Elevation Tour
The Elevation Tour was a worldwide concert tour by the Irish rock band U2. Staged in support of the group's 2000 album All That You Can't Leave Behind, the tour visited arenas across North America and Europe in 2001. Contrasting with the extravagant, outdoor productions of the band's previous two live ventures, the Zoo TV Tour and the PopMart Tour, the Elevation Tour saw them return to indoor arenas with a much more stripped-down, intimate stage design. The stage featured a heart-shaped catwalk that encircled many audience members, and festival seating was offered in the United States for the first time in the group's history.
The Elevation Tour comprised 113 shows over three legs. It opened on 24 March 2001 with the first leg in North America, the second leg in Europe that summer, and the third leg returning to North America that autumn, ending on 2 December 2001. It was both the highest-grossing concert tour in North America and globally that year. Its success was capped off by the band's performance at the Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show in 2002. The tour was depicted in two concert films, Elevation 2001: Live from Boston and U2 Go Home: Live from Slane Castle, Ireland.
Stage design and show production
The Elevation Tour show was designed by Willie Williams, with Mark Fisher serving as the architect. The stage, built by Tait Towers, measured wide by deep and featured an open center. Extending from the wings of the main stage were curved ramps shaped like the bottom of a heart, which joined together at the center of the venue floor. The heart shape was inspired by the video graphics being produced for the tour, and it was chosen by the creative team early in the design process. At the suggestion of bassist Adam Clayton, the stage was given an open center that could be filled with fans; the first 300 general admission ticketholders to queue before a concert were given wristbands and allowed access to the center of the heart. Williams was amused that the catwalks were the same shape as the vertical golden arch from the PopMart Tour stage when laid horizontally. The Elevation Tour stage was placed at one end of the venues, with seating offered "in the round". Due to this configuration, the stage designers focused on ensuring sightlines were not obstructed for anyone. Fisher said, "With a show done in the round, you can't really have any scenery because what is background scenery for one person is a sightline obstruction to another." To facilitate this, the stage height was kept low to the venue floor, with the main stage built high and the wings high.A video wall constructed by Brilliant Stages was located at the rear of the stage, measuring high by wide. It comprised 13 sections that could independently rise out of the stage or lower below it. The video wall featured Barco DLite LED panels and was provided by XL Video; it featured more LEDs than the video screen from the PopMart Tour, which was high by wide. The idea for the video wall was suggested by lead vocalist Bono, who preferred it over the video options that Fisher showed him. Williams called the amount of backlight produced by the video wall "ridiculous".
In lieu of traditional image magnification, four video screens were hung above the front of the stage, each of them displaying a black-and-white camera feed dedicated to a specific member of U2. Four long-lens cameras followed the band members and presented a "raw" video feed of each, without the intervention of a video director. The setup was Williams's response to what he saw as a growing trend with rock shows having "big video screens on either side running something that looks like an HBO special". He believed such a trend instilled a mindset into the audience that the most interesting thing happening at a given moment was what the video screens were displaying, thus diverting attention away from the actual live performance. Williams was inspired by his experience over the years "standing behind video directors and engineers, seeing what they were seeing" on the video monitors. Rather than present a director's vision of what shots to show an audience, Williams wanted to "take that person out of the equation" and present an unmediated look at the band members. U2's management and concert promoters were sceptical at first, but Williams said that after it was seen in action, it was a "complete no-brainer". He expected it to be one most of the most influential aspects of the tour. According to him, the easiest solution would have been to eliminate IMAG altogether, but it was "deemed necessary" because of the size of some indoor venues and the high cost of tickets.
Projection factored heavily into the shows' visuals. The tour used four PIGI projectors from E\T\C Audiovisuel placed in the corners of each venue. The projectors used a 7K bulb with a, square aperture, producing an "enormous amount of light", according to Williams. Instead of projecting the imagery onto a screen, Williams had the idea to project it across the entire interior space of the venues. Each projector was positioned on its back and aimed upwards at a mirror that was operated by a crew member to direct the reflection around the venue.
Williams enlisted visual artist Catherine Owens to create the artwork used for the projectors and the videowall. Most of the projection imagery was hand-drawn, much of it directly to film, though some artwork was computer-generated. Owens worked with a team of four artists to create the artwork. The projection graphics were generally abstract and textural; Williams said the look of it borrowed heavily from rave culture. For the concluding song "Walk On", he handwrote the lyrics from the song's closing refrain onto the projector film and reversed it, allowing the words to "scroll over the audience and run like closing credits". The wide dimensions of the videowall posed challenges for Owens's team, as they had to re-aspect much of the artwork without it looking squashed. A large amount of the videowall artwork was created onsite during tour rehearsals. During that time, the artists were given access to one of Media 100's editing suites in London, where they created images on a PowerBook G3 laptop and could instantly view them on the videowall. The process allowed Owens's team to solicit artistic ideas from the band and turn them around within a single afternoon.
