(I should probably warn you there are spoilers here, if you haven’t seen the U2:UV at the Sphere concert yet… (Though, how on earth have you avoided them all to date!!?!?!))

I saw my boys again a couple weeks ago. Three of them anyways (Poor Larry! I miss Larry!). Finally! After the dreaded ticket fiasco of May 2023, it happened!

U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at the Sphere in Las Vegas on October 5, 7, and 8th 2023!!

Ir’s been a while, almost four years (minus a Bono adventure six months ago), and I missed them. Of course, just seconds after they left the stage from my third and final show and I already miss them again.

It’s just the way it’s always going to be, this No More U2 Show (for awhile anyways) Blues.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll always say it: I miss them like I would miss breathing.

U2. My heart. The musical loves of my life. I know. I know. I’ve said that before too… probably in every post I write about them. But much like the No More U2 Show Blues, these things will never change.

After almost 40 years (for me), it feels safe to say this love affair is eternal. I don’t know, maybe they pipe dopamine and oxytocin through the vents at their shows … is that a thing???

Right, the show.

The amount of times I have tried to start writing this blog, and I am still just so stunned from all the feels, all the visuals, all the emotions of seeing U2 live again, and live, this time, at the game-changer Sphere in Las Vegas.

Ok – Let’s begin by addressing the gigantic, globe-shaped, 160,000+ speaker-holding, so far beyond anything ever seen or heard before ground-breaking elephant in the room….

Yes. The Sphere is a game-changer. The outside 360 degree ‘exo-sphere’ video screen with the cute smiley face, holiday, event, mood, imagery is spectacular enough. So spectacular people just go to the Sphere and sit outside and watch it, there’s social media sites dedicated to it, and apparently, yes, car accidents have occurred (talk about your distracted driving!!).

But inside. Inside this gargantuan ball, is a whole universe of wonder and technology designed specifically for entertainment (as opposed to sports venues where concerts are normally held, designed for, well, sports). There’s a 516 feet wide and 366 feet high screen of immersive, engulfing, 16K resolution LED endless possibilities. Those 160,000+ speakers are spaced throughout the inner-sphere to enable every one in the 18,000 to 20,000 audience to have the same crystal-clear sound experience. (If you like the music geekery of visual and sound and tech stuff, check out this and this article on the Sphere.)

And who better to inaugurate this behemoth of entertainment than U2. U2, the little band from the north-side of Dublin, with their big hearts, big sound, and big ideas.

And with their big Achtung Baby and the 30th (plus a bit) anniversary of its big Zoo TV tour.

U2, who don’t just raise the bar of concert technology and live entertainment every time they tour, they catapult it far beyond anything before.

Just think about 1992’s Zoo TV tour and it’s Trabant cars as spotlights and the massive backdrop of countless TVs, each playing individual channels or working together as one stage-length, wall to wall screen.

While not the first tour (by a long shot) to use video screens or theatrics, Zoo TV is considered the tour that “made video content ‘standard practice'” in concert design and is credited as spear-heading the ‘modern tour’ (apparently leaving Mick Jagger claiming: “rock n’roll has now entered ‘the Star Wars era'”).

Or Popmart’s technicolour wonder. It’s 100ft tall golden arch and 40ft wide mirrorball lemon (which spun around and held the band inside for their encore entrance).

Or The Joshua Tree 30th Anniversary Tour’s 200ft wide and 45ft high LED video screen, which showed stunningly clear and panoramic vistas that are surely pre-cursors to the imagery at U2’s Sphere shows.

The Sphere is simply the next giant leap for humankind, and for U2 in their continuing quest for ‘sensory overload‘ for their audience (and by the looks on their faces as they gazed up and around at the imagery during their show, for themselves as well.)

Ok, sure, any band could do something special in this place. Because this place is special. But no other band fits like this to be the first to hang their placard on the door. And to do it in celebration of the innovative Zoo TV tour that standardized video content in a venue that has instantly revolutionized immersive video (and sound) experience? Perfection.

And revolutionize, it has.

At its heart U2:UV at the Sphere is just the rock n’ roll simplicity of band, sound, and imagery. And yet the complexity behind that simplicity dropped all our jaws to the ground through-out this show.

Entering the stage/screen area and your head automatically lifts up and around in awe. You know from seeing the outside in reality and from pictures and videos that the Sphere is an enclosed dome of a limited size. And yet from inside, the first view you see on entering the theatre area projects an impossibly much taller dome with an opening at the top a la the Pantheon in Rome. There are birds flying inside and landing on the structure (there aren’t).

