U2 360 Tour Salt Lake City

Tech investor Roger McNamee has jammed for some pretty big crowds in his side gig as a rock n’ roll musician.

On Tuesday, he’ll play perhaps his grandest stage yet when his band Moonalice opens in Oakland for U2 — which is only the biggest rock band since maybe the Beatles.

How does a long-haired multimillionaire who’s better known for backing the likes of Facebook and disk drive maker Seagate rate such a gig? Well, it helps that U2 frontman Bono is a partner in McNamee’s Sand Hill Road investment firm, Elevation Partners.

“He’s seen our band, and a year ago he invited us to play,” McNamee said. “You could have knocked me over with a feather.”

This actually isn’t the biggest crowd Moonalice has performed for, says McNamee — that honor goes to the gigs they’ve played at festivals like Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. The band puts on about 100 shows a year, performing original music and marketing itself heavily on Twitter and Facebook.

Still, considering that Moonalice’s other recent shows include the Redwood Mountain Faire in Felton and a free show in San Francisco’s Union Square, it’s fair to say Tuesday’s gig at Oakland Coliseum — which also includes funk rocker Lenny Kravitz — represents a step up in weight class.

Moonalice is McNamee’s second attempt to get the band together in a serious way.

In the late 1990s, he and brother Giles founded the Flying Other Brothers, which regularly jammed with members of the Grateful Dead. (Roger McNamee, who calls himself “unapologetically eccentric,” had spent years advising the band on business and technology issues.)

Moonalice was founded a decade later as a reflection of McNamee’s desire to make serious, albeit seriously fun, music. The band’s current lineup features longtime collaborator Pete Sears (ex-Jefferson Starship) and former bandmates of the Dead’s Phil Lesh.

The hookup to Bono came via Sheryl Sandberg, who at the time was working in the U.S. Treasury Department and helping the Irish rocker in his lobbying campaign for Third World debt relief. “This is a guy who clearly thought about technology in ways I hadn’t seen from a musician before,” McNamee says.

A few years later, Bono rang up with the idea of buying a record company; when McNamee’s partners at Menlo Park investment firm Silver Lake turned down the idea, “I quit.”

Elevation launched in 2004 to focus on entertainment investments, and after some admittedly bumpy years its big wins have included Palm, Yelp and Facebook.

McNamee later returned the favor by introducing Sandberg to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg; she’s now the company’s chief operating officer and considered one of the most powerful women in Silicon Valley. So things worked out pretty well for everyone involved.

Another capacity audience executing spectacular Mexican waves at the Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City. ‘Real Thing’, I Will Follow, Get On Your Boots, Magnificent, Mysterious Ways – the audience response was deafening, U2360° was in orbit again.

After the entire stadium carried off All I Want Is You, it was time to pay birthday greetings to an old friend of the band celebrating his 70th birthday today.

‘Happy Birthday Bob Dylan,’ announced Bono, before leading everyone in a birthday chorus. The spirit of Dylan was in the house tonight with Bono later slipping into ‘Blowing in the Wind’ before ‘Streets’ and ‘The Times They Are A Changing’.

More poetry before Beautiful Day when three girls climbed up on to the stage to read a verse each of a poem ‘Utah’ by Minnie J Hardy as the people of Salt Lake City made this a night we won’t forget.

U2.COM review here

Bono once again mentions Adam Clayton’s fatherhood and Larry received plaudits for his newly released and ‘very cool arthouse movie’.

Below, you can see the best videos we got so far and link to constantly updated photo album, credit to the several U2 fans attending the show.

SETLIST

Opening Act(s): The Fray

Main Set: Even Better Than The Real Thing, I Will Follow, Get On Your Boots, Magnificent, Mysterious Ways, Elevation, Until the End of the World, All I Want Is You, Love Rescue Me, Happy Birthday, Stay, Beautiful Day – Here Comes The Sun, Pride, Miss Sarajevo, Zooropa, City of Blinding Lights, Vertigo, I’ll Go Crazy (remix) – Discotheque – Mofo, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Scarlet, Walk On – You’ll Never Walk Alone

Encore(s): One, Blowin’ In The Wind – The Times They Are A-Changin – Where the Streets Have No Name, Hold Me Thrill Me Kiss Me Kill Me, With or Without You, Moment of Surrender

VIDEOS

I Will Follow

Elevation

Vertigo

With Or Without You

Blowin’ In The Wind

Pride (In The Name Of Love)

Miss Sarajevo

Sunday Bloody Sunday

PICTURES

Click in the link below to see all photos

Here

In another life and time, Craig Evans might have been a carnival barker, attempting to drum up interest and sell tickets for any number of traveling entertainment troupes passing through town.

