Zoo TV Tour

Zoo TV Tour
World tour by U2
Associated album	Achtung Baby, Zooropa
Start date	29 February 1992
End date	10 December 1993
Legs	5
Shows	157
U2 tour chronology
Lovetown Tour (1989–1990)	Zoo TV Tour (1992–1993)	PopMart Tour (1997–1998)

The Zoo TV Tour (also written as ZooTV, ZOO TV or ZOOTV) was a worldwide concert tour by rock band U2. Staged in support of the album Achtung Baby, the tour visited arenas and stadiums from 1992 through 1993. To mirror the new musical direction that the band took with Achtung Baby, the tour was intended to be an unequivocal break with the band's past. In contrast to the austere stage setups from their previous tours, the Zoo TV Tour was an elaborately-staged multimedia event. It satirised television and the viewing public's over-stimulation by attempting to instill "information overload" in its audience.^[1]

The tour's concept was inspired by disparate television programming, the desensitising effect of mass media, and "morning zoo" radio shows. The stage featured dozens of large video screens that showed visual effects, random video clips from pop culture, and flashing text phrases. Live satellite link-ups, channel surfing, crank calls, and video confessionals were incorporated into the shows.^[2] Whereas U2 were known for their earnest performances in the 1980s, the group's Zoo TV performances were intentionally ironic and self-deprecating;^[3] on stage, Bono performed in-character as several personas he conceived, including "The Fly", "Mirror Ball Man", and "MacPhisto". Differing from other U2 tours, the Zoo TV shows opened with six to eight consecutive new songs before older material was played.

The tour comprised five legs and 157 shows, beginning in Lakeland, Florida on 29 February 1992 and ending in Tokyo, Japan on 10 December 1993. The first four legs alternated between North America and Europe, before the final leg visited Oceania and Japan. After the first two legs of the tour took place in indoor arenas, the final three legs mostly visited outdoor stadiums and were branded as "Outside Broadcast", "Zooropa", and "Zoomerang/New Zooland", respectively. Approximately 5.3 million people attended Zoo TV, which was the highest-grossing North American tour of 1992. The band's 1993 album Zooropa was recorded during a break in the tour, expanding on many of Zoo TV's themes, and its songs were played during the 1993 legs. The tour was depicted in the Grammy Award-winning concert film Zoo TV: Live from Sydney. Music critics have called it one of the most memorable tours in rock history.

Background

U2's 1987 album The Joshua Tree and the supporting Joshua Tree Tour brought them to a new level of commercial and critical success, particularly in the United States.^[4] Like their previous tours, The Joshua Tree Tour was a minimalistic, austere production that was highlighted by the group's earnestness, and they used this outlet for addressing political and social concerns.^[4] The band earned a reputation as being serious,^[3][5] an image that became the target of derision after their much-maligned 1988 motion picture and companion album Rattle and Hum.^[4] The project—which documented their exploration of American roots music—was criticized as being "pretentious" and "misguided and bombastic",^[6] and they were accused of being grandiose and self-righteous.^[4] Their 1989 Lovetown Tour did not visit the United States, and at the end of the tour, lead vocalist Bono announced on-stage that it was "the end of something for U2" and that "we have to go away and ... just dream it all up again", foreshadowing changes for the group.^[7]

Conception

The first ideas for Zoo TV emerged during the Lovetown Tour in 1989, when various aspects of radio programming intrigued U2, particularly the large radio audience their Dublin concerts acquired.^[9] The wild antics of "morning zoo" radio programmes inspired the band with the possible idea of taking a pirate radio station on tour.^[10] They were also interested in using video as a way of making themselves less accessible to their audiences.^[11] These ideas developed in late 1990 while the band recorded in Berlin at Hansa Studios for Achtung Baby. They watched television coverage of the Gulf War on Sky News, which was the only English programming available. When tired of hearing about the conflict, they tuned into local programming to see "bad German soap operas" and automobile advertisements.^[10] The band believed that cable television had blurred the lines between news, entertainment, and home shopping over the previous decade, and they wanted to represent this on their next tour.^[12]

The juxtaposition of such dichotomous programming fascinated the group, and it inspired them and Achtung Baby co-producer Brian Eno to conceive an "audio-visual show" that would display a rapidly-changing mix of live and pre-recorded footage on video monitors.^[8][10] The idea was intended to mock the desensitising effect of mass media.^[3] Eno is credited in the tour programme for the "Video Staging Concept",^[13] and he clarified, "the idea to make a stage set with a lot of different video sources was mine, to make a chaos of uncoordinated material happening together... The idea of getting away from video being a way of helping people to see the band more easily ... this is video as a way of obscuring them, losing them sometimes in just a network of material."^[14]

Trabants from the Zoo TV Tour now adorn the lobby of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

While on a break from recording, the band invited production designer Willie Williams to join them in Tenerife in February 1991. Williams had recently worked on David Bowie's Sound+Vision Tour, which used film projection and video content, and he was keen to "take rock show video to a level as yet undreamed of".^[15] The band played Williams some of their new music—inspired by alternative rock, industrial, and electronic dance music—and they told him about the "Zoo TV" phrase that Bono liked.^[11] Williams also learned about the band's affection for the Trabant, a German automobile that derisively became a symbol for the fall of Communism. Williams thought their fondness for the car was "deeply, deeply bizarre",^[11] but nonetheless, he incorporated it into his ideas for the tour. In May, he brainstormed the idea to construct a lighting system using Trabants by hanging them from the ceiling and hollowing them to carry spotlights.^[16]

