One of the most notable things about U2's Sphere shows, properly known as “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere,” is that the band remains faithful to Achtung Baby's arrangements. Gavin Friday, longtime collaborator of U2, told us why.
Why U2 (mostly) play the Achtung Baby tracks in their original form
The third song played during U2's Sphere shows is “Even Better Than the Real Thing.” Technically, this is the second track off of Achtung Baby, but the band decided to play most of the album's songs in their “ZooTV” tour order. “The Fly” — the album's seventh track — was bumped up to the second song played, and “Mysterious Ways” — the album's eighth track — gets played fourth as it was on the “ZooTV” tour.
Anyway, “Even Better Than the Real Thing” is noticeably played differently than in recent years. The original whammy pedal effect was back after The Edge ditched it in recent years. Starting around 2011 or so, U2 would play the song with a new guitar effect. It sounded closer to the “Fish Out of Water” remix that's included on deluxe albums of the album. But hearing the original arrangement was a pleasant surprise, as was Bono singing the final “you take me higher” refrains in falsetto a la the “ZooTV” tour.
A band decision
Gavin Friday, U2's self-proclaimed “midwife,” weighed in on this during his interview with ClutchPoints (full interview Thursday). He has worked with the band on a number of their tours and is in the know when it comes to their setlists and stage productions. Friday told ClutchPoints that the band made this decision vis-à-vis “Even Better Than the Real Thing” and others (such as “So Cruel”).
“And even ‘One' is back to the original version — there's no strings, it's just the raw version,” Friday said. “So yeah, I think ultimately they did want to be quite authentic to the music, but visually bring it to another level and a new meaning.”
What he means by that is the Sphere itself. Back on the “ZooTV” tour, U2 decked out their stages with dozens of TV screens. The Sphere is a whole different beast, with its 16K resolution screens. According to Friday, U2 was more concerned about reinventing the “ZooTV” tour's message in 2023.
“The ‘ZooTV' tour 30 years ago was all almost a premonition of what we're living in, like mass information, fake information, where the phone is God, news is God, and who the hell is God?” Friday said. “We decided to sort of not go there because we did that 30 years ago and to look at possibly the most important thing in the world: Mother Earth. It's [the Sphere shows] a poetic poem to Mother Earth.”
A visual spectacle
U2's Sphere shows are a unique spectacle. Online video footage doesn't do justice to what the band has done. Gavin Friday knows the band better than anyone. Comparisons to the “ZooTV” tour were inevitable, but it's clear that the band wanted to do something unique with these shows. Even if there are similarities, including the way some of the Achtung Baby songs are played, it's thematically very different.
U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere is set to continue through December 16.
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