In today’s world, however, Evans is the director for the U2 360° Tour — the biggest and grandest rock concert endeavor of all time. Indeed, by the time this traveling spectacle wraps in July, it will be the highest-grossing (to the tune of $700 million) and highest-attended (7 million tickets sold) tour of all time.

Despite the unprecedented, off-the-charts success of the tour, Evans was still at Rice-Eccles Stadium in Salt Lake City on Monday afternoon, holding court with local media members and drumming up advance coverage for tonight’s long-awaited U2 appearance. (The show was postponed from last summer due to emergency back surgery for Bono, the band’s lead singer and frontman.)

U2′s current concert undertaking is so immense, that even Evans’s barker-style hyperbole comes across as a mere stating of the facts.

“This is U2 2011, and these guys are growing and getting better every day,” he said. “This is the greatest U2 that there ever has been.”

It’s hard to disagree, seeing as how Evans was standing on the field at Rice-Eccles Stadium in front of the largest concert stage ever constructed. U2′s stage for this tour features a futuristic design that includes four steel legs that are 90 feet tall and a center pylon that tops out at 150 feet. The whole structure — dubbed “The Claw” — weighs 400 tons.

According to Evans, because it takes four days to construct the “Claw” structure at each venue, there are actually three of them which leap-frog tour dates around the country. So, presently, there is one in Denver still being taken down after Saturday’s concert, one in Salt Lake City for tonight’s show, and a third one being set up for the following show in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

There is only one set of production equipment, Evans said, which includes lights, sound, video board and the main stage below. That arrives the day before each show and is added to the main structure.

Let the good tines roll

The idea for this massive undertaking, Evans said, can actually be traced to the end of the band’s “Vertigo” tour on Dec. 9, 2006, at Aloha Stadium in Hawaii. As he was walking out of the venue after the show, Bono asked U2 stage designer Willie Williams if next time, there would be any way the band could play to all the stadium.

The concept continued over dinner with the placement of four forks over a plate, visually representing a 360-degree viewing experience. Voila! “The Claw” was born.

“The idea was to make a stadium setup that was so big that it actually made the stadium feel small,” Evans said. “And the idea behind that was to create a more intimate atmosphere and environment for the fans and the band, where everyone feels like they’re not in a giant stadium but in very close. This stadium is the smallest stadium of the entire U2 tour. It’s interesting to see the show that will happen here is going to be very unique indeed. It’s going to make for a very special show … and to be able to come to a community like Salt Lake City, which is a great city to come do shows at, but it’s a challenge to bring a show of this size. But it’s going to be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for people to see U2 — the full-blown U2.”

Evans was asked about which seats offer the best viewing experience for this tour. Like any good salesman, he was non-committal while extolling the virtues of any seat in the house.

“It’s funny, I’m a golfer and people say, ‘What’s the best golf course?’ and I can never answer that question because every good golf course is really good,” he said. “I hear from fans that say they love it to be further back, and they get the big picture view. And I hear from fans who say, no, they want to get sweated on by Bono as he’s running across the stage. You know, there is such a great experience because what is going on here is 50,000 people in a very closed area, and when they start screaming and yelling and sharing their excitement, then the band responds very obvious to that excitement, and then it goes back and forth. Really, wherever you are, you are part of that experience at the stadium.”

Dave McKay, vice president for United Concerts, which is working with Live Nation on Tuesday’s appearance, has seen all kinds of tours over decades in the entertainment business, but nothing like the current U2 undertaking.

“The U2 tour is truly the largest production ever put on the road,” McKay said last week. “They are not only the most inspiring band, they are over the top with trying to entertain their fans. I’m not sure if this tour will ever be topped from a presentation standpoint — it just can’t get any bigger.”

Weather or not

A recent spate of rainy weather will not have any effect on the show one way or another, Evans said. The show will go on, rain or shine. In fact, the futuristic stage has a backup plan in cases of inclement weather.

