The Heart In PopMart

The golden arch was visible from miles away. Indeed, I d wager it was visible from as far away as the surface of Mars. Perhaps that s the whole point. Unsatisfied with being the biggest band in the world, U2 are intent on using the PopMart tour as a special introductory offer to attract audiences from markets elsewhere in the universe.
It s a truly wonderful, and oddly touching, sight to see this enormous, gleaming monument to mass-consumerist glitz rising up out of the Creator s green earth on a sunlicked Saturday afternoon. Surrounded on all sides by vast ranches of bucolic Austrian farmland, it looked alien, disturbing, sacrilegious, hilarious; a sex toy at a funeral.
Imagine if the Papal Cross in The Phoenix Park was, overnight, replaced with a 50ft high statue of the little guy on the front of the Tayto packet. That will give you some idea of the arch s unsettling visual impact (except for the fact, of course, that the arch looks more like a Cheezy Wotsit).
U2 s Austrian concert, staged last Saturday night, was the biggest one-night music event the country has ever seen, its 100,000 attendance smashing the previous national record of 90,000 set by a Pink Floyd show in 1994. It was held at Flugfeld, in Wiener Neustadt, an immense airfield with nothing around for miles but hangars, sheds and an industrial estate, the nearest Lansdowne resident happily tucked-in thousands of miles away in (I assume) a soundproofed bedroom.
The excitement about the arrival of PopMart in Austria was obvious. The papers were full of profiles of the band and ruminations on the meaning of their latest incarnation. What with Mozart Balls and Eurotrash hits like Reinhard Fendich s Blonde , it s not as if Austria doesn t have enough kitsch of its own, asserted a piece on the lead op-ed page of Austria Today. Then, U2 s PopMart heads this way and turns kitsch around until it s actually quite cool.
Throughout the weekend, every second track played on a national station called Hits 3 FM was a U2 track. Tonight, Flugfeld will be a field of dreams, proclaimed one DJ on Saturday afternoon. If U2 build it, they will come.
Flugfeld is an hour outside Vienna if you travel by zippy car, considerably longer if your mode of conveyance is the distinctly unzippy body of an Irishman with no German, no sense of direction, no appreciable intuition but with an unshakeable belief in his own instincts.
Eventually, however, I got there, by an assortment of means: tramline, road, rail, sighing a lot while looking at my watch. Around 5.30pm, with the sun still splitting the stones, I disembarked from a train at Wiener Neustadt station in the thick of a 300-strong army of U2 fans, many in full song.
We headed straight for a meadow through which a wide path had been cleared as a short-cut to the concert grounds. At regular intervals, we came upon hawkers selling cans of beer and soft drinks from the backs of refrigerated vans (how come nobody in this country ever thought of that?).
As we neared the entrance to Flugfeld, cop sirens suddenly rent the air. A half-dozen Polizei motorcyclists screeched into view and halted all movement. A caravan of limos and Saabs followed, sped past and raised a tidal wave of gravel as side-gates were hurriedly opened and the cavalcade zoomed up an avenue to the backstage area.
U2 and their entourage had come directly from Cologne, in northern Germany, where, the night before, they d received the gong for Best International Act at the Viva! Awards ceremony. In the blur of their arrival, the only recognisable figure was Larry Mullen, with those distinctive shades of his, the ones that seem to have been fashioned from metallic-coloured Meccano.
His heavily-bejewelled wrist glinted in the sunlight as he held on to the grip-strap above a backseat window. He looked like Elvis.
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Don t believe the hype. PopMart is better than you ve heard. Exaggeration doesn t do it justice. Any embellishment will only be an understatement.
The show defies description. It has got to be disbelieved with your two eyes. Terms like extravaganza and spectacular are too small and imprecise to convey the experience. I have been struggling to find the words which would adequately express the PopMart sensation. I have done this by drawing on my years of skill and training as a professional wordsmith. After much deliberation, I ve come up with two. Here they are: KA-BONG! and PADDA-POW!
The 100ft TV screen is awesome. It grabs the eyeballs and tourniquets the attention like nothing I ve ever witnessed before. The images it flashes are devoutly strange, often ludicrous, but impossible to forget.
The use of colour is the most breathtaking exercise in dazzling contrast since Arthur Guinness first decided that what would perfectly set off that black pint would be a nice white head. The visual jokes are smart and sharp and (surprisingly) funny. The close-ups of Bono s head are truly terrifying.
Like a musical short-order chef, flipping discs rather than burgers, Howie B kept the anticipation sizzling on his turntables while the final minutes ticked away before blast-off. Dozens of inflatable lemons were bopped and tossed about over the crowd s heads, in an extraordinary and surreal ballet. As with so much else in PopMart, it was like something out of a movie, only moreso.
