Skip this ........ if you are not interested in the interior life of U2 and the Crew on the road which will lead us into Mexico - down under - Japan ......
This is the Diary of Willie Williams from U2
- Set and Stage - and Lighting and show concept designer .....
This diary can be found on U2 dot com but I think only for members of the community ..... you can join too .....
Thursday February 9th, 2006. Los Angeles - Monterey
I joined the crew party to fly down to Mexico today. The band are going to stay in L.A. for a couple more days, but I really need to get to see the staging system as soon as possible as its been a while. We flew on Air Aviacsa, which was a first for me. Its been a very long time since I flew an airline I’d never used before to a city I’d never visited before, so the experience was vaguely exhilarating. It was an early start this morning and I was exhausted anyway having hit the ground running in L.A. Sadly though, I found I couldn’t sleep - once again my body was flat out but the little guy in my head was bouncing off the walls. It was really most peculiar to experience jet lag whilst on an aeroplane, blasting through time zones in reverse direction.
With the time change we didn’t get to Monterrey till after night fall. It was going to be a while till the system in the stadium was ready so Bruce and I headed out to find some nosh. This looks like a nice part of town. We found good food then headed back to the hotel, discovering other members of our touring party propping up the bar. More reunions.
Word came through that we weren’t going to be able to get at the show system tonight, so I counted my blessings and hit the sack.
Friday February 10th, 2006. Production Rehearsals, Monterey
Down to the venue bright and early to get a jump on everything which needed doing towards rebuilding the outdoor show. Clearly we are taking the European show as the starting point, but are customising it for each of the countries we are visiting. Also there are quite a few visual things which appeared during the last indoor leg which need to be reformatted to work in the great outdoors.
It was a scorching hot day, so it was bare legs all round. Everything came together in good time and the early dusk allowed us to start programming by 7ish. A very weird curfew rule here states that there can’t be any loud noise in the stadium before 9pm, which is refreshingly counter-intuitive. Consequently we were trying to get as much done as we could before the backline guys arrived to unleash the fury.
It was fabulous to see the outdoor stage again. Its a magnificent looking thing, even if I do say so myself. Even nicer when it gets turned on. Word came down the wire that the backline guys weren’t going to come in after all which produced much rejoicing in our front of house oxygen tent. Its so much easier to get work done when you’re not listening to random music noise and 120 decibels.
We were the usual crew of suspects inside the mix position, Bruce programming lighting, Smasher programming video, Bob at the video engineering, Luke & Sam on the video sequences. As ever, it can become oddly quiet out there for long periods of time as we all beaver away on our separate pieces of the puzzle, occasionally coming together to run a song, or see how lighting and video fit together.
The temperature dropped like a stone after dark and we were largely unprepared, sartorially speaking. We dug out all of the clothing we had, but it was still woefully inadequate. Luke improvised some sarong-like garments out of large sheets of plastic and we started jumping up and down a good deal. Eventually Bruce cracked open the ‘sporting goods’ drawer of his workbox adding more clothing to the mix, though largely shirts and shorts. I ended up wearing six shirts and three pairs of trousers but was still bloody freezing. You should have seen us, bundled up to an absurd degree - “Tellytubbies go mad in the Arctic”.
At about 4am I was thinking perhaps we should knock it on the head and carry on tomorrow night. However, it was only then I realised that there is no tomorrow night - I have lost a day somehow in my jet lag blur, as I imagined we had another night’s programming before the band arrived, but no, they’ll be here, on stage tomorrow evening. I guess we’d better carry on then…...
Saturday February 11th, 2006. Production Rehearsals, Monterey
To bed at 7am and up at 3pm, a bunch of dazed roadies were picked up from the crew hotel. I had all my bags piled up on the sidewalk as the band party arrives today, so I am transferring to their hotel.
The cold of last night seems to have stayed on and it was pretty chilly all day. At the gig all was noise and activity with sound checks and preparations for the run through. The band came in around 5 and we had a quick huddle to figure out the set list. We’re getting into a situation now where we have so many great songs worked up that the show is potentially too long. The Edge always laughs and says “ah, its great value for money!”, but the truth is that if even a great show is too long it throws out the dynamics of the whole event. For U2 something in the region of two hours ten minutes seems to work the best. We’ve touched two and a half hours on occasion and even though the crowd is delighted, you can feel them getting tired. That said, I have been pretty determined to get “Bad” into the main set for this leg, so we decided to add it in, even though we couldn’t find another song to drop to make way for it.
Regular readers will know that playing without an audience has never been U2’s strongest suit, so imagine our surprise when the four of them got up there and played the entire set from start to finish without stopping. We were stunned and the crowd outside the stadium were loving it. (Hearing the far off chant of “EL-E-VA-TION” was hilarious from inside the deserted venue.)