On 14 June 1991, the first tour production meeting was held, with Williams, the band, manager Paul McGuinness, artist Catherine Owens, and production managers Steve Iredale and Jake Kennedy in attendance. Williams presented his ideas, which included the Trabant lighting system and the placement of video monitors all over the stage; both notions were well-received.^[11][16] Eno's original idea was to have the video screens on wheels and constantly in motion, although this was impractical.^[14] Williams and the group proposed many ideas that did not make it to the final stage design. One such idea, dubbed "Motorway Madness", would have placed billboards advertising real products across the stage, similar to their placement beside highways.^[17] The idea was intended to be ironic, but soon questions were raised why U2 would not ask the corporations to pay them for the advertising. Ultimately, they scrapped the idea out of fear of selling out, since "if they ironically put up the logos, and then ironically take the money, it's not ironic anymore".^[17] Another rejected idea involved building a giant doll of an "achtung baby", complete with an inflatable penis that would spray on the audience. The notion was decided to be too expensive.^[18]

By August, a prototype of a single Trabant for the lighting system was completed, with the innards gutted and retrofitted with lighting equipment, and a paint job on the exterior.^[16] Williams spent most of the second half of 1991 designing the stage.^[13][16] Owens was insistent that her ideas be given priority, as she felt that men had been making all of U2's creative decisions and were using male-centred designs.^[17] With bassist Adam Clayton's support, she recruited visual artists from Europe and the United States to arrange images for use on the display screens. These people included video artist Mark Pellington, photo/conceptual artist David Wojnarowicz, and satirical group Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN), who digitally manipulate sampled image and sound.^[19] Pellington envisaged a collection of text phrases into the visual displays, inspired by his working with artist Jenny Holzer.^[20] The idea was first put into practice in the video for Achtung Baby's lead single, "The Fly".^[21] Bono devised and collected numerous phrases during development of the album and the tour.^[20] Additional pre-recorded video content was created by Eno, Williams, Kevin Godley, Carol Dodds, and Philip Owens.^[16] McGuinness led a trip to East Germany to buy Trabants from a recently closed factory in Chemnitz,^[17] and in January 1992, Catherine Owens began to paint the cars.^[11] As she described, "The basic idea was that the imagery on the cars should have nothing to do with the car itself."^[11] One such design was the "fertility car", which sported blown-up newspaper personal ads and a drawing of a woman giving birth while holding string tied to her husband's testicles.^[17] Williams and Rene Castro also provided artwork on the cars.^[22]

Stage design and show production

The Zoo TV stages were designed by Willie Williams, U2's stage designer since the War Tour in 1983. In place of U2's austere and minimalist productions of the 1980s, the Zoo TV stage was a complex setup, designed to instill "information overload" in its audience.^[1][23][24] The set's giant video screens showed not only close-ups of the band members performing, but also pre-recorded footage, live television transmissions (intercepted by a satellite the group brought on tour), and text phrases.^[25] Electronic, tabloid-style headlines ran on scrawls at the ends of the stage.^[26] The band's apparent embracing of such technology was meant as a radical departure in form, and as a commentary on the pervasive nature of technology.^[3][27] This led many critics to describe the show as "ironic".^[3]

Several versions of the stage were used during the tour. The first two legs were indoors and used the smallest of the sets, which included four Philips Vidiwalls, six painted Trabants suspended above the stage, 36 television monitors, and a B-stage—a small remote platform connected to the main stage by a ramp.^[28] A seventh Trabant by the B-stage doubled as a DJ booth and a mirror ball.^[29] To redesign the set for the North American outdoor stadium leg—dubbed "Outside Broadcast"— Williams collaborated with stage designers Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park, both of whom had worked on The Rolling Stones' Steel Wheels Tour stage set. The set was expanded to include a 248-by-80-foot (76 by 24 m) stage, and the Vidiwalls were supplemented by four larger mega-video screens.^[30] Williams faced difficulties in designing the outdoor lighting system, as the stage did not have a roof. He settled on using the venues' house spotlights and strategically placed lights in the structure behind the band.^[29] The spires of the stage, intended to resemble transmission towers, were tall enough that the Federal Aviation Administration required them to have blinking warning lights.^[24] The stage's appearance was compared to the techno-future cityscapes of cyberpunk writer William Gibson.^[3] The B-stage was located at the end of a 150-foot-long (46 m) catwalk.^[22] The larger set used 176 speaker enclosures, 312 18-inch (46 cm) subwoofers, 592 10-inch (25 cm) mid-range speakers, 18 projectors, 26 on-stage microphones, two Betacam and two Video-8 handheld video cameras, and 11 Trabants suspended by cranes over the stage.^[22][24] The outdoor stage used for the 1993 legs of the tour was smaller due to budget concerns, and it discarded the Trabants hung from cranes, instead featuring three cars hanging behind the drum kit.^[29][31] All of the projection screens were replaced with "video cubes", as the projectors were not bright enough for the European summer nights, when daylight remained later into the evening.^[29]

To realise the video production ideas, the equivalent of a television studio control room—worth US$3.5 million—was built for the tour.^[2][13] Beneath the stage, Dodds, the video director, operated a system custom-built by Philips called CD-i. It used five broadcast camera systems, 12 Laser Disc players, and a satellite dish, and it required 12 directors, 19 video crew members, and two separate mix stations to operate.^[22] Despite the production's complexity, the group decided that flexibility in the shows' length and content was a priority. Guitarist The Edge said, "That was one of the more important decisions we made early on, that we wouldn't sacrifice flexibility, so we designed a system that is both extremely complicated and high-tech but also incredibly simple and hands-on, controlled by human beings... in that sense, it's still a live performance."^[23] This flexibility allowed for improvisations and deviations from the planned programme.^[32] Eno recommended that the band film its own video tapes so that they could be edited and looped into the video displays more easily, instead of relying entirely on pre-sequenced footage. Eno explained, "their show depends on some kind of response to what's happening at the moment in that place. So if it turns out they want to do a song for five minutes longer, they can actually loop through the material again so that you're not suddenly stuck with black screens halfway through the fifth verse."^[8] The band shot new footage for the video displays over the course of the tour.^[33]

