U2's Zoo TV Tour
The Summit, Houston, Texas
April 6, 1992
by Marc Hirsh

never published, and boy, you don't want me to go into that story...

I hated Achtung Baby. I just want to get that out in the open right away. After years of ignoring U2 and dismissing them, I finally gave them a serious listen when Rattle and Hum, a record considered by many to be the worst U2 album, came out. I found the songs unbelievable and the musicianship perfect: not outstanding, but more than enough to get the message across to the listener effectively. I was hooked. I think I can say that Achtung Baby was the only album that I was truly looking forward to buying in 1991, and when I did, I felt cheated. Gone were the songs about finding what we were looking for and trying to make sense of the world that's been given to us. Instead, I had to fight my way through nearly an hour of love songs, which, to be fair, have been done very successfully by U2: "All I Want Is You" stands as one of the band's best songs ever. Still, this change of focus was accompanied by a sudden reconstruction of the band's entire sound and image, and maybe I was too immature to handle it, but I detested the change. I wanted the new album by U2, not an album by whatever band they had become. I've been listening to it a lot, though. I keep saying, "It can't have been that bad." And every time I listen to it, it gets better. I now accept "The Fly," "Mysterious Ways," "Zoo Station," "One," "So Cruel," and "Love Is Blindness" as great songs. Overall, however, the album leaves a bad taste in my mouth, maybe just for the trauma I went through on hearing it for the first time.

Now that I've gotten that off of my chest, I understand that it may come off as hypocrisy for me to have wanted to see U2 on Monday, April 6 at the Summit. My only response to this is that I felt that U2 was still one of my favorite bands, and, unlike on Dire Straits' new album, the performances are still as energetic and impassioned as ever on the new songs, so I felt that seeing them live would be as much of a treat as it was supposed to have been when I missed them on their last U.S. tour.

Opening up for U2 were the Pixies, a band for which I've always had a soft spot in my heart, if only because my best friend and I blasted Surfer Rosa many times driving to the record store. So I imagine that I was willing to enjoy their set more than many of the U2 fans. I can't imagine how bad their set must have been for someone who came in determined to hate them. Sure, there are the rumors of impending breakup, so maybe that affected the performance, but the band was completely dead. They had a very large stage to use as they saw fit, and they did nothing but stand there, except for the occasional between-song dash for a new guitar. Other than this, guitarist Joey Santiago remained motionless for most of the set. Bassist Kim Deal moved between two spots on stage: behind her microphone and next to the unnecessary keyboardist, apparently borrowed from Pere Ubu. Singer Black Francis' trademark primal screams seemed ridiculous, as they affected his stance not one bit. Drummer David Lovering was my focus for the set, probably because his job demanded movement. In addition to the lackluster performances, the material was spotty at best. The best song they played, "Planet of Sound," was made unlistenable when the excessive distortion overpowered the hook in the chorus. Songs like "Debaser," "Gigantic," and "Trompe le Monde" were abandoned for fluff like "Here Comes Your Man," which, on record, stands as one of the funniest parodies of pop music. By playing it in concert, however, the Pixies made me question whether it was intended as a parody or not.

Following the Pixies' set, DJ B.P. Fallon sat himself in one of the many customized Trabants and began playing tunes and keeping us entertained while roadies set up for the main attraction. Fallon's exhortations were lost on me, as he referred to every band that he played as "completely brilliant" and then dedicated Lou Reed's "Take a Walk on the Wild Side" to Jesus. When he said that we should all be thankful that we lived at the same time as Bob Marley and that we were about to hear something by him just as the Ronnettes' "Be My Baby" came over the loudspeakers, I knew that he had no clue as to what he was doing. Still, he kept us entertained until the reason we had come reached the stage.

