Popmart Tour
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| PopMart Tour | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| Tour by U2 | ||
| Start date | April 25, 1997 | |
| End date | March 21, 1998 | |
| Legs | 4 | |
| Shows | 94 | |
| U2 tour chronology | ||
| Zoo TV Tour (1992-1993) |
PopMart Tour (1997-1998) |
Elevation Tour (2001) |
The PopMart Tour (often referred to as just PopMart) was a concert tour by the Irish rock band U2, which took place from 1997 to 1998, in support of the group's 1997 album, Pop. PopMart was in part a parody of consumerism; the band kicked off the tour by holding a press conference at a Kmart store.
Contents |
[edit] The stage
The show was designed by frequent U2 collaborator Willie Williams, who had also designed their previous tour, Zoo TV. The stage included a 100-foot tall golden parabolic arch suggestive of the McDonald's logo, a 150 x 50-foot LED video screen, the largest in the world at the time. [1], a huge martini olive spiked high on a towering toothpick, and a 40-foot-tall mirrorball lemon. Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. joked that "it could have been an artichoke, but we wanted a more practical fruit." [2]
[edit] The show
The performances began in the style of a boxing match, with the band (heavily guarded with suited men) walking through the crowd towards the end of the B stage while the "PopMart Mix" of M's "Pop Muzik" was played. Each of show opened with a performance of "Mofo."
Following "Mofo" at every show, the band performed "I Will Follow," "Even Better Than the Real Thing," "Gone," "Last Night on Earth," and "Until the End of the World." As the group performed, the audience was bombarded with images and colors, all designed towards the show's ironic embrace of tackiness and pop-ular culture. Each show featured "Staring at the Sun" during the middle of the set, and many shows featured "New Year's Day," and "All I Want Is You." "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," "Pride (In the Name of Love)," and "Bullet the Blue Sky" (often preceeded by "Miami") were played at every show. Those songs were often followed by an "Edge Karaoke" slot, in which The Edge would sing The Monkees' "Daydream Believer" or a similar song against a cheap karaoke CD, complete with lyrics shown on the giant screen. The end of the main set featured "Please," which segued into "Where the Streets Have No Name."
At the end of the main set, before the first encore, the giant lemon moved to the middle of the stage. There a sheet fell off exposing a huge disco ball that lit up the stadium in spinning lights while the Perfecto Mix of "Lemon" played over the PA. The band then would walk out of the giant lemon onto the B stage to perform "Discothèque."
The rest of the first encore typically consisted of "If You Wear That Velvet Dress" and "With or Without You." After another brief break, the band would return to perform "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me," their single from 1995 for the Batman Forever soundtrack. "Mysterious Ways" followed this, and then "One." Occasionally, "One" was followed by "Unchained Melody," "Wake Up Dead Man," or "MLK;" at the final show of the tour, it was followed by "40."
A total of 55 different songs were played throughout the tour, including both original songs and covers. Out of the 12 songs on Pop, each song was played in full at least once, with the exception of "The Playboy Mansion," which was only featured as a snippet several times at the end of "Where the Streets Have No Name." "Do You Feel Loved" was only performed during the first six shows, and "If God Will Send His Angels" was performed once by the full band, plus about 20 other times solely by Bono and The Edge. "Bad" and "Desire" were also played at a handful of shows.
[edit] Example setlist
A sample PopMart Tour setlist, taken from the band's show in Rotterdam, Netherlands, on 1997-07-19.
- "Mofo"
- "I Will Follow"
- "Gone"
- "Even Better Than the Real Thing"
- "Last Night on Earth"
- "Until the End of the World"
- "New Year's Day"
- "Pride (In the Name of Love)"
- "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
- "Staring at the Sun"
- "Radar Love" (Edge Karaoke)
- "Miami"
- "Bullet the Blue Sky"
- "Please"
- "Where the Streets Have No Name"
Encore 1: - "Discothèque"
- "If You Wear That Velvet Dress"
- "With or Without You"
Encore 2: - "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me"
- "Mysterious Ways"
- "One" / "Unchained Melody"
[edit] Reception
Although the extravagance of the tour was visually and technically impressive, the early dates of PopMart were, on occasion, marred by subpar performances. The band had booked the tour before the album was finished, and with the planned November 1996 release pushed back until March 1997 to finish the album, valuable tour rehearsal time was lost. This lack of preparation manifested itself in the shows, particularly during the poorly received opening night in Las Vegas where the band lost their timing on the song "Staring at the Sun," stopped playing partway through, and then started over. Nonetheless, the quality of the band's performances improved greatly by the second leg in Europe, evidenced by the "Please" single that features three songs from the first European show in Rotterdam. The appearance at the Belfast Botanic Gardens was U2's first show in Belfast in over ten years.
Despite its cleverness and some positive critical response, many fans felt alienated by the shows; new material from the Pop album didn't go down as well as U2 might have hoped and too many people just didn't seem to get the joke. U2 dressed as The Village People in the "Discothèque" video, and their willingness to mock their serious image continued during PopMart.
Technical problems also arose throughout the tour. At the shows in Oslo, Sydney and Tokyo, the giant lemon in which the band would walk out from during the encore failed to fully open, which ruined the beginning of the encore performance. Before the show in Raleigh, North Carolina, the television monitor failed to operate properly, which ended up causing the entire concert to be cancelled altogether.
Like Zoo TV, PopMart was another huge success in terms of revenue. For example, on September 20, 1997, the band set the new European record for attendance at a concert for a single performer, when 150,000 Italians went to the "Campovolo" in Reggio Emilia. However, PopMart was not profitable for the band: despite taking $80 million in revenue, the show cost $100 million to run. Drummer Larry Mullen Jr. said that the only thing that saved the band from financial ruin was T-shirt sales.
[edit] Sarajevo concert
During the Zoo TV Tour, U2 aired controversial satellite link-ups to Sarajevo. The link-ups were arranged by aid worker Bill Carter, who interviewed ordinary people about their experiences of the ongoing Bosnian War. As a result of the satellite broadcasts, U2 promised to play in Sarajevo. The Sarajevo show had to wait until the PopMart tour, when U2 became the first major band to perform in the city after the war. The show, which was highly emotional (and heavily bootlegged), was among the highlights of the PopMart tour. 50,000 people attended and effort was made to make sure all the ethnic groups were present. During the encore, Brian Eno joined the band for the first ever performance of "Miss Sarajevo," aside from the Pavarotti and Friends concert. Unfortunately, the performance did not go as well as planned due to Bono's lack of voice and messing up during the song's timing, which caused him to apologize for to audience for "fucking it up."
Despite the subpar performance, a news story said: "For two magical hours, the rock band U2 achieved what warriors, politicians and diplomats could not: They united Bosnia." Trains ran for the first time since the war to enable people to see the concert, though they were stopped again afterward. According to Mullen Jr., "there's no doubt that that is an experience I will never forget for the rest of my life. And if I had to spend 20 years in the band just to play that show, and have done that, I think it would have been worthwhile." [3]