The 180-person crew traveled in 12 buses and a chartered jet known as the Zoo Plane.^[24][34] For the American stadium shows, 52 trucks were required to transport 1,200 short tons (1,089 t) of equipment, 3 miles (4.8 km) of cabling, 12 forklifts, and a 40-short-ton (36 t) crane; the million-dollar stage was constructed in a 40-hour process with the help of 200 local labourers.^[2][24] The sound system used over one million watts and weighed 30 short tons (27 t).^[22]

Planning, itinerary, and ticketing

Ticket from the 1993 Zooropa leg

Rehearsals for the tour began in December 1991. During this time, Eno consulted the band on the visual aspects of the show.^[13] The band found it challenging to recreate all the sounds of the new album.^[35] They considered using additional musicians, but their sentimental attachment to a four-piece prevailed.^[36][37] They left Dublin on 19 February 1992 to set up at Lakeland Civic Center in Lakeland, Florida for rehearsals before the opening show at the venue on February 29.^[28][38]

Unlike many of the group's previous tours, which began ahead of or coincident with the release of a new album, Zoo TV started four months after Achtung Baby was released, giving fans more time to familiarise themselves with the new songs. By opening night, the album had already sold three million copies in the U.S. and seven million worldwide.^[9][27] The first two legs of the tour, 32 shows in North America and 25 in Europe, were indoor arena shows. While the band had toured North America every year between 1980 and 1987, they were absent from the North American tour circuit for over four years before Zoo TV.^[39] The U.S. concert business was in a slump at the time, and the routing of the first two legs generally allowed only one show per city.^[39][40] This was intended to announce the band's return to major cities, to gauge demand for ticket sales, and to re-introduce the notion of a "hot ticket" to concertgoers.^[39][40] Tickets for the opening show in Florida sold out over the phone in four minutes,^[38] demand exceeding supply by a factor of 10 to 1.^[39][41] To combat scalping, the band avoided selling tickets in box offices as much as possible, preferring to sell over the telephone instead.^[42] Several cities' telephone systems were overwhelmed when Zoo TV tickets went on sale; Los Angeles telephone company Pacific Bell reported 54 million calls in a four-hour period, while Boston's telephone system was temporarily shut down.^[43] In Europe, ticketing details were kept secret until radio advertisements announced that tickets had gone on sale at box offices.^[44] In many cases, tickets were limited to two-per-person to deter scalping.^[43] Due to the production costs and relatively small arena crowds, the European arena leg lost money. McGuinness had planned larger outdoor concerts in Berlin, Turin, Poland, and Vienna to help the tour break even, but only the Vienna concert occurred.^[44]

Both the Outside Broadcast stadium leg in the second half of 1992, and the European stadium leg in 1993—called "Zooropa"—were tentatively planned and dependent on the success of the arena tour.^[27][45] While their playing stadiums was motivated by pragmatic concerns, the group saw it as an artistic challenge as well, imagining what Salvador Dalí or Andy Warhol would do with such spaces.^[46] By the time Outside Broadcast began, Achtung Baby had sold four million copies in the U.S.^[47] Rehearsals for Outside Broadcast began in Hersheypark Stadium in Hershey, Pennsylvania in early August 1992; a public rehearsal show was held on 7 August.^[24] Technical problems and pacing issues forced refinement to the show.^[24] Six days before the official leg-opening Giants Stadium show, the group delayed the concert by a day, due to the difficulty of assembling the large outdoor production and the destruction of the largest screen in a windstorm.^[48][49] Tickets for the Zooropa leg went on sale in November 1992. The leg, which began in May 1993, was the band's first full stadium tour of Europe and marked the first time they had visited certain areas.^[31] Scheduling for the 1993 "Zoomerang" stadium leg in the Pacific afforded the band more off-days between shows than previous legs, but this amplified the exhaustion and restlessness that had set in by the tour's end.^[50]

Although the tour was listed as co-sponsored by MTV,^[51] the group decided against explicit corporate sponsorship; band members, especially drummer Larry Mullen, Jr., were uncertain that the tour would be profitable.^[24] The daily cost of producing the tour was US$125,000, regardless of whether a show was held on a given day.^[52] An attempt to convince Philips to donate the video equipment was unsuccessful, and the band had to pay for it themselves.^[53] In order to defray the heavy expenses of the Pacific shows, U2 asked for large guarantees from local promoters up front, rather than sharing the financial burden as they had in the past.^[54] This sometimes caused promoters to raise ticket prices above usual levels, which in turn sometimes resulted in less than full houses.^[54] Profit margin was a slim four to five percent at most sold-out shows.^[3]

Show overview

Pre-show

Between the support acts and U2's performance, a disc jockey played records. For the 1992 legs, Irish rock journalist and radio presenter BP Fallon filled the role. Originally hired to write the Zoo TV tour programme,^[37] he played records from inside of a Trabant on the B-stage, while providing commentary and wearing a cape and top hat.^[55] His official title was "Guru, Viber and DJ".^[37] He hosted Zoo Radio, a November 1992 distributed radio special that showcased select live performances, audio oddities, and half-serious interviews with members of U2 and the opening acts.^[46] At the group's suggestion, Fallon eventually published a book about the tour entitled BP Fallon - U2 Faraway So Close.^[56] Paul Oakenfold, who became one of the world's most prominent club DJs by the decade's end, replaced him later on the tour.^[57]

During the 1992 European leg, Fallon began playing "Television, the Drug of the Nation" by hip-hop artists The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy as the last song before the venue darkened and U2 took the stage.^[59][60] U2 saw the song, a commentary on mass media culture, as encapsulating some of the tour's principle themes.^[46][61] The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy became one of the supporting acts for the Outside Broadcast leg, and after their supporting stint, "Television" was retained as the pre-show closer until the tour's conclusion.^[61][62] After the venue darkened, one of several audio-video pieces was played to accompany the group taking the stage. During the Outside Broadcast leg, the piece was one by Emergency Broadcast Network that reorganised video clips of American President George H. W. Bush to make him sing Queen's "We Will Rock You". A different piece, created by Ned O'Hanlon and Maurice Linnane of Dreamchaser video productions, was used on the 1993 legs;^[63] it wove looped video from Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will and Olympia with various clips of war and news footage.^[34]