We had a brief catch up afterwards but agreed to meet at noon tomorrow to make a final plan. It had got really quite cold again by this time, to we sent to crew for cups of tea before settling in to another night’s programming. Most of what we did last night was pretty good, but the new visuals for “End of the World” needed some tidying up and the visuals for “One” didn’t work - it was all too big and distracting. Both of these we worked on and made a big improvement. “End of the World” uses footage of fall out from atomic bomb tests (taken from a U.S. government archive film reel which en masse and in isolation makes for incredibly depressing viewing). By way of redeeming it in the name of art, we abstracted it, chopped it up and put it through an interference blender, so it now has the look of the band coming through your TV during a nuclear war. Its just charming. I also took another run at “One” and nailed it. Much simpler, less busy, fewer words and more buffalo. How could I have been so blind?
By 4.30am we were seeing double so bailed. We’re in great shape given how quickly everybody had to get back into this. Dropped all the lads off at the crew hotel, then I’m glad the runner knew where my hotel was as I didn’t have a clue. Its gone 5am, meeting with Bono at noon, so I’d better get off line and get some sleep.
Sunday February 12th, 2006. Show Day, Monterey
Was woken by the phone at 11am, with a friendly voice telling me that my meeting with Bono had been pushed back from noon till 3pm. Result!
Rolled over for another hour, but found myself awake so staggered up. One of the many extraordinary things about road life is that its possible to exist in a state of almost complete ignorance of your surroundings or domestic arrangements. Being the start of a new leg and having been so intensely busy at the venue, I hadn’t a clue about what hotel I was in or any travel arrangements. Usually you look for a piece of paper shoved under your door which tells you what to do. and today’s piece of paper informed me that I’m going to Mexico City tonight (fancy that!) but more crucially that the hotel was serving “complimentary brunch till 1pm”. Result!!
It was about 12.30 so I pulled on some clothes and went to find the food. This I did, along with a couple of other members of our party, in a large, smart, busy, dining room laid out with a huge spread of food. It was perfect, so we piled our plates high and made the most of it. Have gorged ourselves, another member of our party arrived and looked puzzled. “Aren’t you coming for breakfast in the bar with everyone else?”. Yes folks, we had just sat down and helped ourselves to a complete stranger’s wedding reception.
Later down at the venue everything seemed to be in order, pretty much like we’d never been away. There was, however, one surprise which took the evening into unexpected territory. It was cold. In fact it was nearly freezing out there which made it very hard for the audience to produce any kind of party atmosphere. When I walked out the the mix position before the show I was really taken aback by the complete lack of noise or vibe from the crowd. This is Mexico after all, home of the Mexican Wave, home to some of the greatest gig audiences on the planet, but tonight it was clearly going to be a struggle.
A struggle it was. From the minute the band hit the stage it was clear that, even though the audience was loving it, the chances of us achieving elevation were slim indeed. The gig had its moments (Elevation being one of them) but for the most part the crowd would cheer at the beginning and end of songs, but huddle together for warmth in between. Another “problem” (though in many ways encouraging) is that here it seems the newer U2 material is far more well known than the older. The ‘Boy’ songs didn’t get anything like the usual recognition and my visionary insistence that we put ‘Bad’ into the set created without doubt the low point of the evening. It was uphill work all round.
My one smile came from seeing Selma Hayek in the audience. The encore section of the show begins with a set of “one arm bandit” reels which spin around revealing the symbols from Achtung Baby with a mixture of political and cultural icons. For each of the shows on this part of the tour we have made a custom version of this piece, including famous faces from that country and the one for Mexico contains….Selma Hayek. She must have been surprised.
After the show we did a runner to Mexico City, where hopefully it might be at least a little warmer.
Monday February 13th, 2006. Monterey - Mexico CIty
I was so tired when we arrived last night that I fell asleep in the van. Got to my hotel room, walked in the door, got straight into bed and passed out without waiting for luggage, showering or anything.
Slept well and woke feeling more human. I spent a couple of hours working on the show, devising a new set list which might be more suitable for this part of the world. Given the cold and the dark, I think the European show is too slow to get to the spectacular bits. When we were opening in daylight and there was more of a football crowd spirit we could get away with holding back, but here it seems wiser to go in all guns blazing.
Went up to Bono’s room and had an hour or two with just the two of us which was fantastically productive. Its hard to get that kind of focussed time, but it pays off enormously. We’re going to try the “City of Blinding Lights” opening and focus on newer material. More spectacle, more upbeat, more rock and roll.
This was followed by another meeting to sort out some forthcoming film shoots which will be happening during the rest of this South American leg. Again this was productive, so time well spent.
Finally made it out of the hotel for some dinner with Sam and Luke my video content team. We went out looking for trouble, but on a cold Monday night in February, trouble was not to be found. Instead we strolled the Zona Rosa looking into entirely empty bars and clubs, rode in one of Mexico City’s fantastic VW Beetle cabs (three of us in the back as there’s no front seat) before settling into the hotel bar. Ah well, an early night won’t do us any harm.
