2023-12-08

Sphere, Las Vegas, NV

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

"Zoo Station"
"The Fly"
"Even Better Than the Real Thing"
"Mysterious Ways"
"One"
"Until the End of the World"
"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses"
"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"
"All I Want is You"
"Desire"
"When Love Comes to Town"
"Love Rescue Me"
"Acrobat"
"So Cruel"
"Ultra Violet (Light My Way)"
"Love is Blindness"

Encore:

"Elevation"
"Atomic City"
"Vertigo"
"Where the Streets Have No Name"
"With or Without You"
"Beautiful Day"

Additional Music

Pre-Recorded Intro Song: "Lemon" (Remix) - U2
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "Glorify" - U2 featuring Brittany Howard
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "What A Wonderful World" - Louis Armstrong

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

"I Feel Love" (Donna Summer) / "Love Me Tender" (Elvis Presley) / "Paint it Black" (Rolling Stones) / "Landlady" (U2) / "Walk On the Wild Side" (Lou Reed) / "Viva Las Vegas" (Elvis Presley) / "The Pushbike Song" (Mungo Jerry) / "My Way" (Frank Sinatra) / "Moment of Surrender" (U2) / "Love is Bigger Than Anything in its Way" (U2) / "Blackbird" (The Beatles) / "Glorify" (U2 featuring Brittany Howard) /

Show Details:

U2 are playing their 21st show of 40 in total at the Las Vegas Sphere. Four additional shows, taking the total to 40, were announced earlier in the week and went on sale today. The full listing of shows can be found in our U2 show archive. U2 are performing these shows without founding member, Larry Mullen Junior, who is missing due to surgery to repair damage suffered from years of drumming. A Dutch drummer, Bram van den Berg replaces Mullen at these shows in Las Vegas. Tonight U2 stick to the Rattle and Hum segment they’ve favourited since the start of these shows. Bono is in good spirits, talkative, and his voice sounds really strong tonight.

Bono thanks Pauli the PSM ahead of “The Fly” but skips the usual “Drive My Car” snippet to ask “Who wants this? You want it? I want it…Come on!” He ends “Even Better than the Real Thing” singing “Child, man child…” before introducing the venue, “Our heads are done in. We work here. Appearing every Friday. Welcome to the Sphere. A shape shifting kind of a deal. It can be a cave. It can turn into a club in Berlin in the ’90s. It can be no, not just an Elvis chapel, it can be an Elvis mega-church, and later it can turn into a cathedral of the natural world. Stick around!”

The introduction to “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” includes the piece Bono has been adding about energy and matter, “The atom split, stars are scattered, energy at the heart of the matter, atom split, the stars are scattered. Energy! Heart of the matter.” Tonight he slips into a whisper as he delivers the lines. He returns to these lines again at the end of the song, singing them this time, and going into “I’m raising up Jacob’s ladder” a few times to end the song. It leads into the balloon appearing on screen. During the song, Bono pretends to be coming home after a night out with a balloon for Ali, who refuses to answer the door when he gets home. Bono shares, “The door? What does the door symbolize? Your partner’s refusal to take shit anymore?”

Taking a break from the Achtung Baby songs, Bono speaks about writing “All I Want is You” as they switch gears into Rattle and Hum, “The songs we wrote, or I write, are often not just one person. There’s the arm of one person, the leg of another, two bodies conjoined. I can put my head on a few different people. This song for instance, well, this is actually written from a bride’s point of view.” Bono then plugs the fact that he tells people this in his book, “My book! Which is available for 28-dollars and 99-cents at the local bookstore!” During “All I Want is You”, Bono finishes with an extended bit of “Walk On the Wild Side” getting the audience to join him in singing. He finishes saying, “Everyone welcome here! Whoever you are. Whoever you want to be. Everyone welcome.”

Bono’s introductions are long tonight, over the start of “Desire” following up on a circus theme. “I’d like now to introduce you to the great trapeze artist of our band. That’s right. Not because of his death-defying, high-flying, actually, acts of show business…no! Precisely, because he doesn’t do that kind of thing. He is of course, our musical contortionist, The Edge. Now let me introduce you to another high-flying act. This time, these days, without a can of kerosene and matches. On the bass…the most attractive footwear. Our, I’m going to say showman, maybe, our showgirl, putting the tease in Dita Von Teese, Adam Clayton! In the circus, in Ireland anyway, we’d go to see the circus, sometimes and the man who would be the world’s strongest man, would end up selling the ice creams in the interval, and then be the human light bolt by the end of the show. Our strongman, our vessel of light, our standing in for Larry Mullen Jr, which is almost impossible, Bram van den Berg.” At the end of the introductions he drops in a brief line from Mungo Jerry’s “The Pushbike Song” before finally breaking into “Desire”.

Ahead of “When Love Comes To Town” Bono shares that Jerry Schilling is in the house tonight. Schilling was a music manager for Elvis, the Beach Boys, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Bono shares that it was Schilling that let them into Graceland, telling them to stay away from the motorcycles (which we see in Rattle and Hum they ignored.) Introducing “Love Rescue Me” Bono shares the song, “now feels more like a prayer for the moment we are in. If you’re not the praying type, just close your eyes and think of someone or a situation that is so desperate you’ve all but given up hope. That’s the moment where your thoughts, your prayers, can almost add up to actions.”

“Where the Streets Have No Name” opens with a few lines from “Moment of Surrender”. U2 aren’t playing any songs from No Line on the Horizon at these shows, this has been the only representation for that album. Towards the end of the song he gives a nod to another album which isn’t being played at these shows, their last, Songs of Experience. He sings “Love, love, love, love is bigger, bigger”, a reference to “Love is Bigger Than Anything in its Way”. Introducing “Beautiful Day” Bono slips up and shares, “Art and science combine, but you know it means fuck all unless there’s real communication, real dealing with our audience and music, music, music. I’d also like to apologize for just having done an expletive. There’s no excuse for that in Las Vegas. Sorry about that. For Irish people it’s a musical event.” He later jokes that he hasn’t had a drink, “yet!”

Early in the show “I Feel Love” makes an appearance during “Mysterious Ways”, a longer version of the song than has been appearing in recent shows, which Bono returns to at the end of the song. “Love Me Tender” comes in at the end of “One” as it has throughout these shows since the start. “Until the End of the World” once again includes “Paint it Black”, and a brief line from “Landlady” opens “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World”. “Viva Las Vegas” pops up at the end of “Love is Blindness” ending the main set. “My Way” appears at the end of “Elevation” tonight. “Blackbird” makes an appearance at the end of “Beautiful Day”. Before leaving the stage, the vocals of Brittany Howard are heard over the PA singing a new song, “Glorify”, and Bono joins in singing along to the song as it plays.

Tonight U2 took the stage at 8:35pm.

Initially five shows in Las Vegas were announced, quickly followed by seven more, and then five more taking us to the end of November. On May 12, the final shows for December were added, with all eight shows being available via a U2.com presale offer, where you could apply for the shows you were interested in. The offer ended on May 15. Face value on tickets range from $140.13 – $501.35 at four different price points for seats for face values. A General Admission floor will be priced at $267.88, and at each show there was be a (RED) Zone riser at the back of the GA area which held 50 people, priced at $600.00. Although these prices listed were face values, tickets in seated areas were subject to Platinum pricing in the general sale.

Officially Released Tracks