Main set

The concert began with a fixed sequence of six to eight consecutive Achtung Baby songs, a further sign that they were no longer the U2 of the 1980s.^[25] For the opening song, "Zoo Station", Bono entered as his primary stage persona, "The Fly", appearing silhouetted against a giant screen of blue and white video noise.^[64] "The Fly" usually followed, with the video monitors flashing a rapidly-changing array of textual words and aphorisms. Some of these included "Taste is the enemy of art", "Religion is a club", "Ignorance is bliss", "Watch more TV", "Believe" with letters fading out to leave "lie", and "Everything you know is wrong".^[65] During the first week of the tour, media outlets reported that the words shown included "Bomb Japan Now", which the band denied.^[66] Before "Even Better Than the Real Thing", Bono channel surfed through live television programming,^[13][34] and during the song, as random images from television and pop culture flashed on screen, he filmed himself and the band with a camcorder.^[67][68]

In a Zoo Radio interview, The Edge described the visual material that accompanied the first three songs:^[46]

"'Zoo Station' is four minutes of a television that's not tuned in to any station, but giving you interference and shash and almost a TV picture. 'The Fly' is information meltdown—text, sayings, truisms, untruisms, oxymorons, soothsayings, etc., all blasted at high speed, just fast enough so it's impossible to actually read what's being said. 'Even Better Than the Real Thing' is whatever happens to be flying around the stratosphere on that night. Satellite TV pictures, the weather, shopping channel, cubic zirconium diamond rings, religious channels, soap operas..."

"Mysterious Ways" featured a belly dancer on-stage. For the 1992 indoor legs, Florida resident Christina Pedro was the dancer. Tour choreographer Morleigh Steinberg assumed the role starting with the Outside Broadcast leg.^[25] "One" was accompanied by the title word shown in many languages, as well as Mark Pellington-directed video clips of buffalos leading to a still image of David Wojnarowicz's "Falling Buffalo" photograph.^[67] For "Until the End of the World", Bono often played with a professionally-operated boom camera, kissing the lens and thrusting it into his crotch.^[27] Beginning with Outside Broadcast, the band began playing "New Year's Day" afterwards.^[69] During "Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World", Bono danced with a young female fan pulled from the crowd (which he did more solemnly on past tours), shared camcorder video filming duties with her, and sprayed champagne. At this point in the show, Mullen sometimes sang a solo performance of "Dirty Old Town".^[70]

The band plays from the B-stage during the middle portion of the show.

The group played its Achtung Baby songs almost exactly as they had appeared on record.^[67][71] Since this material was complex and layered, most numbers featuring pre-recorded or offstage percussion, keyboard, or guitar elements underlying the U2 members' live instrumentals and vocals.^[67][72] U2 had used backing tracks in live performance before, but with the need to sync live performance to Zoo TV's high-tech visuals, almost the entire show was synced and sequenced. This practice has continued on their subsequent tours.^[73][74]

Zoo TV was one of the first large-scale concerts to feature a B-stage, where performances were intended "to be the antidote to Zoo TV".^[46] Here, the four members played quieter numbers, such as acoustic arrangements of "Angel of Harlem", "When Love Comes to Town", "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)", and Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love".^[69] Many critics compared the B-stage performances to "busking" and singled them out as the shows' highlights.^{[23][75][76][77]}

After leaving the B-stage, U2 often played "Bad",^[69] with performances of "Bullet the Blue Sky" and "Running to Stand Still" following. For "Bullet the Blue Sky", the video screens displayed burning crosses and swastikas;^[13][78] during "Running to Stand Still", Bono mimed the actions of a heroin addict from the B-stage, rolling up his sleeves and then spiking his arm during the final lyric.^[79] Afterwards, red and yellow smoke flares came out from either end of the B-stage,^[80] before the band re-grouped on the main stage for U2 classics played straight.^[51] "Where the Streets Have No Name" was accompanied by sped-up footage of the group in the desert from The Joshua Tree's photo shoot.^[81] U2 often finished their set with "Pride (In the Name of Love)" while a clip from Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famed "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech was played on the video screens.^[34] The group was initially unconvinced that the leap from the rest of the show's irony and artifice to something more sincere would be successful, but they felt that it was important to demonstrate that certain ideals were so strong and true that they could be held onto no matter the circumstance.^[34] The group alternated performances of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" in acoustic form on the B-stage with using it to close the main set.^[82]

Encore

Commencing with the Outside Broadcast leg, footage from the tour's "video confessional booth" was displayed on the set's screens between the main set and the encore. Concertgoers were encouraged to visit the booth prior to the concert and say whatever they wanted. These "confessions" varied from a woman flashing her breasts to a man revealing he had killed his friend in a car accident.^[83] Once the encore began, Bono would return as a different alter-ego—Mirror Ball Man in 1992, and MacPhisto in 1993. Performances of "Desire"—accompanied by images of Richard Nixon, Margaret Thatcher, Paul Gascoigne, and Jimmy Swaggert—were meant as a criticism of greed;^[81][77] cash rained the stage and Bono often portrayed Mirror Ball Man as an interpretation of the greedy preacher described in the song's lyrics.^[84] Bono often made a crank call from the stage as his persona of the time.^[81][83] Such calls included dialing a phone sex line, calling a taxi cab, ordering 10,000 pizzas (the Detroit pizza parlor delivered 100 pizzas during the show), or calling a local politician.^[83][85] Bono regularly called the White House in an attempt to contact President Bush. Though Bono never reached the President, Bush did acknowledge the calls during a press conference.^[83][86]

"Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" and "With or Without You" were frequently played afterwards. Many concerts ended with Achtung Baby's slower "Love Is Blindness".^[69] Beginning with the 1992 European arena shows,^[87] it was often followed by Bono's falsetto take on Elvis Presley's long-time show-closing ballad, "Can't Help Falling in Love", culminating in Bono softly stating that "Elvis is still in the building".^[34] Both songs presented a quiet, introspective conclusion to the show, in contrast to the dynamic, aggressive opening; the group also wanted to move away from its long tradition of ending concerts with fan sing-along favourite "40".^[34] The night finished with a single video message being displayed: "Thanks for shopping at Zoo TV".^[88]

Guest appearances

Side view of the Zoo TV set at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia after a concert in September 1992.

