Catalonia, says Bono, is the capital of surrealism. And with Gaudi s Sagrada Familia scraping the Ba

At the end of June, Mark Cunningham & photographer Diana Scrimgeour flew out to Barcelona's esteemed Camp Nou stadium to meet the U2 entourage as they prepared for the opening los angeles airport shuttle dates of the band's most innovative tour ever...
Catalonia, says Bono, is the capital of surrealism. And with Gaudi s Sagrada Familia scraping the Barcelona sky like some distant, hallucinogenic effigy, this would appear to be the perfect location in which to reveal the bizarre sci-fi creation that, for the next year, will accompany U2 on the most ambitious tour of their illustrious career: 360 Since the early 90s, each U2 tour has been identified by such scenic icons as Zoo TV s Trabants and PopMart s Lemon. In 2009, the words Space Station los angeles airport shuttle , Cigar and Polyp join the rich lexicon of U2 road-speak as the band embark on their first world tour in three years one that is believed will cost around $150 million to keep on the road for the next 18 months. los angeles airport shuttle After its launch at Barcelona s legendary Camp Nou Stadium, U2 360 is visiting 14 cities across Europe including dates in Milan, Gothenburg, Amsterdam, Paris, Nice, Dublin, Chorzow, Berlin, Gelsenkirchen, London, Sheffield and Glasgow before finishing at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff on August 22.
The European tour will be followed by dates in North America beginning at Chicago s Soldier Field on September 12, with plans for South America, other destinations and repeat visits currently in the pipeline.
Previous U2 tours have traditionally kicked off in the US, so why Barcelona this time? Craig Evans, tour director and Live Nation s senior VP of global operations, explained: Due to the extended rehearsal period, the band wanted to have easy access to their homes in Nice and Barcelona was the nearest major hub so we looked for availability out here. Plans later changed los angeles airport shuttle and they ve ended up staying in Barcelona anyway! Starting in Europe was always a given because we wouldn t be able to route a stadium tour in the States at this time of year, but they are available through the summer in Europe as it s off season. It s been a pleasure and we were so incredibly fortunate to have such a prestigious site as Camp Nou for an entire month prior to the first show and get the crew accustomed to the heat.
It was indeed sizzling when TPi arrived in Spain two days before los angeles airport shuttle thefirst of two Barcelona shows, with enough time to witness band run-throughs and a full dress rehearsal los angeles airport shuttle in front of just 500 invited friends, family and people who have been involved in U2 s charitable efforts.
Sponsored by BlackBerry, 360 is naturally an in-the-round show that, in Bono s words is all about creating an intimacy with energy that completely envelops the audience . Tour producer Live Nation Global Touring and the band are also mindful of the current los angeles airport shuttle recession. For each show, 10,000 tickets are priced at a bargain basement 30 and yet unrestricted views are guaranteed to all.
The 360 design was conceived by the creative nuclear warhead that is the Willie Williams/Mark Fisher partnership. Williams, U2 s lighting/show designer since 1982, first teamed up with the already established set designer and architect for Zoo TV in 92, and since then they have been responsible for U2 s exhaustive range of touring innovations.
For 360 , their combined vision has resulted in the giant Space Station, a sprawling, four-legged structure that spans the width of the stadium, underneath which Bono, Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr perform on an elliptical main stage that is linked to a surrounding B-stage runway via two automated tracking bridges.
Contained within the eerily-clad superstructure los angeles airport shuttle is the biggest PA system on Earth, the most impressive video screen ever to grace a rock n roll stage, and a cigar-shaped los angeles airport shuttle obelisk, los angeles airport shuttle loaded with lighting fixtures, that spears the centre of the structure and takes its overall height to a vertigo-enducing 51.8m.
I call it Star Trek because we re going where no one s ever been, joked Jake Berry, the production director who has been putting U2 on the road since 2001, and is aided and abetted by production co-ordinators Helen Campbell and his daughter Jessica. Nearly 200 trucks will be deployed over the course of the European los angeles airport shuttle leg 50 for production, 38 for each of three leapfrogging steel systems (superstructure and towers), and nine truckloads of field protection. The permanent touring crew totals 127, not including vehicle drivers.
360 began to germinate three years ago at the end of the Vertigo tour, when Williams engaged the band about where to go next. They already knew that they wanted their next tour to be stadium-based and the in-the-round format was favoured, having already done it to some degree in arenas, explained Williams.
