In a mysterious 15-second commercial during the Super Bowl on Sunday, U2 announced a run of concerts in Las Vegas this Fall honoring their 1991 album “Achtung Baby”; however, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. is still recovering from surgery and would miss this run of performances. Bram van den Berg, a Dutch drummer, will fill in.
The concerts, dubbed “U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at the Sphere,” will mark the opening of Las Vegas’s new MSG Sphere at the Venetian. The band’s first live performances in four years will occur during the unspecified “special run of shows,” which a rep emphasized are not a residency. It appears likely that this will be the beginning of a world tour to commemorate the 30th anniversary of “Achtung Baby,” similar to their successful tours for the 30th anniversary of their 1987 album “The Joshua Tree,” which included Mullen. More than 3.2 million people attended those concerts, which took place in 2017 and 2019 (and were interspersed with the band’s “Experience + Innocence” tours of 2015 and 2018). They brought in about $400 million.
The “Achtung Baby” and “Zooropa” albums, which were both produced in Berlin and released in November 1991, effectively restarted U2’s career by introducing fresh sounds, influences, and lyrical approaches while breaking away from the anthemic rock sound that had made them one of the most popular bands in the world in the 1980s. The subsequent “Zoo TV” tour, which lasted almost two years and was viewed by more than 5 million people, proved that their audience was with them every step.
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The concerts will mark the first time U2 has performed without Mullen since the band formed in Dublin in 1976. Mullen had hinted in a November interview that the group might not perform this year due to his unspecified surgery; the quartet was accepting a lifetime achievement award at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony.
In a joint statement, the band’s Bono, the Edge, and Adam Clayton mentioned the Sphere shows as well as the relatively unknown van den Berg, a former member of the Dutch band Krezip:
But Larry has joined us in welcoming Bram van den Berg, a force in his own right. It will take everything we have to approach the Sphere without our bandmate in the drum seat.
“The Sphere performance has long been under development. We don’t want to disappoint anyone, especially our viewers… We miss them just as much as they seem to miss us. The fifth band member was always our listener. The basic truth is that U2 hasn’t performed live since December 2019, and we need to go back on stage so our fans can see our faces again. And what a distinctive stage they’re constructing for us in the sand… The Sphere is the ideal location, “Achtung Baby” is the ideal album, and we are the ideal band to elevate the live music experience. U2 has been attempting to do that with our satellite stages and television installations, most notably on the ZOO TV Tour, which closed in Tokyo 30 years ago this Fall. U2’s songs will be plastered all over The Sphere’s walls, a gallery, and a performance space.
The world’s most advanced audio system, incorporated within a structure constructed with sound quality as a priority, will make the Sphere so distinctive. Still, its beauty also lies in the possibilities for immersive experiences in real and made-up settings. The Edge kept going. It’s a canvas with unequaled scale, image quality, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We all concluded that it would be crazy not to accept the invitation after considerable thought.
James L. Dolan, executive chairman and CEO of Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp., states, “MSG Sphere’s cutting-edge technology allows a legendary band like U2 to bring its music to life in completely new ways. A new media called The Sphere will transform the entertainment industry.
According to the statement, the MSG’s Sphere venues in Las Vegas and London will debut “the first 16K screen that wraps up, around, and behind the audience.” Every seat in the auditorium receives pitch-perfect audio thanks to Immersive Sphere Sound. The audience will be able to physically experience the thunder, the heat, and the wind, thanks to 4D technologies. This unique technology will be used in the first series of the “U2 UV Achtung Baby Live at the Sphere” concerts, giving fans a brand-new experience.
U2 will release 40 U2 songs from the band’s discography on March 17 under the title “Songs of Surrender.” These songs were “re-recorded and remade for 2023” during sessions that spanned the previous two years. They come after singer Bono’s book tours in support of his similarly named autobiography, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story.”