On 11 June 1992, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of ABBA appeared onstage in Stockholm for the first time in years to perform "Dancing Queen" with the band,^[89] which U2 had frequently performed on the tour up to that point.^[90] Other guest performers on the tour included Axl Rose,^[2] Jo Shankar,^[31] and Daniel Lanois.^[91]

On 19 June 1992, during the European indoor leg, U2 played the "Stop Sellafield" concert in Manchester, alongside Kraftwerk, Public Enemy, and Big Audio Dynamite II, to protest the operation of a second nuclear reactor at Sellafield.^[92] For the group's performance, the stage was made to resemble their Zoo TV stage. The following day, the band participated in a demonstration organised by Greenpeace in which protesters landed on the beach at Sellafield in rubber dinghies and displayed 700 placards for the waiting media.^[89]

At the first Outside Broadcast show on 12 August 1992 at Giants Stadium, Lou Reed performed "Satellite of Love" with the band;^[93] he and Bono dueted using their contrasting vocal styles.^[26][47] For the second show and the remainder of the tour, a taping of Reed singing the song was used for a virtual duet between him and Bono.^[93]

Novelist Salman Rushdie joined the band on stage in London's Wembley Stadium on 11 August 1993, despite the death fatwā against the author and the risk of violence arising from his controversial novel The Satanic Verses.^[34] In reference to the novel's satanic references, Rushdie, when confronted by Bono's MacPhisto character, observed that "real devils don't wear horns".^[94] In 2010, Clayton recalled that "Bono had been calling Salman Rushdie from the stage every night on the Zoo TV tour. When we played Wembley, Salman showed up in person and the stadium erupted. You [could] tell from Larry's face that we weren't expecting it. Salman was a regular visitor after that. He had a backstage pass and he used it as often as possible. For a man who was supposed to be in hiding, it was remarkably easy to see him around the place."^[95]

Sarajevo satellite link-ups

As the 1993 Zooropa leg unfolded, U2 became concerned with the uncertain political situation of post-Communist Europe and the resurgence of radical nationalism.^[34] A number of these European shows featured live satellite link-ups with people living in war-torn Sarajevo during the Siege of Sarajevo/Bosnian War. The transmissions were arranged with help from American aid worker Bill Carter. Before their 3 July show in Verona, Italy, the band met with Carter to give an interview about Bosnia for Radio Televizija Bosne I Hercegovina.^[96][97] Carter described his experiences helping Sarajevo citizens while surviving the dangerous living conditions.^[98] While in Sarajevo, Carter had seen a television interview on MTV in which Bono mentioned the theme of the Zooropa leg was a unified Europe. Feeling that such an aim was empty if ignoring Bosnia, Carter sought Bono's help.^[99] He requested that U2 go to Sarajevo to bring attention to the war and break the "media fatigue" that had occurred from covering the conflict.^[97] Bono wanted the band to play a concert there, but their tour schedule prevented this, and McGuinness believed that a concert there would make them and their audience targets for the Serbian aggressors.^[97]

Instead, the group agreed to use the tour's satellite dish to conduct live video transmissions from their concerts to Carter in Sarajevo.^[97] Carter returned to the city and was able to assemble a video unit. The band had to purchase a satellite dish to be sent to Sarajevo and had to pay a £100,000 fee to join the European Broadcasting Union.^[98] Once set up, the band began satellite link-ups to Sarajevo on nearly a nightly basis, the first of which aired on 17 July 1993 in Bologna, Italy.^[100] To connect with the EBU satellite feeds, Carter and two co-workers had to traverse "Sniper Alley" at night to reach the Sarajevo television station, and they had to film with as little light as possible to avoid the attention of snipers.^[100][101] This was done a total of ten times over the course of a month. Carter discussed the deteriorating situation in the city, and Bosnians often spoke to U2 and their audience.^[100] These grim interviews starkly contrasted with the rest of the show, and they were completely unscripted, leaving the group unsure of who would be speaking or what they would say.^[97] U2 stopped the broadcasts in August 1993 after learning that the Siege of Sarajevo was being reported on the front of many British newspapers.^[101] Though this trend had begun before the first link-up, Nathan Jackson suggested that U2's actions had brought awareness of the situation to their fans, and to the British public indirectly.^[101]

Reactions to the transmissions were mixed, triggering a media debate concerning the ethical implications of mixing rock entertainment with human tragedy.^[34] The Edge said, "A lot of nights it felt like quite an abrupt interruption that was probably not particularly welcomed by a lot of people in the audience. You were grabbed out of a rock concert and given a really strong dose of reality and it was quite hard sometimes to get back to something as frivolous as a show having watched five or ten minutes of real human suffering."^[97] Mullen worried that the band were exploiting the Bosnians' suffering for entertainment.^[97] In 2002, he said, "I can't remember anything more excruciating than those Sarajevo link-ups. It was like throwing a bucket of cold water over everybody. You could see your audience going, 'What the fuck are these guys doing?' But I'm proud to have been a part of a group who were trying to do something."^[102] During a transmission from the band's concert at Wembley Stadium, three women in Sarajevo told Bono, "We know you're not going to do anything for us. You're going to go back to a rock show. You're going to forget that we even exist. And we're all going to die."^[97] Some people close to the band joined the War Child charity project, including Brian Eno.^[97] Writer Bill Flanagan believes that the link-ups accomplished Bono's goal for Zoo TV of "illustrating onstage the obscenity of idly flipping from a war on CNN to rock videos on MTV".^[103] U2 vowed to perform in Sarajevo someday, eventually fulfilling this commitment on their 1997 PopMart Tour.^[104]

