Ahead of U2’s first Australian show of the 360° Tour, media were invited to have a preview of the spectacular stage they flew here on six 747s.
There to take us through the stage was production manager Jake Berry and set designer Willie Williams.
“My goal was to find a way of having U2 be able to play outdoors in the same configuration that they play indoors,” Williams explained, “which is where the stage is at one end and they sell all the way around, and indoors it’s just the perfect way of them playing because they’re right in the middle of the audience but of course you can’t do that outdoors because there’s no roof, so that was the beginning of the challenge to find a way of doing it, and how do you find a way of doing it, and how do you hold up so much gear in a self supporting structure?”
Fans often don’t consider the logistics behind such an enormous stage.
“A massive undertaking because this stadium is pretty unique. It’s built over a parking lot,” Berry chimed in. “Where most tours would come in and have ground support legs that manage 20 - 25 tonnes, we managed to get over 100 to 120 tonnes on each of the supports, so the stadium have spent a lot of time and effort, and if you have time and effort that equals money in making support underneath it to hold the weight of the show.
“Of course another big dillema is that our show is actually taller than the building, so we cannot shut the whole roof, which is probably a first, so we’re kinda happy about that just to be bigger than anything else. We’ll close it a bit, we were talking about that today, we would hate for the people to get soaked, but after the last tour’s experience when we played two shows here in beautiful weather with the roof open it was just an amazing experience, we’re going to try to hold that as long as we can. But we do realise that we’re have to make a decision before we open the doors whether the roof will be open or shut, but we’re hoping the forecasters are going to be wrong like they are in most parts of the world and we can play like it is here.”
“It’s a five day process for us,” Berry added when asked about the time required to set up such an enormous set. “Four days to build the claw, then one day for production and then tomorrow’s the show day. We came in from Auckland, New Zealand and we came in on a mere six 747 planes.”
The tour, which was originally due to finish late last year, is constantly evolving. “I have been making new video pieces this week. There is at least one new piece in the Melbourne show,” designer Willie Williams modestly announced.
“In the larger sense it’s completely their baby,” Williams said of the band’s involvement in the set design. “They tend to be more reactive. It comes from conversations. They’re very good at creative conversations, which I will then ingest, as well as everything else that I observe and the music that I hear them making, and then it goes to the next level where we have to find out that it’s at least vaguely feasible before we propose anything. They’re very very good at being involved in the big picture, but leaving the specifics to those people who are good at those things. That also comes from having such a long relationship.”
So what happens to the structure once the tour is finished? “This might be the first stage production in history that does have an afterlife,” Williams said. “We think we’re in the final year of hte tour, nobody is quite sure. There is talk about being able to reuse this structure as some kind of small venue or a band shell type of structure, but I think there is hope for this one I think, rather than just being scrapped.”
So if you’re out at a festival or something like that and think a particular stage looks familiar, it might just have once had Bono and co running around below it.
U2’s 360° tour, with Jay-Z, begins in Melbourne tomorrow night.
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