Journal

U2 at Cardiff Millennium Stadium

Posted on June 30th, 2005, in the evening

Now that was an amazing show! Our seats were not brilliant, otherwise I think that might have been my all-time favourite live music experience. Radiohead at Glastonbury 97 is hard to beat, but the U2 show is so well put together and the crowd were so up for it that last night comes close.

It was my first time seeing U2 live so I was keen to hear all the singles; they don't seem to have been playing With Or Without You, Pride, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, New Year's Day, All I want Is You at every show this tour, so I had come to terms in advance with the possibility that I wouldn't hear some of those. They played them all. The opening 8 songs were simply electric. It was almost profound. (The setlist is up at U2tours.com.)

The new songs came off well too. Miracle Drug and All Because Of You particularly hit home live in a way they haven't for me listening to the record. The acoustic version of Yahweh was pretty special too. Given the fact he does it every night, I was amazed at the raw emotion of Bono singing Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own for his father.

That said, without question the star of the show for me was The Edge. He was on fire. The highlights were his seamless switches between piano and guitar in New Year's Day, but the whole night he was just incredible.

We paid the outrageous ticket prices, travelled six hours each way to get there, endured less than perfect seats, but it was absolutely worth it.