Here’s Willie Williams writing in one of his recent diary entries on U2.com about how U2 puts together its show. This is from production rehearsals in Turin, when the band was considering three different openings to the show:
The band rolled in during the late afternoon and we tried each of these several times over. All three approaches worked, though in very different ways so, depending on what happens with the rest of the set list, we can keep them all in the can for the time being.
Given that we’re in Italy it also seemed like a no-brainer to put Miss Sarajevo in the show, at least for opening night. The biggest challenge we have now is that the show is as long as it can comfortably be – beyond 2hrs 15mins it starts to become a bit of a marathon for both band and audience, plus the reality of noise curfews means that a longer show has to start earlier rather than end later. Consequently, for every new song that goes in, something has to come out and this has proved to be exceptionally difficult. There are other factors too, like the production elements and how they hang together. The opening of the screen is obviously the biggest production moment and it was strangely tough to find a song that could hold its own in the presence of such a jaw-dropping physical event. Unforgettable Fire has proven to be perfect for this moment, though we have tried it with other songs. I’d thought that the end of Until the End of the World would be a suitably cataclysmic moment to open the screen but in reality it just didn’t feel right. Tonight we tried playing Miss Sarajevo with screen opening but again (to my mind) it felt wrong as the ‘gag’ for this song is Bono’s extraordinary operatic moment. To do it whilst a great big machine is opening overhead just looked a bit silly. Tonight ended up being a little inconclusive, but we’ll keep experimenting.
So that pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it?
“…beyond 2hrs 15mins it starts to become a bit of a marathon for both band and audience…”
And then curfews come into play, because U2 doesn’t want to take the stage at 8:00 pm and play a show in broad daylight when all of the lighting and production won’t be visible.
And then songs have to be matched to production elements, like the mere act of unfurling the video screen.
The length of U2’s concerts comes up regularly in our forum (and others, I’m sure) as a discussion topic. And the discussion inevitably goes dead when someone brings up other artists, like “Bruce Springsteen plays for three hours, so U2 should, too.”
Well, you know, U2 isn’t Bruce Springsteen. It’s apples and oranges. Bruce is amazing at what he does, but what he does is 180-degrees different from U2.
I think we’d all love for U2 to play unending concerts. I’d gladly stand through a 4-hour U2 marathon (to borrow Willie’s word), wouldn’t you? But if you’ve been following this band for more than a couple years, you should know by now that it’s never gonna happen. Time to accept it and enjoy the shows while we still can, y’know?