But that’s not all this screen can do and you and everyone around you knows it. And there’s a tension building in this room, partly due to the anticipation of waiting for U2, partly in anticipation of seeing what this titan can do on the inside.

The tension manifests in the bouncing to and forth from sore foot to sore foot. (Some of us have been waiting in intervals of queues for a day or two, and at 5:30 in the morning for GA bracelets, returning at 5:30pm to get into the building – we are old, and our feet hurt!) Anxious glances around the stage and behind, where will they enter from?! When will it start!?

It builds as you notice the pair of Fly glasses on one speaker on the stage, and a pair of circular rose-tinted glasses on the other.

Builds as Pauli the PSM warms the crowd with a selection of 80s and 90s hits from his blacklight Trabant. Many of us wearing glow sticks and UV makeup. (It tickles me to no end that my first rave-like experience is weeks before my 50th birthday at a U2 concert :P. Age means nothing – music means everything.) (Side note, because this also tickles me – Pauli was the percussionist and musical director for Harry Styles’ Love on Tour.)

Builds as you wait and wait to see that screen at its best capacity. This is cool – the Pantheon thing and the birds.

Builds and builds as you hear the Lemon remix and, oh this sounds sooo good, but you don’t yet realise how good this whole thing is going to sound.

But you know this can do so much more! But U2, U2 know how to draw this out. How to build that anticipation higher and higher. And oh, there’s helicopters flying across that opening at the top (there aren’t).

And then.

U2, my boys, walk up onto the stage to uproarious applause and screams. Our boys are here.

We are here. For our first show my friend and I are on the floor, dead centre, two people back from the rail, our other friend, further back.

And there they are. Right there in front of us.

Bono puts on those Fly shades and you think the crescendo of anticipation and joyous noise can not get any bigger. It’s filling the dome. Until he sings. And the screen behind him opens up multiple gigantic shadows of Bono.

Bit by bit they tease you with this screen. Building anticipation. Zoo Station, and the screen seems to slowly crack light. Bright light seeping through, a stream parallel, a stream perpendicular to the stage. Bright, white light forming a cross, a sword and expanding.

Images of the band and static appear in the sword of light, rectangles reminiscent of the Zoo TV TVs.

Words, phrases, flashing big across the screen. More welcome nods to Zoo TV. This is phenomenal. This is so fricking cool! This screen. And yet, you still know, this is not all.

But you can’t take your eyes off the band anyways. The emotion of seeing them live, of hearing these songs, this album. And Bono, on the stage, his pole dance microphone stand moving him in circles. The Return of the Fly. Posturing.

And then.

Matrix-like numbers and letters spread across the screen, raising up and up, higher and higher all around until they meet. The audience inhaling in awe, audibly as one. Exhaling as the numbers then come down, a box pushing down, tighter and tighter.

Yep. This is a game-changer.

Even Better Than the Real Thing and an overwhelming beautiful cacophony of imagery. All over. Behind the band, around the sides and overhead. Surrounding. Sensory overload, indeed!

Where do you even look? It’s Everywhere. Everything. All at once.

Overwhelmed by the imagery, and the crick in my neck, I focus back on U2. And the immediate, yet thousandth, thought in my head is thank God we have tickets to two more shows (the 3rd night of which my friend only just found us minutes ago while talking with people in the audience! It was meant to be!) because one U2 show is never enough for me and two in this building won’t do it either!

I’ve written before about the desire, the need, to see multiple U2 shows in a tour, and a large part of that is the spectacle of their show – the screens and their imagery, the characters the band portray – like Bono’s the Fly, MacPhisto, the costumes, the lighting, the stories they tell through all these elements.

When you are looking here, you are missing there. And that is so much more true in this venue and this concert. There is just so much to see and hear!

On the floor, two people away from the stage and the band are my focus. I can’t see the top of the stage, which I know is meant to be a record player. I can’t see the audience behind me, nor the full impact of the screen.

And I am more than ok with this. I am ecstatic. I am in my happy place. This is home. My heart. In front of my boys, feeling all the feels and energy.

In front of my boys. I can see how engaged they are with us and each other. I can see the sparkles of Adam’s bass, the sweat on Bono’s neck, the glint in the Edge’s eyes. I can see how much fun Bram van den Berg is having (Larry is apparently in the audience on the October 7 show [though I don’t know if this is true, can anyone verify?]), and the awe on all their faces as they look at us and the screen around them.

