2011-04-10
Estádio do Morumbi, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Set List of Show:
Main Set:
- "Even Better Than the Real Thing"
- "Out of Control"
- "Get On Your Boots"
- "Magnificent"
- "Mysterious Ways"
- "Elevation"
- "Until the End of the World"
- "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
- "Pride (In the Name of Love)"
- "North Star"
- "Beautiful Day"
- "Miss Sarajevo"
- "Zooropa"
- "City Of Blinding Lights"
- "Vertigo"
- "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight"
- "Sunday Bloody Sunday"
- "Scarlet"
- "Walk On"
- "One"
- "Where the Streets Have No Name"
- "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)"
- "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:
-
"Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" (The Beatles) /
"Blackbird" (The Beatles) /
"Singin' In the Rain" (Gene Kelly) /
"Helter Skelter" (The Beatles) /
"Relax" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) /
"Two Tribes" (Frankie Goes to Hollywood) /
"Amazing Grace" (John Newton and William Walker) /
Show Details:
The second of three nights in Sao Paulo is a rainy one. The skies open up and drench the crowds ahead of the show. Muse opens the show.
Like the previous night, “Even Better Than the Real Thing” opens the show. It is the new remixed version of the song, which will open shows for the remainder of the tour. The next song up? A complete surprise, “Out of Control” makes its debut. The song has not been played since the Vertigo tour in 2006. The band had decided to play the song at the last minute, and Willie Williams in his tour diary for U2.com shares, “they’d decided to throw in Out of Control, a song from Boy that they haven’t looked at in five years so had a brief skiffle rehearsal to make sure that they would at least all be playing it in the same key.” Adam Clayton discussing the return of the song said, “Those songs from that first album era, and up to about War, a long time ago, they are the ones you remember easiest.”
The show sees “North Star” in the middle section. This is one of the new songs that U2 has been testing out on the road, and rumours are the band plan to release it as a single later this year. “Beautiful Day” has moved to the middle of the set tonight, as it has on other nights where “Even Better Than the Real Thing” opens.
“Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Blackbird” both made an appearance in “Beautiful Day” tonight. “Singin’ in the Rain” made an appearance during “City of Blinding Lights”. “Vertigo” included a little touch of “Helter Skelter” and both “Relax” and “Two Tribes” appeared during “I’ll Go Crazy”. “Where the Streets Have No Name” started out with the “Amazing Grace” opening.
The biggest moment of the show comes in the form of “Zooropa”. The song from 1993 has only been played three times in total, and in each case it was only a partial performance of the song. Tonight fans get the full song. It was last performed in August 1993. Tonight it is accompanied with the screen fully extended, images of static and interference, some lifted from the Zoo TV screens, and even a recent MRI of Willie William’s chest. And with the introduction of “Zooropa” to the set list, the pre-recorded piece with “Fez – Being Born” mixed with “Zooropa” lyrics, is now dropped from the show.
The band had started working on the song the day before the first show in Sao Paulo. Willie describes the early rehearsal that day, “The main proposal for the evening was to have a crack at playing Zooropa. We’d decided that, however it went, we wouldn’t put it in the opening night show here. It was amazing to get Even Better Than the Real Thing into the show at such short notice but Zooropa is a vastly more complex proposition so we didn’t want to add any pressure. Besides, sometimes it’s nice to save a big surprise for night two. The band rehearsed with the P.A. turned off for the first hour or so, but then decided to give it a go at full tilt. It sounded very promising and I’m sure the punters outside the stadium practically had a heart attack. I’d thrown something together by way of a visual element though clearly, if this song goes the distance, it will take a good deal more time to do it justice. The idea though, is that this could be a song to be played from inside the fully opened video screen, so once the band was comfortable on stage we had two or three run-throughs of the song, complete with screen moves.” Of the actual performance on this second night of the tour in Brazil, Willie shares, “It was truly wonderful to hear Zooropa performed live, really for the first time as the few times it was played on Zoo TV it was only the last section (“Zooropa 3”, as we call it, as distinct from “Zooropa 1” (the babble & voices) or “Zooropa 2” (the first vocal section). Plus it’s not everyday a man gets to see eighty foot tall images of his own chest cavity.”
The audience is captivated by the song, but so is the audience following along at home. The performance of “Zooropa” lead to the word Zooropa trending worldwide on Twitter. It reached the top ten trends reported on Twitter worldwide.
“Moment of Surrender” is once again dedicated to the victims of the school shooting in Rio de Janeiro. As was done on the first night, their names are shown on the screen as U2 performs the song at the end of the show.
After this show, it is also official that this tour is big. The U2360 tour has officially become the highest grossing tour of all time. They beat the previous record of $558-million dollars set by The Rolling Stones and their “A Bigger Bang” tour. It’s a record will hold until Ed Sheeran’s “Divide” tour crosses the $736-million dollar mark in August 2019. (Ed Sheeran took 243 shows to gross the amount that U2 had done in just 110 shows for the entire U2360 tour.)
The show goes on sale on December 9, 2010.
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