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[Live & On Record]

NIGHT FOUR:
SATURDAY-NIGHT SPECIAL

The fourth and final night of U2’s “Elevation” tour stop was, by Bono’s own addition, the band’s 29th Boston-area gig, presumably going all the way back to the pre-War days of battling their way through crappy club gigs in the pre-alternative, post-punk early ’80s. He mentioned this stray fact prior to the new soul searcher “Kite,” the eighth number in a rousing and enjoyable 23-song set — not that anyone was expecting anything less from the best arena-rock band currently in the arena-rock business.

The capacity crowd answered back with a roar of approval, though he’d probably have gotten the same response if he’d just read aloud from the phone book. Didn’t he try that two tours ago? Anyway, the theme this time around for U2 seems to have something to do with returning to their humble roots, even if it would be hard to find anyone who remembers Bono and his cohort ever projecting anything less than pride (in the name of love and all kinds of other noble stuff). To that end, they’ve downsized in a big way — from football stadiums like Foxboro to hockey/basketball arenas like the Fleet, and from the massive technicolor video-screen backdrop of “Pop Mart” to the quartet of black-and-white single screens that hovered above the “Elevation” stage. If nothing else, it made the cavernous FleetCenter seem an intimate venue. (It also made the little stripped-down mini-set featuring “Desire” that the band performed “unplugged”-style at the front of the heart-shaped ramp — a conceit that made sense on the “Pop Mart” tour — seem a little redundant.)

Arriving with the house lights on — a simple device that’s effective precisely because nobody ever does it — and wearing what passes for street clothes for stars of their magnitude, Bono, Edge, Larry, and Adam set themselves right to the task of crafting a transcendent experience everyone there. That included Elvis Costello, who, if he was indeed hovering around the soundboard as rumored, got to hear Bono sneak lyrics from “Pump It Up” into “Elevation” and from “Allison” into “Bad.” At his most effusive, Bono has always reminded me of that old Steve Martin bit where he thanks each and every member of the audience. And by now working the crowd is so effortless for him that he had to resort to scuffling with a security guard who seemed to be trying to keep some guy in the crowd from getting access to the stage just to challenge himself. Of course, the brief altercation, which ended with the guy from the crowd taking a victory lap around the stage, could easily have been scripted. Either way, it had the desired impact: it made this Saturday night seem special, and, for a second, we all felt that if he coulda, he woulda lifted each and every one of us up there on stage with him to share in the glory that is U2.

BY MATT ASHARE

Issue Date: June 14 - 21, 2001