And I can feel everything in the sound. Achtung Baby is probably U2’s most emotional album. It is raw, it is hurt, it is heartbreak. And, as Bono said on one of the three nights I was there, it is sexual.

The power of those emotions come through at any U2 concert involving these songs (and any of their songs). But here, again, this Sphere, this unfathomable technology. Eight speakers per person in the room and… And it is crystal clear, the sound and the emotions.

So crisp, there are guitar scratches, and notes, and reverb, and subtleties I’ve never heard in these songs in the many years I’ve heard them live or in various recorded formats.

We learn firsthand on our second night way up in the 300 level, no matter where you are in that room, the sound is crisp and clear. When Bono whisper sings those lyrics, it sounds like he is whispering in your ear, wherever you are. Those guitar scratches, like the Edge is playing right beside you.

But that first night, on the floor, little more than arms reach from my hearts and the emotions get to me. I don’t know why, but it hits me hard during Who’s Going to Ride Your Wild Horses.

Such a powerful song and the band and Willie Williams could have gone with any on the nose imagery of horses galloping across that incredible screen. But they didn’t. They pulled it back to just embers (or stars, I forget) falling from the sky and the band.

I wept.

How artfully they chose when and when not to use the screens!

Songs like Wild Horses and So Cruel were better served without the intense imagery.

OMG, So Cruel! Talk about the impact of this new sound system on a song! My favorite song on this album, and wow, the harmonies between Bono and the Edge! Unreal! So perfect! I can not get over them! The depth of emotion! The imagery, just tall shadows of the lighting. Bare, like how this song strips you.

Even Better Than the Real Thing, The Fly, Streets – those songs, the power of the video enhance the big anthem-y power of those songs.

With or Without You and Beautiful Day with that crazy, incredible, gasp-inducing swallowing of the audience in imagery. That fits.

But pulling back to just band and sound; this beautiful, pure, equal sound, for Wild Horses and So Cruel is genius. Having imagery during these songs would have taken the focus off the band. Attention on the visual distracts attention from the auditory, and So Cruel, in particular, was all about the auditory.

As truly stunning and overwhelmingly joy-inducing, serotonin pumping as the imagery was, my absolute favourite, most unforgettable moment was So Cruel and those two singing together. I had shivers. I still get shivers just thinking about it.

Where to Sit/Stand

It only matters where you sit if it matters where you sit.

If you need to be on the rail for whatever your reasons, aim for the rail. If you want to focus on the band, aim for the rail or a few people back on the Floor. If you need the energy of the crowd, aim for the middle of the floor or closer to the stage.

But if you want to see the spectacle at its truest impact – e.g. see the whole of the screen and the stage – aim for the upper levels 04 – 05 sections. We had 305 for our second show and throughout the night we kept exclaiming “Oh I didn’t know that happens!” “Oh I didn’t see that last time!” The stage really is a record player and it changes colours and has imagery (e.g. the band’s faces) projected on it at various times.

The full impact of the 360 screen (or whatever, it doesn’t really go all the way around, it stops at the audience, but still) isn’t really experienced from the floor, either right at the stage or in the middle, at least not without effort. You have to crick your neck up to see it above or turn around to see it behind you, which does work, it just doesn’t allow the whole experience. The screen is best experienced further up and centre. I’m not sure if there’s a difference between sitting in 305, vs 205 or 405, but 305 was damn cool!

Also, some of the seats in the Sphere have haptic capabilities – I don’t know if they were actually on or if we were in them – I don’t think so – but we could still feel the storm in our seats. And I didn’t even realize there was storm imagery from the floor (I was very focused on my boys).

I guess the question is do you want to see the boys up close and personal, or do you want to see the whole impact? Both are valid. Both are awesome. I want both, so I try to see multiple shows 😀

Also – don’t forget that there are rows in the 100 level that have an obstructed view from the overhang of the upper levels. I think I read somewhere that that obstruction is noticeable from row 19 or 20 and back.

Other Things

The Venetian is hosting a U2 fan experience, Zoo Station, during the residency. It’s pretty cool! There’s a couple Trabants, movies, photo ops, merch only available at Zoo Station, interactive fun stuff, fan meet ups, and more.

There’s also a host of other U2 sites you can see while in Vegas, including where the videos for Streets and Atomic City were filmed. I created a city guide of the sites several years ago and have since updated it with a bunch of new locales. You can check the guide out here.