2015-07-10

TD Garden, Boston, MA, USA

Set List of Show:

Act One:

"The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)"
"The Electric Co."
"Vertigo"
"I Will Follow"
"Iris (Hold Me Close)"
"Cedarwood Road"
"Song for Someone"
"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
"Raised by Wolves"

Act Two:

"Invisible"
"Even Better Than the Real Thing"
"Mysterious Ways"
"Elevation"
"Ordinary Love"
"Every Breaking Wave"
"Bullet the Blue Sky"
"Pride (In the Name of Love)"
"Beautiful Day"
"Bad"
"With or Without You"

Encore:

"City Of Blinding Lights"
"Where the Streets Have No Name"
"One"
"40"

Additional Music

Pre-Recorded Intro Song: "People Have the Power" - Patti Smith
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "Same Love" - Macklemore and Lewis ft. Mary Lambert
Pre-Recorded Intermission Song(s): "The Wanderer" - U2 with Johnny Cash

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

A Little Night Music

Show Details:

After a quick trip to Toronto, U2 bring the show back to the US for two final cities, four shows in Boston and eight shows in New York will finish out this leg of the tour. Bono appears happy to be back in the Boston area, sharing that he’s a lucky man because he can consider Boston among multiple hometowns. “It’s a lucky man who can consider more than one town his hometown.” He talks about the 23 shows they’ve played in the city including the first a few blocks away at The Paradise Theater in 1980.

A few changes are made for tonight’s show. In previous shows, after the intermission break, the screen shows images of graffiti from the Berlin Wall. This is now being extended beyond the screen through a series of banners on either side of the screen with additional graffiti printed on either side. Later in this run of Boston shows, the Intermission video will itself be switched out.

Tonight’s show includes “Ordinary Love” and “Elevation” and “The Electric Co.” A female fan was brought onto the stage to dance during “Mysterious Ways” and stayed to do the Meerkat video in the following song. During “Pride (In the Name of Love)” Bono references the Boston Marathon bombing that happened in April 2013. This is their first performance in the city since that time. “Sing this for all lives that have been stolen by brutality and hatred, sing this for Baltimore, Ferguson, Charleston, sing for the lives lost in this city, April 15, 2013, sing this for the survivors, so strong, so strong, that no hatred can take their pride in the name of love.” U2 also display the hashtag “#BostonStrong” on the screen to the cheers of the audience as Bono asks them to sing for the victims of the bombing. He later thanks Boston for being a “city that refuses to hate because it knows love will do a better job.”

“One” is late in the show, and usually ends the shows when it has been played on this tour, but tonight the band add in a spontaneous rendition of “40” at the end of the show. The song was not on the printed set list, and Bono introduces it by sharing its “imperative that we play it for you right now” before telling the story of how Dennis Sheehan would go into the crowd to start the crowd singalong for the show. The crowd signs out loud tonight.

The show also includes the fan favourite “Shine Like Stars” verse in “With or Without You” that Bono first sang on this tour in Toronto on the previous tour stop, urged on by fans in that city who had brought signs requesting it.

Snippets tonight include “Send in the Clowns”, “Pour Some Sugar On Me” and “I Can See For Miles” during “The Electric Co.” and “Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio?” and “God Save the Queen” during “Vertigo”. “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” makes an appearance in “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and Bono inserts some lyrics from “Love and Peace or Else” into “Bullet the Blue Sky”. In the second act, Bowie’s “Young Americans” appears in “Mysterious Ways”, and “19” makes an appearance in “Bullet the Blue Sky”. “The Hands That Built America” is in place as the usual transition from “Bullet” into “Pride (In the Name of Love)”. “Moment of Surrender” is obviously on Bono’s mind, and he drops pieces of it into “Beautiful Day” and “Bad” tonight. “Mother and Child Reunion” opens “Where the Streets Have No Name” which also includes a reference to U2’s own “California (There is No End to Love)”.

Bono’s brother is at the show with his family tonight. Bono dedicates “Song for Someone” to Norman. Early in the evening Norman is blocked by security from moving from the North side of the arena to the South side of the arena, and his identity is vouched for by multiple fans, before security will let him pass. Bono shares that it was Norman that taught him guitar, “And yet he, like the band, seems pleased that I can’t play it anymore.” Also in the building are Dr. William Li, and other physicians from the Angiogenesis Foundation, as is Tom Brady, quarterback with the Patriots.

Reviews for the show are strong. The Boston Herald shares, “The set is a revelation. It’s anti-ZooTV tour and still mind-blowing.” and the Patriot Ledger shared that the tour “adds a dazzling high tech video production to the mix that gave the 20,000 capacity crowd the impression they were not just sharing the band’s story, but inside of it at times.” And Sarah Rodman in the Boston Globe shares “in the first of four shows at the TD Garden, the Irish rock quartet serious amped up the wow factor in a spectacular, in every sense, two-hour-plus show,” and that “all the glitz was, happily, upstaged by the music itself.”

Ahead of tonight’s show, U2 are captured by a photographer in front of their video screen which is displaying an image of Irish fighter, Conor McGregor. Also during the day the band soundchecks both “Invisible” and “New Year’s Day”, a song that has not yet been played on this tour.

The first two shows in Boston are part of the initial announcement of the Innocence + Experience tour on December 3, 2014. Pre sales start for U2.com members on December 4, and the general sale starts on December 8, 2014. All shows use credit card entry, and you enter by scanning the credit card used to purchase the tickets.

Officially Released Tracks