Equipment for the sound system was provided by Clair Brothers Audio, which had a long-standing relationship with the band. The primary front-facing speaker arrays at stage left and right each featured 14 of Clair Brothers' i4 cabinets, variously angled at 2°, 5°, and 10°. Directly adjacent to these arrays were Clair Brothers' i4B subwoofers; 24 cabinets were used in total. For sidefill, each side of the venues was covered by a column of eight speaker cabinets, while the rear of the stage was covered by two arrays of six cabinets arranged in 10° increments. For the general admission audience inside the heart, P-2 speakers were positioned on top of ML18 bass cabinets under the front of the stage, and a cluster of three P-4 speakers was center hung overhead. Sound engineer Joe O'Herlihy mixed the sound on a Midas XL4 automated console, and used a Yamaha O2R console for overflow inputs.
For the stage monitor system, the band members utilised a combination of in-ear monitors by Future Sonics and monitor speakers by Clair Brothers. For Clayton, a single 12-AM wedge was placed near his "pocket" position at the corner of the drum riser, while a pair of "double-12s" was placed at the front of the stage. For the rest of the band, a pair of 12-AM wedges was used by Bono, a pair of Series II wedges by guitarist the Edge, and a pair of ML18 bass speakers by drummer Larry Mullen Jr. On each side of the backline, a P-4 cabinet was laid on its side atop ML18 units, which were angled inwards for sidefill. At the front of each wing of the stage, a "double-12" was placed, and on each side of the rear apron were a wedge and two subwoofers. The monitors were mixed by engineers Don Garber and Dave Skaff on two ATI Paragon consoles, with a Yamaha 02R and Mackie 1604 console used for audience microphones and talkback inputs from crew members. Skaff mixed for Clayton and Mullen, while Garber mixed for Bono and the Edge. Their mixing position was underneath the left wing of the stage, without a line of sight to the band; as a result, they tracked the band members on video monitors, which displayed the same feed as the on-stage video screens.
Williams served as the lighting designer with Bruce Ramus as lighting director. The lighting system was configured in a manner that followed the tour's "forward to basics" theme. Ramus said that the lighting truss design was simplified, as the team wanted to move away from clever designs. Four straight trusses were suspended above the main stage, two measuring long and two measuring long. Seven Vario-Lift hoists by ChainMaster could raise and lower the trusses to trim heights varying from to high. A diameter circular truss was suspended above the general admission area inside the heart. The lighting system used 54 Vari-Lite VL2416 wash luminaires; they were the only automated light fixtures used on tour, and marked U2's first time using Vari-Lite products. Williams chose the fixture for its zoom control and brightness, allowing him to achieve a throw distance. For a footlight, the heart-shaped ramp had 300 T3 quartz bulbs embedded in gutters on both sides, along with about 400 Egg Strobe and Star Strobe lights.
Early in the tour, the lighting system featured 24 Fresnel fixtures with gold-painted barn doors for a "pleasantly stylish, Gucci feel". These fixtures dominated the first part of the show, illuminating at about 50 percent to produce what Williams called a "wonderful brown, low color temperature light which the band loved". As the tour progressed, Bono felt they were too nostalgic among the more contemporary elements of the show, while Williams thought they were being underused. As a result, the Fresnels were replaced with eight custom fixtures called "fornows"; designed by Williams on a napkin, they were constructed by Light & Sound Design and each housed a four-DWE Mole striplight in a short, deep wedge-shaped box. Williams felt the "fornows" befitted the show better, emitting light that was "less friendly and more aggressive". Among several unconventional fixtures in the lighting system were 30 modified police beacons, which were placed sideways in groups and whose movements were staggered with each other to create a "rain effect" during "Where the Streets Have No Name" to stun the audience. At the corners of the stage were four custom-built "ripple drums" by LSD; Williams described the pieces as slowly rotating black trash cans with holes in them and "a naked 5kW fixture" inside. The lighting package also included 48 LSD DWE Mole striplights, 24 ETC Source Four fixtures, 12 Omni fixtures and 70 Tota fixtures by Lowel-Light, and a variety of strobe lamps. Williams controlled lights with an Avolites Pearl console, while Ramus operated a Jands Hog 1000 console.
The stage and equipment travelled on 14 semi-trailer trucks, and required two hours to disassemble and load into the trucks.