to us, he’s like my big brother”.

Willie Williams in his tour diary for U2.com shares that the sound check ran late, and the doors are due to open. “all the musicians left the stage except for Bono who was still noodling with something. I could feel the security guys starting to twitch a little. ‘Don’t worry,’ I joked, ‘the audience won’t see him because they would never imagine he’d be standing on the stage when they come in.’” Sure enough, Bono was on the pitch when the doors opened, and about 200 fans entered, so focused on getting to the stage they walked right by Bono without so much as a glance.

U2 soundcheck “All I Want is You” and “Love Rescue Me” but neither are performed. See the entry for tomorrow night’s show in Sydney for more information about the soundcheck today. Neither are played tonight, but they will show up tomorrow. “Mysterious Ways” was also sound checked, and The Edge worked on “Where the Streets Have No Name”, “Beautiful Day” and “Vertigo”.

In December 2010, Oprah Winfrey brought 302 audience members on an seven-night trip to Australia, and filmed four episodes of her TV show titled “Oprah’s Ultimate Australian Adventure”. And part of that experience was attending the first show in Sydney, along with the audience members who flew with her to Australia. During the show that aired, we see Oprah share her first experience seeing U2 perform in concert, as well as a backstage visit with Bono where he gifts her a guitar. Bono also appears outside the concert footage for an interview with Oprah taped at the Sydney Opera House.

Andrea Wishom, a producer for Oprah’s show shared, “U2 happened to be in Australia at the same time we were, and seeing the band live was definitely on Oprah’s bucket list. She went backstage with Bono before the show, and he gave her a guitar. Later he also threw her a private party at the hotel. I remember thinking, ‘It’s 2 A.M., I’m in Australia, Oprah’s over there talking to Bono and the Edge—life is good.’”

Oprah isn’t the only famous face among the crowd. Nicole Kidman and her husband Keith Urban are at the show, as are Cate Blanchett, Kanye West, and Baz Luhrmann, director of Moulin Rouge.

Bernard Zuel, reviewing the show for the Sydney Morning Herald said, “If you’re going to invite a giant presence to play before you, you either have balls of titanium or a show which blows away all comparisons. Or maybe, if you are U2, both.” and shares, “Yeah, they can do big. Big enough to mention Oprah en passant, to drop in a bit of the Beatles’ Blackbird and then to make the 30-year-old I Will Follow sound like it was written during the current economic gloom, not the last one. Big enough to make Jay-Z seem small. That big enough for you?”

Officially Released Tracks