The stage was filled with TVs of all size and pointed in all directions, and multicolored Trabants filled the air, literally. U2 stepped on the stage and proceeded to beat us into submission. For those that were still standing after the metallic squeals of "Zoo Station," Bono Vox's self-absorbed but well-loved stage presence and the massive visual attack of all of the TVs blaring at once was too much to withstand. During "The Fly," the sets showed a rapid succession of words and expressions that kept boiling down to what I thought about U2 the first time I heard the new album: "Everything You Know is Wrong."

Although "The Fly" was the most "choreographed" television song, others used the device to equally successful ends. A thought that occurred to me after the concert was that with the TVs so closely connected to the songs, the band members must have been very unspontaneous in their performances, otherwise a single extra chorus could have thrown the systems completely out of synchronization. You'd never know it to watch the band, however.

I have always thought of the Edge as a second-rate guitar player who wrote first-rate songs, but on stage, he definitely increased my respect for him. Eddie Van Halen he's not, but as far as I was concerned, the man wailed at the Summit, plus he sang the high part in "The Fly," which makes me angry that no other U2 song has given him the reign that he had on Rattle and Hum's "Van Diemen's Land." Bassist Adam Clayton held his own and even expanded on his lines which are notorious for being mind-bogglingly simple, yet appropriate. Larry Mullen, Jr., who I've always thought to be one of the most underrated drummers in music today, gave me the proof that I needed to see to fully believe that. But, of course, the star of the show was Bono.

Dressed in all black and shades, and possibly not a little drunk, Bono commanded attention the entire night. Between songs he announced, "Some of you paid five hundred dollars for tickets to the show. Rich fucks." During "Trying to Throw Your Arms Around the World," he walked behind the stage carrying a bottle and a towel to imitate the main character of that song. When a throng of admirers couldn't get past the security guard to at least get a direct view of their hero, he threw the towel to them and made his way to the front of the stage, where he soaked the first few rows with champagne. He wasn't just singing, he was performing. When he was changing the Zoo TV channels during "Even Better Than the Real Thing," he ran across the NCAA basketball finals and left it there for a few seconds to taunt the fans who had to sacrifice the game for the concert. Later, Bono changed the lyrics to "Even better than basketball."

The show started reaching its peak when the band went to a small stage on the side of the floor and played "Angel of Harlem." The TVs turned off, and, although they would come on again later, they were largely ignored. After singing Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love," declaring that they watched "Zoo TV," they segued into the most eclectic medley I have ever heard. The quiet "All I Want is You" tore into a blazing version of "Bullet the Blue Sky," with Bono getting so caught up in himself that he repeated the "one hundred, two hundred" chant over and over again, changing it each time so the audience wasn't quite sure where he was going. This moved into "Running to Stand Still," regaining the somber mood that had started the medley.

Although the band refused to play anything off of their first three albums (and thus, no "I Will Follow," "Gloria," or, most importantly, "Sunday Bloody Sunday"), "Bad" and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" kept the crowd from getting restless. The presence of Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking on Zoo TV during the latter song was a beautiful touch, and it added even more depth to the song.

The encore was enjoyable, mixing old favorites "Desire" and "With or Without You" with "Ultra Violet (Light My Way)" and "Love is Blindness," two of the better songs off the new album, but, despite the staging and emotion of the set, I got the impression that there could have been more appropriate choices. Still, seeing Bono dressed as a huckster in a shiny silver suit, kissing a reflection of himself in "Desire" was damn amusing, considering that the man himself walks a fine line between mocking and becoming what he mocks. And even though we had all seen it or heard about it before, when Bono pulled a female audience member up to the stage to dance with him during "Blindness," it was easily one of the most emotional moments of the entire evening.

Despite the almost dominating presence of the new album that they were there to promote, I thoroughly enjoyed Zoo TV, perhaps more than anybody who hates the new album has a right to. But when I and twenty thousand of my closest friends all sang "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" over and over until U2 showed up to do the encore, I knew that the togetherness and brotherhood that U2 used to sing about wasn't gone. The band just assumed, rightly, that it was already understood that it was present, and they didn't need to point it out anymore.

Back to articles