U2 360 Tour Edmonton

OK, so I’ve got a little secret to reveal … the incomparable Fish Griwkowsky is joining The Journal! Here are his thoughts about U2?s extravaganza at Commonwealth Stadium:

A hundred years ago this July 21, pop philosopher Marshall McLuhan was born in Edmonton. That U2 should convoy in with their giant crustacean television and exemplify two of McLuhan’s central tenets – the medium is the message in the global village – is nothing more than an accident of fate. But it’s poignant. Not unlike the methods of Barack Obama’s famous HOPE poster, the Irish band’s $30-million stage was a monolithic, impossible-to-ignore way to get their simple messages of planetary love, peace and social activism to 65,000 of us river folk. Be as cynical as you like about the budget spent on this lurching fusion of Pokemon, Blade Runner and Amnesty International – but it gets its message across. How many of us knew much about the freeing-via-international-pressure of Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi after 20 years of house arrest before last night, after all? I’ll take this over Toby Keith writing songs of kicking the ass of foreigners any day – you?

Bono is, of course, one of the luckiest men on planet earth both grateful and graceful enough to acknowledge it. Pointing up at the greatest set piece most of us have ever seen outside of Las Vegas, he thanked, “… all of you who helped build this … madness.”

Even the obligatory sports franchise nod found with tiresome ubiquity at such large events was based on the strange twist of fate that an Oiler – Gilbert Brule – would be driving in West Van when Bono and his assistant happened to be hitchhiking to escape the rain. Concert rock stars can throw on all the Oilers jerseys they want for the rest of time, Bono’s unbelievable luck with such a hometown connection was an instant legend carved in bedrock.

U2 has always mined such connections, especially in Bono’s career-long propensity to throw in ADD snippets of covers of bands – at the time – much bigger than his. Last night’s show opened with Bowie’s Space Oddity, closed with Rocket Man by Elton John. Whether you call this a postmodern mashup – it’s too BIG to be considered conventional artistry – or just brilliant marketing doesn’t matter much. These four Irish tug at our cultural nostalgia like no other band, even referencing themselves on the megascreen as baby versions of U2 (God, they were young) walked around Joshua Tree in dusters and tank tops, or drove around Eastern Europe, the singer running fingers through his long mane, no sunglasses.

As he repeated a mantra of Neil Young, “And I’m getting’ old,” Bono acknowledged what a lot of us were thinking, even of ourselves. The cartoon aliens onscreen complained about their feet hurting for a reason. The leathery face of once-troubled Adam Clayton, the late-night cringe of Larry Mullen Jr., The Edge‘s time-carved eyes … Bono’s high-powered karaoke of an era when we still had true eternals decided by Rolling Stone, U2 (don’t say Coldplay) being the last of the real giants, still able to fill stadiums.

We were reminded Achtung Baby is 20 years old, the radio score to the Soviet Union’s collapse. From this point on their songs were designed to take advantage of stadium acoustics and performer endurance, mid-tempo pop singalongs thick and layered and climactic. Yet much more than their new material, U2 stays relevant by engaging the world. Those who begrudge Bono’s hubris are ignoring the fact this was once an anonymous religious band who crossed over with punk cred because of their activism. As weird as it is to see a 51-year-old in a laser suit singing about overexposure (With or Without You), interpreted by some to be about heroin addiction, all U2 has ever done is amplify their original message with the four-letter word they use on every record: love.

But one last note, a tiny hint of menace: as multiple thousands tried to Tweet and text their experiences as we all do these days, the phone networks turned to frozen glue under the band’s green Space Invader. In this temple bowl of technology our digital community was cut off. No big deal – we should probably we watching the show, not Tweeting set lists. But it showed how tenuous some of our assumed connections really are. Not that 20 years ago we would have even thought about it. Well, unless you were Marshall McLuhan, that is.

Sandra Sperounes-Edmonton Journal

EDMONTON – Edmonton Oiler Gilbert Brule and his girlfriend picked up an unusual hitchhiker in West Vancouver on Tuesday — U2 frontman Bono.

Brule and girlfriend Kelsey Nichols were driving to a park to walk Bella, their German shepherd, on Tuesday afternoon near the West Vancouver Yacht club when they spotted a couple of hitchhikers on the side of the road.

Brule, watching out the window, was sure one of them was Bono.

Nichols, who was driving, didn’t believe him, because, really, why would Bono be hitchhiking in West Van?

“I didn’t want to stop, but they waved and G yelled ‘that’s Bono’,” Nichols said Wednesday night at Commonwealth Stadium. “I didn’t believe him so I kept driving.”

The couple went on, a short distance anyway, all the while Brule trying to convince Nichols to turn around. Eventually, she agreed.

The hitchhikers were still there when they drove up, so they yelled out: “Bono!”

He waved and walked over to their truck.

The Irishman, who indeed was Bono, asked if they could give him and his assistant a lift to Horseshoe Bay. Of course, Brule and Nichols obliged.

Turns out, he and his assistant had gone out for a walk when it started to rain, just before Brule and Nichols happened upon them.

