Elevation 2001
April 19th
San Jose Arena
U2's arrival at the Arena in San Jose is greeted with a plethora of signs.
What else ?
The nun puppet is here again, along with a girl in the front row who is celebrating her birthday. She must be. Her sign reads 'Birthday Girl' with a big arrow pointing to her.
'Please Play Kit' reads another, 'You Promised You Would In San Diego' .
(Everything comes to he who waits. Not long now.)
There are Irish flags in the heart, lemons on strings, another banner reading 'I LOVE THE EDGE' and another with the mysterious 'J 33-3'.
The music, as usual, elevates the arena, lifts the roof and, if you were the photographer in the pit getting a kiss from the singer, probably does even more.
'In New York you get hot,' says Bono, taking off his jacket and posing in front of the video screens. He takes a bunch of sunflowers from a fan and holds them aloft, soon he has taken an Irish flag too which is draped over the piano for a blistering rendition of Sunday Bloody Sunday.
'Was that alright?' he asks 20,000 U2 fans of their performance. 'You're much smaller in real life.'
'I'd like to do something that's very, very difficult for a singer to do, introduce you to the rest of the band.
'Now before we were called U2, we had a few other names, The Hype, which we later lived up to but for one lunchbreak we were known as the Larry Mullen band...'
Larry Mullen Jr is introduced to the sound of a stadium exploding in appreciation.
'God is fair,'adds the singer. 'Larry Mullen can't sing and I thank God for that on a daily basis...'
And then his Lordship is introduced.
'The first manager of U2, musical conscience, jazz man of the band, by far the man with the most complicated sandwiches, the poshest member, Lord Adam Clayton...' to whom Bono bows reverentially.
And the scientist.
'He's done more with technology than you people put together, a man whose made music out of it....a brain so big he has to wear a hat, will you welcome, The Edge wearing the No. 16 t-shirt.'
And they do. Loudly.
Desire is 'for any young punk bands starting up' and The Ground Beneath Her Feet is for another punk, a novelist.
'When you're from the northside of Dublin, you're allowed to sing 2 and a half love songs in a row but they have to be good. This we wrote with the singer of that other great rock band, the Salman Rushdies...'
And there is a final dedication too, this time to someone dearly departed.
'When we were 14, 15 and 16 we were inspired to make our band 'cos of a group out of New York called The Ramones. I'd like to play this song for Joey Ramone...
And U2 play In A Little While.
