Elevation Tour - Tour Overview

Tour Overview

Lead singer Bono would reiterate during shows the promotional theme of both the tour and the new album, that after the relatively poor sales of Pop and sometimes poor reception of PopMart, "We're back, re-applying for the job ... And the job is best band in the world."

The European leg of the Elevation Tour was also presented in arenas. However, several outdoor shows were played due to logistics and facility requirements. These included both of the Slane Castle shows, which were part of Ireland's annual Slane Concert. For these two performances, the "heart" was extended and widened in order to accommodate the more than 80,000 people who attended each gig. The Turin show was played in a football stadium, with a black U-shaped semicircle extending out into the crowd instead of the heart. The Berlin show was performed in a natural outdoor arena with a tent-like structure supporting all the band's flown gear such as speaker stacks and lighting rigs. Due to the limited amount of space available for production, the top of the heart was placed at the front of the stage. During this leg, Bono regularly flew back to Dublin after each show to be with his dying father.

The third leg of the tour began in the U.S. only a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks and in the midst of the 2001 anthrax attacks. This nearly led U2 to cancel the leg, but they decided to continue, starting it at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana, home of the "Fighting Irish". While some fans shied away from coming to an ordinarily celebratory occasion or to a large, enclosed public gathering, many other fans did not let these events stop them. The tenor of the times dramatically affected the temperament of the shows, with Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" appearing frequently in the setlist and the band's "Walk On" taking on added emotional weight.