And then, finally, it was time. The opening moments of the concert are an armed coup with a soundtrack. A hundred things happen simultaneously, none of which can be properly comprehended, but you catch glimpses and snatches: Bono shadowboxing his way towards the stage in hooded sweats; Edge in cowboy hat and preposterous handlebar moustache wrestling with his guitar like he was rustling a steer; Adam striding forward in a gas-mask and orange overalls, his bottle-bleached head swivelling from left to right like a lighthouse beam on red alert; Larry casually sauntering over to the drums as though he was walking to a bus top (he looked like Elvis).
Somehow, you expect to hear gunfire any second but what you get is the remorseless, teeth-gnashing intro of Mofo . For me, one of the most striking features of the PopMart gig was how perfectly cohesive all of the music sounded, even though the set-list was drawn from all stages of U2 s two-decade career.
Miami , for instance, segued seamlessly both in and out of Bullet The Blue Sky . Please was shot through with sparks from Sunday Bloody Sunday . One of the biggest cheers of the night resounded for the opening bars of I Will Follow , which in turn lead into a storming version of Gone .
As if to prove that, despite their new high-tech armoury, the band haven t forgotten the simpler tricks of their trade, Bono s simple beckoning hand-gestures during an exhilarating New Year s Day had the required effect. You could feel the temperature in Flugfeld rise a dozen notches every time he did it.
Not since the earliest days of his alter-ego, The Fool, has Bono so shamelessly indulged his theatrical fascination as he does on PopMart. There were moments in Austria when, with his jaw thrust forward pugnaciously, he lolloped and mugged about in a manner that reminded me of no-one so much as Lee Evans, that most physical, most clown-like of contemporary comedians.
During the Miami set-piece, Bono performed a fully-fledged MGM song n dance routine, complete with star-spangled umbrella twirling in his hands. Robbing moves from Gene Kelly in Singin In The Rain and Charlie Chaplin s little tramp, he strutted about the stage like an unhinged parody of himself, the camp showmanship purposely deflecting attention from what was probably his rawest, most emotional vocal performance of the night.
This being PopMart though, it wasn t long before he relinquished the parasol and got into some down and dirty bump n grind with the tour s resident female dancers. From tap dancer to lap dancer in the blink of an eye.
U2 have gone Music Hall. They know that when you ve got an audience laughing and singing, you can do anything you want to them behind their backs.
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The night of the Austrian gig, August 16th, was the 20th anniversary of Elvis Presley s death. If Presley had survived til today, there s little doubt that he and U2 would have recorded together. It s easy to visualise Bono ingratiating his way into Gracelands and, stealthily, stealthily, stealthily flattering The King into such a collaboration.
Inevitably, the spirit of Elvis was evoked throughout the proceedings. Elvis banners and badges had rustled and glinted all over Flugfeld throughout the afternoon. Hand-drawn posters featuring Bono and Elvis in a variety of poses and clinches were ubiquitous. One young lady, with what looked like a small rhino tusk through her nose, was in the process of painting an extremely intricate mural on a massive cardboard canvas featuring the fab four kneeling in front a throne-perched His Presleyness.
Onstage, Even Better Than The Real Thing and Last Night On Earth both became odes to Presley, with Bono screaming on the former Who owns the house? Don t forget who owns the house! ( ELVIS! ELVIS! ELVIS! ). Later, Mr. B even treated us to a brief snatch of His Latest Flame and then blamed his guitar when it started to go a little awry.
By far the most bizarre Elvis tribute though came when Edge abandoned his guitar and led the entire 100,000 assembly in a vigorous karoke version of Suspicious Minds the lyrics appearing, in standard karaoke fashion, on the gigantic TV screen.
The encores were my favourite part of the whole shebang. They began with a blistering Discothique , the battle hymn of the PopMart Republic, and then encompassed everything it is that U2 do so well in the course of a stunning half-hour hitzkrieg. KA-BONG! PADDA-POW!
On its surface(s), PopMart is a celebration of the seven deadly sins. The show oozes pride, lust, gluttony, anger, sloth, covetousness and envy from every pore. Just listen to Bono sing Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me and tell me that boy doesn t yearn to be the lowest, laziest, sleaziest lounge lizard in the whole reptile house.
At its heart, however, U2 are sill hungering for the higher thing, still waiting for God to send His angels.
That any rock band could deliver a show like PopMart is astonishing. That they could deliver a show like PopMart that has a heart should numb even our faculty for astonishment.
Already, I want to see it again. n