U2 Elevation 2001
BOSTON Show Two
6 JUNE
More Incidents and Episodes and Random Observations of U2 in Boston
For Elevation and Where The Streets Have No Name tonight's show went live to the NBA basektball finals between the Philadephia 76ers and LA Lakers. It was also being filmed for a later television broadcast.
'I know we're filming the shows but that's not what tonight is about,'
explains Bono. 'Tonight is about playing a really great rock and roll show that would make you really proud to have us.
'You know we want to play like - you know...' and he sings the first verse of In My Life by, you know, The Beatles.
The voice is back. 'I'm singing alright tonight, aren't I?' he inquires as Kite begins. 'I had an extraordinary thing happen a few nights ago in Albany, where I've never felt so crap, I never felt so bad, and those people really carried me and the band also.
'It was a really special moment for me and my voice is back now and this song is about letting go of something you don't want to let go off, could be a lover, could be a father, could be a child, could be a friend...this is Kite.'
John Barry's Midnight Cowboy theme introduces New York tonight, in which Bono pulls open his jacket to reveal its stars and stripes lining and jokes that the song is 'a hard one to swallow Boston.'
'When we were 15, 16, Larry was 14...still is, The Ramones were the band, and without The Ramones it's hard to imagine that we would have felt like we felt about joining a band and all. So this is a song that Joey Ramone loved and they played it to him while he was lying in his hospital bed a couple of months back and it's the last song that Joey Ramone heard in his life here and that's an amazing thing for somebody who grew up as a fan of Joey Ramone I can tell you.
'Anyway, Joe turned this song about a hangover into a gospel song I think cos that's the way I always hear it now through Joey Ramone's ears.'
U2 play In A Little While.
Time to introduce the family.
'This is a family business, I'd like to introduce you to the scientist in the family, a man who takes sexual pleasure in the collection of data, wearing the No. 7 shirt this evening, even his mother calls him The Edge...'
'On security, the body guard of the band, the man who gave us our first job and keeps us in our first job, on the drums Larry Mullen Jnr...
'The jazz man, the musical conscience of the family, the man whose instrument holds mysterious powers over woman folk, the poshest member of U2, Adam Clayton..'
Bad ('This is a little ditty about addiction.')
Where The Streets have No Name, live to the NBA Finals in which the singer brings together for the first time in history a psalm of David and a basketball dribble.
Pride ('Dr King still a saviour...)
With or Without You in which Bono lies down on the stage with a girl he has pulled from the crowd and she sings along with him.
The Fly in which the singer jumps into the audience, off the catwalk and runs across the floor and out of the back of the hall at the end of the song.
PJ Harvey. Thanked, for 'opening up her ribcage for us.'
Everyone Else. 'Thanks for coming, thanks for spending your hard earned out on a rock show, thanks a lot, thanks for for giving us a great life. I met a man last year who marched with Martin Luther King back in the old civil rights days. He said an interesting thing to me, he said you know as an Amercan it's hard for me to feel really free while my brothers and sisters are in chains in Africa, in chains to diseases like HIV Aids, like money, like bad loans hanging around the neck of a proud people who want to be free of their past, free like Americans are free, free like Europeans, it's not just about civil rights, it's about human rights, the right to live like a human.
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