On the drive to Horseshoe Bay, Bono and his assistant sat in the back with the couple’s dog. The four chatted about Brule’s hockey career, about Dublin and Bono’s apparent love for Vancouver.

Bono mentioned that his band was playing a show in Edmonton on Wednesday and asked if they’d like to go.

So Brule and Nichols sold their tickets for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals, bought plane tickets (three, so Brule’s mom could come too) and flew back to Edmonton, where Brule is a forward for the Oilers.

Bono got them backstage passes to say thanks for the ride.

On Nichols’s pass, he wrote: “Thanks for the ride.”

On Brule’s pass, he wrote: “My hero Gilbert.”

It was the strangest thing.

“We go to walk our dog and Bono ends up in our car,” Brule said.

Bono paid tribute to the favour onstage during Wednesday’s concert.

“I like ice hockey because people who play ice hockey are the kind of people who pick up hitchhikers,” Bono told the crowd.

“I’m ever so grateful. I’ve decided that I want to be Gilbert Brule.”

BY BEN GELINAS, EDMONTONJOURNAL.COM

UPDATE (02/06)

By Andrew Matte, Leader-Post

REGINA — When Lori-Jo Sherwin-Laing heard her first U2 song as a teenager, she didn’t know she’d be following advice found in the lyrics more than 20 years later.

Thanks to good timing, careful planning and a lot of money, the Regina woman hatched a plan to live her own rock-and-roll dream by travelling to see the Irish rockers 11 times this year. Sherwin-Laing appreciates the irony that the U2 song “I Will Follow” from 1980 remains her favourite and also serves as a title for this year’s pilgrimage to concert stages across North America.

“They are my favourite band and they always have been,” Sherwin-Laing, 36, said Wednesday from an Edmonton hotel room where she was planning to witness her second U2 show this year.

Her plans began last year with a modest idea to attend three U2 shows before singer Bono’s back surgery scuttled the band’s North American tour. Sherwin-Laing’s heartbreak soon turned to delight after deciding an extra year to plan and save money allowed her to make more ambitious plans to see the make-up dates.

“If this happened last year, I would have only been able to go to three shows. So this extra year has been a blessing in disguise because it allowed me to save a lot more money,” she said.

Making travel arrangements and buying tickets haven’t been easy. In total, she’s spending 31 nights in hotels, taking 16 flights on eight different airlines and making three trips by car. She saw her first show Sunday night in Winnipeg had plans to see the Edmonton show on Wednesday night and be in Seattle for Saturday’s show. She’ll return to the road later this month for concerts in Lansing, Mich., Chicago, Nashville, New York, Toronto and Montreal twice before her last gig in Minneapolis on July 23.

She’ll be attending American shows with friends and is travelling with her husband to Seattle and Toronto. Dave Laing also joined her for the shows in Winnipeg and Edmonton.

Laing said she shares his wife’s passion for Bono and the boys but concedes his wife has him seeing more concerts than he normally would.

“But I wouldn’t be going if I wasn’t a fan,” Laing, 33, said from Edmonton. He said he has always appreciated U2’s message, especially in albums like Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Pop.

“I like the lyrics that are personal rather than a lot of their ’80s stuff that was more socially conscious … Actung Baby was the album that did it for me,” Laing said.

While 2011 brings a lot of firsts for the woman, Saturday wasn’t her first U2 show. Sherwin-Laing saw U2 five times in 2009 in Chicago, Toronto and Vancouver. It was her experiences that helped her decide to ramp things up in 2011, she said, adding the more times she sees the band, the more she appreciates them.

“Now it’s become a lot more real after seeing them live … I am a fan more now than I have ever been,” she said.

She said she usually buys general admission tickets for $55 and gets in line early — sometimes as early as 6 a.m. — so she can get as close to the stage as she can. She sometimes buys a seat in the “nosebleed” section to get a different view of the production, she said. “It’s nice to see the show from varying vantage points because the stage itself is a show.”

Her favourite U2 member is The Edge, evidence of which can been seen on her right shoulder where she has a tattoo of a Gibson Explorer, The Edge’s favourite guitar.

“He is probably the most innovative guitarist of my generation. He invents sounds and I admire the direction that he’s taken the band,” she said.

She said her appreciation for the music and messages found in the lyrics has grown stronger over the years, especially since the Internet and travel has allowed her to share stories with other U2 fans.

“I have spent many a late night sitting at home watching someone’s crappy cellphone feed from a U2 concert in Zurich,” said Sherwin-Laing, who posts videos and other musics from the tour to her blog at http://mrstheedge.com.

“There is a U2 song that applies to every situation in your life,” she said. “Fans around the world feel the same thing no matter where we’re from and what our social backgrounds are.”

Prior to 2009, Sherwin-Laing had always wanted to see U2 in concert, especially after seeing concert DVDs. The 1983 concert film Live At Red Rocks, a historic show from the popular outdoor venue near Denver, cemented her as a fan, she said.

“They went ahead with the concert even though it was raining and even though they could have cancelled it,” she said. “It was one of the most emotional things I have ever seen. After that, I decided I had to be there.”amatte@leaderpost.com

amatte@leaderpost.com