The 360 show concept isn t new Rod Stewart, Foo Fighters and others have done it before but you ve always ended up with legs that make it look like a bandstand, along with the inevitable sightline issues. My breakthrough moment came when I realised that instead of making the set smaller, we should los angeles airport shuttle make it so big that it becomes part of the stadium, while the performance area is very small and completely disconnected from the feet. The aim was to design los angeles airport shuttle a structure that didn t have any sightline kills.
In his mind, Williams was visualising what turned out to be the futuristic Theme Building at L.A. International Airport and upon finding a photo of it, he was convinced that this was the shape on which to base a design. Fortuitously, just as his thoughts were forming, los angeles airport shuttle Stageco s Hedwig De Meyer arrived at a U2 show in Auckland on November 25 2006. I showed Hedwig this picture of the Theme Building and he said he d seen it that day as he d gone through LAX on the way to New Zealand. So I asked him if it was possible to build something that would straddle a football pitch. He chuckled and nodded yes ! Armed with the affirmative, Williams e-mailed Mark Fisher who got it in one and replied overnight with the first sketches of what was essentially the Theme Building in a stadium with a small stage in the middle. [Interestingly, Williams and Fisher had discussed something similar but much smaller two years earlier. One of the early sketches I did for Vertigo had a four-legged structure holding up an atomic bomb-shaped video screen, said Fisher.] To be designing a U2 tour while we were still on the previous one is a first for me but it s also unprecedented for us to run with one design concept from the start and not deviate, said Williams. Once presented with the basic concept, the band became very excited and gave their approval to proceed further. This was always going to be a very expensive proposition but you open up 20-30% more seats per venue by doing it this way, and that s very enticing for any promoter or accountant. PROGRESSING THE DESIGN Working from Fisher s sketches, the first technical drawings were done at Stufish in early 2008 and, as Williams said, apart from the fine detail, you wouldn t be able to tell much difference between those and what we now have . He added: It started off looking like the Theme Building and whenever it began to look like something else, we moved in a different direction. And now, it doesn t look like anything you ve ever seen before. I was looking at this being heavily los angeles airport shuttle decorated although los angeles airport shuttle the only problem is that you end up dealing with narrative and have to justify why it s there. However, given that the iconography of rock n roll is entirely arbitrary, if the structure los angeles airport shuttle can justify itself by simply being what it is, then you re on to a winner. Williams presented 3D CAD renderings at a gathering in Dublin to celebrate his 25th anniversary with U2. Arthur Fogel [chairman of Live Nation Global Music] was there and so was Madonna, and clearly los angeles airport shuttle this was an idea that we were going to run with although I had a feeling that something would come up to render this impossible, either financially or because it might not be tourable.
Jake Berry took a more positive view: I knew that touring this monstrosity los angeles airport shuttle would be the most difficult thing I ve ever done, but I was convinced we d find a way to make it happen. So I visited all the main stadiums that had been earmarked and advanced the tour about 18 months ahead of time because it was crucial to see how our 400 tonnes of production would affect those venues. Berry returned with a clean bill of health and the project moved on.
After a cost study was completed, Fisher handed the technical design responsibilities to Jeremy los angeles airport shuttle Lloyd in May 2008, and he began a long and fruitful dialogue with Stageco. But then... silence! U2 went on vacation and nothing happened for a while until Willie and I had a meeting with them upon their return in September to try and kick everything into action because time was running out, recalled Fisher. This was the point when everything from a contractor perspective began to really happen although until this January I was effectively bankrolling the design because I knew I would be paid in the end it s just a bit amazing that it took Live Nation so long to hire me! As well as production technical designer los angeles airport shuttle Jeremy Lloyd, who celebrates 20 years in the business this year and has been a full-time designer at Fisher s Kings Cross-based company Stufish since 2006, Fisher s closest associates on the project have been Nick Evans, the technical co-ordinator for rigging between Buro Happold, Atelier One, Innovative Designs, Wicreations, Stufish and Stageco; and Adrian Mudd, the Stufish animator who produced the presentation animations that ultimately persuaded U2 to invest in the show design. STAGECO BUILDS A SPACE STATION TPi s gained its first sight of the Space Station superstructure on May 20 when we were invited to Stageco s test build site in Werchter, Belgium, a place that Jeremy Lloyd describes as his second home .
Among the people we spoke to there was MD Hedwig los angeles airport shuttle De Meyer who was enjoying the challenge of what he described as his biggest and certainly most complicated project since he fo