Bono's stage personas

Bono assumed a number of costumed alter-egos during Zoo TV performances. The three main personas that he used on stage were "The Fly", "Mirror Ball Man", and "MacPhisto". Additionally, during performances of "Bullet the Blue Sky" and "Running to Stand Still", he appeared onstage wearing a military utility vest and cap, and a microphone headset. As this character, he ranted and raved in an act he said was set in the Vietnam War.^[105]

The group decided to alter their image by being more facetious, and it was an attempt to escape their reputation for being overly serious and self-righteous.^[3] Bono said, "All through the Eighties we tried to be ourselves and failed when the lights were on. Which is what set us up for Zoo TV. We decided to have some fun being other people, or at least other versions of ourselves."^[10] The Edge said, "We were quite thrilled at the prospect of smashing U2 and starting all over again."^[27] The group viewed humour as the appropriate response to their negative perception and that although their message would not change, they needed to change how they delivered it to their audience.^[4]

The Fly

Bono as his on-stage alter-ego, "The Fly"

Bono conceived the alternate persona, "The Fly", during the writing of the song of the same name. The character began with Bono wearing an oversized pair of blaxploitation sunglasses, given to him by wardrobe manager Fintan Fitzgerald, to lighten the mood in the studio.^[106][107] Bono wrote the song's lyrics as this character, composing a sequence of "single-line aphorisms".^[108] He developed the persona into a leather-clad egomaniac, describing the character's outfit as having Lou Reed's glasses, Elvis Presley's jacket, and Jim Morrison's leather pants.^[109] To match the character's dark fashion, Bono dyed his naturally brown hair black.^[110]

Bono began each concert as The Fly and would continue to play the character for most of the first half of the concert. In contrast to the earnest Bono of the 1980s, the character strutted around the stage with "swagger and style", exhibiting mannerisms of an egotistical rock star.^[25] Bono often stayed in character away from the tour stage, including for public appearances and when staying in hotels.^[111][112] He said, "That rather cracked character could say things that I couldn't",^[107] and that it offered him a greater freedom of speech.^[3]

Mirror Ball Man

As the Mirror Ball Man, Bono dressed in a shining silver lamé suit with matching shoes and cowboy hat.^[84] The character was meant to parody greedy American televangelists, showmen, and car salesman. Bono said that he represented "a kind of showman America. He had the confidence and charm to pick up a mirror and look at himself and give the glass a big kiss. He loved cash and in his mind success was God's blessing. If he's made money, he can't have made any mistakes."^[58] As the character, Bono spoke with an exaggerated Southern American accent. Mirror Ball Man appeared during the show's encore and made nightly prank calls, often to the White House.^[84] Bono portrayed this alter-ego on the first three legs of the tour, but replaced him with MacPhisto for the 1993 legs.^[113]

MacPhisto

MacPhisto was created to parody the devil, and he was named after Mephistopheles of the Faust legend.^[113] Initially called "Mr. Gold", MacPhisto wore a gold suit with gold platform shoes, pale make-up, lipstick, and devil's horns atop his head.^[114] As MacPhisto, Bono spoke with an exaggerated upper-class English accent, similar to that of a down-on-his-luck character actor.^[113] The character was created as a European replacement for the American-influenced Mirror Ball Man.^[34][113] The initial inspiration for MacPhisto came from the stage musical The Black Rider.^[115] Realisation of the character did not come about until rehearsal the night before the first of the 1993 shows.^[116] According to Bono, "We came up with a sort of old English Devil, a pop star long past his prime returning regularly from sessions on The Strip in Vegas and regaling anyone who would listen to him at cocktail hour with stories from the good old, bad old days."^[117]

Bono continued making crank calls as MacPhisto, but the targets would change with the location of the concert. Many of them were local politicians that Bono wished to mock by attempting to engage them in character as the devil.^[85] He enjoyed making these calls, saying, "When you're dressed as the Devil, your conversation is immediately loaded, so if you tell somebody you really like what they're doing, you know it's not a compliment."^[117] The band intended for MacPhisto to add humor while making a point. Said The Edge, "That character was a great device for saying the opposite of what you meant. It made the point so easily and with real humor."^[117] For the film Batman Forever, Joel Schumacher attempted to create a role for Bono as MacPhisto, but both later agreed it was not suitable.^[118][119]

Recording and release of Zooropa

U2 recorded their next album, Zooropa, from February to May 1993 during an extended break between the third and fourth legs of the tour. The album was intended as an additional EP to Achtung Baby, but soon expanded into a full LP.^[120] Recording could not be completed before the tour restarted, and for the first month of the Zooropa leg, the band flew home after shows, recording until the early morning and working on their off-days, before traveling to their next destination.^[102][120] Clayton called the process "about the craziest thing you could do to yourself", and while Mullen said of it, "It was mad, but it was mad good, as opposed to mad bad."^[120] McGuinness later said the band had nearly wrecked themselves in the process.^[53] The album was released in July 1993. Influenced by the tour's themes of technology and media barrage, Zooropa was an even greater departure in style from their earlier recordings, incorporating further dance music influences and electronic effects into their sound. A number of songs from the album were incorporated into the subsequent Zooropa and Zoomerang legs, most frequently "Numb" and "Stay (Faraway, So Close!)",^[69] with "Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car" and "Lemon" worked into the encore during Zoomerang, and "Dirty Day" in the main set during the same.^[121]