“We have these very, very elaborate and expensively designed umbrellas, that actually look like clear mushrooms, that come out of the stage and come over the top of the band members to protect them if we needed it to,” Evans said. “As you can see with the spire, you have an open center, there’s no actual center roof, so the rain can come right down. If it’s coming on down on the band members, we’re able to protect them. They seem to sort of enjoy it and you’ll get a nice version of ‘I’m Singing in the Rain’ from Bono. There’s really nothing weather wise that will affect us. Lightning is something we’re very well aware of, but we’re grounded safely. Wind is something that we very carefully monitor, but the structure has a very high tolerance. So we have all these safe levels that we’ve studied, but just the simple rain … this show’s happening and it has never really dampened a U2 performance.”

When it comes to the concert industry, Evans has not only been around the block, he’s been around the world many times over. He’s been tour director for U2 for the band’s past four tours, and prior to that he was tour director for the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, and also worked tours with Bon Jovi and Devo. He estimates that he’s worked more than 6,000 shows in a career that began in 1986.

With apologies to another Irish artist, however, Evans said no one compares to U2.

“U2 is on a different level for everything,” Evans said. “The Rolling Stones are an incredible stadium show. But what U2 has in terms of fan loyalty, in terms of international scope that they carry, for what they stand for, it’s really hard not to truly believe all that they stand for. They eliminate debt and help poverty, and AIDS reduction … they’re passionate about it, they live it, it’s real to them, and that adds on to everybody here. We’re proud to be part of something that really in our society today is hard to find. There’s no other band that could have done this tour successfully.”

Yes they are! The show firstly dated June, 3rd 2010, and reschedule due to Bono’s back surgery, will take place tonight in Rice-Eccles Stadium.

The Fray will once again take the stage as opening act, warming the crowd for the 2011 Billboard’s Top Touring Band, U2.

For all the latest details about tonight’s performance go to U2NT on facebook or @U2_NT on Twitter!

SALT LAKE CITY — When U2 takes the stage at Rice-Eccles Stadium Tuesday, fans will have waited 355 days longer to see the rock icons in Salt Lake City than they originally thought they would.

It will have been 368 days since Bono underwent emergency back surgery in Munich followed by the announcement that the American leg of their “360 degree tour” scheduled to kickoff in Salt Lake was postponed. 

And by Tuesday, it will have been 1,983 days, or more than five years, that U2 last played the Beehive State.

But the only number that matters to fans now is May 24. That’s when U2, one of the biggest bands in the world, returns to Utah.

One year ago, the massive stage being used for U2′s world tour was almost completed at Rice-Eccles Stadium, and the band was expected to fly into Utah to begin dress rehearsals before the start of their American tour. That was put on hold following leader singer Bono’s surgery, and the stage was disassembled.

Now, as the semitrucks start to roll back into town and construction of the stage, known as “The Claw,” starts again, and billboards featuring U2 are displayed around the city, the excitement of what could be the biggest concert event of the year in Utah is again starting to boil.

U2′s rise to the top and massive success have truly been impressive. The band formed in Dublin, Ireland, in 1976 and have remained the same four members throughout their entire history: Bono, The Edge on guitar, Adam Clayton on bass and drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. They have sold more than 150 million albums worldwide and won 22 Grammy awards, more than any other band.

They immediately became hits with college radio with their first three albums, “Boy,” “October” and “War” (and its live counterpart, “Under A Blood Red Sky”), began to crack into mainstream success with “The Unforgettable Fire” and jumped both feet into worldwide popularity beginning with their performance at Live Aid in 1985. Three massively successful albums, “The Joshua Tree,” “Rattle and Hum” and “Achtung Baby” followed. U2 seemed to hit a resurgence of sorts in 2000 with the release of “All That You Can’t Leave Behind,” followed by “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” and their latest release, “No Line on the Horizon.”

U2 made their Utah debut June 3, 1983, at the old Salt Palace Assembly Hall when they played along with The Alarm. It would be another 14 years before the band returned to Utah, fueling a popular, but unsubstantiated, rumor for many years that the quartet had such a miserable experience here in 1983 that they had vowed never to return. Even the massive Zoo TV Tour managed to miss Utah during its worldwide run.