Broadcasts and recordings

On 9 September 1992, a portion of U2's performance at the Pontiac Silverdome was broadcast live to the 1992 MTV Video Music Awards. The band performed "Even Better Than the Real Thing" while VMA host Dana Carvey, dressed as his Wayne's World Garth persona, accompanied the band on drums in Los Angeles.^[65] A Zoo Radio special included live selections from 1992 Toronto, Dallas, Tempe, and New York City shows.^[46] Portions of another 1992 show were taped and broadcast later that year in the United States as a one-hour Fox network television special on Thanksgiving weekend;^[122] the broadcast featured William S. Burroughs' reading of the sardonic poem "Thanksgiving Prayer".^[123] Several shows, including the 11 June concert in Stockholm and 27 October concert in El Paso, were broadcast into the homes of fans who had won contests.^[124]

Two November 1993 Zoomerang shows in Sydney were filmed as part of a worldwide television broadcast. The 26 November show was to be a rehearsal for the production crew for the official filming the following night. However, Clayton, who began drinking excessively on the latter stages of the tour, suffered an alcoholic blackout from the previous night and was unable to perform.^[125] Bass guitar technician Stuart Morgan filled in for him, marking the first time any group member had ever missed a show. Clayton recovered in time to play the second night, which was broadcast and was the only show used in the resulting video release.^[125] The concert was broadcast in the United States on tape-delayed pay-per-view.^[126] U2 originally planned to produce the concert with MTV for a January 1994 "triplecast" that would offer three different perspectives of the show on three different channels. However, the group canceled the "triplecast" after realising they had not fully developed the concept.^[127] The concert was subsequently released as the Grammy Award-winning concert video Zoo TV: Live from Sydney in 1994,^[128] and the double CD Zoo TV Live in 2006 to subscribing members of U2's website.^[129]

Critical reception

Reviews written during the initial arena legs reflected the dramatic change in U2's approach. Many critics published favourable reviews about the tour; the San Francisco Chronicle praised the special effects for supplementing the music. The reviewer wrote, "The often-surrealistic effects always served the songs, not the other way around." The review concluded, "this magnificent multimedia production will serve as a pinnacle in rock's onstage history for sometime to come".^[75] Edna Gundersen of USA Today said that U2 was dismantling its myth and wrote that the show was "a trippy and decadent concert of bedazzling visuals and adventurous music".^[9] Hot Press' Bill Graham said of the show, "U2 don't so much use every trick in the book as invent a whole new style of rock performance art." For Graham, the tour resolved any doubts he had about the band—particularly about Bono—following their reinvention with Achtung Baby.^[23]

Other critics indicated befuddlement as to U2's purpose. The Asbury Park Press wrote that the long string of Achtung Baby song presentations that opened the show made one forget about the band's past, and that "almost everything you knew about U2 a couple years ago is, in fact, wrong now".^[72] The Star-Ledger said that the band shortchanged its music with its video presentations and that especially during the opening sequence, "one was only aware of the music as a soundtrack to the real 'show'".^[130] It concluded by saying that the group had lost the sense of mystery and yearning that made it great and that they had succumbed to the style of music videos.^[130] Jon Pareles of The New York Times acknowledged that U2 was trying to break its former earnest image and that they were a "vastly improved band" for being "trendy" and "funny"; still, he commented, "U2 wants to have its artifice and its sincerity at the same time—no easy thing—and it hasn't yet made the breakthrough that will unite them."^[67]

The stadium legs of the tour received more consistent praise than the arena shows. Critics noted that while the show and its setlist were largely the same as before, the tour mostly benefited from the increased scale.^[26][47][51] The New York Daily News said that the stage "looked like a city made of television sets—an electronic Oz" and that "glitz was used not as a mere distraction (as it has been by so many video-age artists), but as a determined conceit".^[26] Gunderson also made the comparison to Oz, saying that even though the band was dwarfed by the setting, their adventurous musicianship still shone through.^[88] She concluded that the group had "deliver[ed] a brilliant high-wire act" between mocking and exploiting rock music clichés,^[88] a comparison also made by stage designer Williams.^[116] Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times said of the outdoor American leg, "Zoo TV is the yardstick by which all other stadium shows will be measured."^[16] David Fricke of Rolling Stone said that the band had "regained critical and commercial favor by negotiating an inspired balance between rock's cheap thrills and its own sense of moral burden". He praised the band for "retool[ing] themselves as wiseacres with heart and elephant bucks to burn". Fricke noted that the increased visual effects for the Outside Broadcast leg increased the shows' "mind-fuck" factor.^[4]

The Independent gave a positive review of the Zooropa leg, with the reviewer stating, "I came as a sceptic, and left believing I had witnessed the most sophisticated meeting of technical wizardry and mojo priestcraft ever mounted."^[131] Dave Fanning of The Irish Times praised the Zooropa leg, stating, "If this is the show by which all other rock circuses must be measured, then God help the new music."^[132] Fanning observed that the group, particularly Bono, exhibited "style, sex and self-assurance".^[132] Billboard wrote, "No one is dancing on the edges of rock'n'roll's contradictions as effectively these days as U2."^[133] The stadium legs had their detractors, though, as the oft-critical NME called the shows a "two-hour post-modernist pot noodle advert made by politically naive, culturally unaware squares with the help of some cool, arty people".^[132] Graham thought that scale of the stadium shows led to more predictability and less interaction with the audiences.^[78] Many critics described the tour as "post-modern".^{[3][4][134][135][136][137]}

Fan reaction and commercial performance

Fan reactions were not easily gauged by the group and the music industry prior to the tour.^[112] During the first week of shows, Bono said, "This show is a real roller coaster ride, and some people will want to get off, I'm sure."^[9] He remained optimistic that their devoted fans would continue following them.^[9] Some hardcore fans, particularly in the U.S., objected to the tour as a blatant sellout to commercial values,^[3] while others misinterpreted the tour's mocking excess, thinking "that U2 had 'lost it' and that Bono had become an egomaniac".^[109] Many Christian fans were offended the band's antics and believed they had abandoned their religious faith.^[138]

By the outdoor legs, many fans knew what to expect, and Pareles observed that Bono's admonitions to never cheer a rock star were greeted with idolatrous applause; he concluded that the show's message of skepticism was somewhat lost on the audience and that, "No matter what Bono tells his fans, they seem likely to trust him anyway."^[51] By the end of the tour's first year, U2 had won over many fans. In a 1992 end-of-year readers' poll, Q voted U2 "The Best Act in the World Today".^[139] The band's almost clean sweep of Rolling Stone's end-of-year readers' poll—which included "Best Artist", "Best Tour", and Bono as "Sexiest Male Artist"—reconfirmed for the magazine they were "world's biggest rock band".^[112][140]

On the opening leg, U2 sold 528,763 tickets and grossed US$13,215,414 in 32 shows.^[44] The 70-plus North American shows in 1992 grossed US$67 million, easily the highest amount for any touring artist that year.^[141] At the time, it was the third-highest such total ever, behind The Rolling Stones' 1989 Steel Wheels Tour and New Kids on the Block's 1990 Magic Summer Tour.^[141] U2 sold 2.9 million tickets in 1992. The Zooropa stadium leg the following year played to more than 2.1 million people over 43 dates between 9 May and 28 August.^[31] Altogether, the Zoo TV Tour played to about 5.3 million people.^[142] The band incurred large expenses to produce the tour, leading to only a small profit.^[53][54] According to McGuinness, "We grossed $30 million in T-shirt sales. Without those we'd be fucked."^[54] Bono later said, "When we built Zoo TV, we were so close to bankruptcy that if five percent fewer people went, U2 was bankrupt. Even in our irresponsible, youthful and fatal disregard of such material matters, it was terrifying."^[143]

Impact and legacy

The Pixies' stint as a support act produced a controversy that partially contributed to their break-up.^[144] In July 1992, Spin featured a controversial cover story titled "U2 On Tour: The Story They Didn't Want You to Read", which detailed the author's travels on the tour's first weeks with his unidentified girlfriend (who turned out to be Pixies' bassist Kim Deal). The article featured their criticisms of U2 for the supposed poor treatment the Pixies received.^[145] Both U2 and the Pixies disagreed and were livid at Deal, particularly Pixies frontman Black Francis. In 1993, following tensions within the group, Francis announced the Pixies had dissolved.^[144]

For the Zoo TV Tour, U2 embraced the "rock star" identity they had struggled with and were reluctant to accept throughout the 1980s.^[3][20] They attracted the fashion crowd during parts of the tour and were partying more than they had in the past.^[102][146] Clayton's romantic relationship with supermodel Naomi Campbell and Bono's friendship with supermodel Christy Turlington made them the subjects of unwanted tabloid attention.^[146] By the time of the Zoomerang leg, Clayton's relationship with Campbell was fracturing and he was drinking frequently. After missing the group's 26 November 1993 show in Sydney from an alcoholic blackout, Clayton quit drinking and sought sobriety.^[125] The incident resulted in tensions within the group in the tour's final weeks. The Edge began dating the belly dancer Morleigh Steinberg during the tour,^[25][49] and the two later married in 2002.^[147]

The tour's two-year length, U2's longest, exhausted the band as the final legs unfolded.^[125] Following the conclusion of Zoo TV, U2 took an extended break from recording as a group. Mullen and Clayton moved into Manhattan apartments in New York City, where they sought out music lessons to become better musicians.^[148] The Edge and Bono spent most of 1994 living in newly-renovated houses in the South of France.^[149] After the tour, although "The Fly" character was retired, Bono began to wear tinted glasses, similar to his "Fly" sunglasses, in most public appearances. The glasses have since become a stylistic trademark of the singer in both his musical and activist roles.^[150]

As the tour drew to a close, the group entered prolonged discussions about creating a Zoo TV television channel in partnership with MTV.^[151] This never materialized, but in 1997, MTV ran a brief mini-series called Zoo-TV, which featured the Emergency Broadcast Network reprising and extending their tour role in creating contemporary surrealist satirical video.^[152] U2 endorsed the effort as a representation of what the tour would have been like as a news magazine,^[153] but their direct role was limited to providing half-financing and outtakes from the Zooropa album.^[152] Wired magazine said the series "pushe[d] the edge of commercial—even comprehensible—television".^[152]

U2's subsequent concert tour, 1997's PopMart Tour, followed in Zoo TV's footsteps by mocking another social trend, this time consumerism. Paul McGuinness said the group wanted "the production [of PopMart] to beat Zoo TV", and accordingly, the tour's spectacle was a further shift away from their austere stage shows of the 1980s; PopMart's stage featured a 150-foot-long LED screen, a 100-foot-tall golden arch, and a mirrorball lemon.^[154] Although critics were much less receptive to PopMart, Bono considers the tour to be their best: "Pop(Mart) is our finest hour. It's better than Zoo TV aesthetically, and as an art project it is a clearer thought."^[155]

The Zoo TV Tour is regarded as one of the most memorable tours in rock history. During the Zooropa leg of the tour, Time called Zoo TV "one of the most electrifying rock shows ever staged".^[156] In 1997, Robert Hilburn wrote that "It's not unreasonable to think of it as the Sgt. Pepper's of rock tours."^[116] In 2002, Q magazine called it "still the most spectacular rock tour staged by any band".^[102] In 2009, critic and writer Greg Kot said, "Zoo TV remains the finest supersized tour mounted by any band in the last two decades."^[157] The Edge said, "as a band I think it stretched us all. We were a different band after that and touring was different."^[65] Producer Nellee Hooper later told Bono that Zoo TV "ruined irony for everyone".^[65]

Tour dates

Leg 1: arenas in North America

Leg 2: arenas in Europe

Leg 3: stadiums in North America ("Outside Broadcast")

Leg 4: stadiums in Europe ("Zooropa")

Leg 5: stadiums in Oceania and Asia ("Zoomerang/New Zooland")

See also

• Timeline of U2

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links

• Zoo TV Tour at U2.com
• Mark Fisher's Zoo TV Gallery

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