U2 @ Wembley Stadium, 14 August 2009

Arrived half way through Elbow, who were really nice and chilled out to listen to. In our seats with drinks flowing soaking up all the atmosphere, when they finished off with a full quartet of strings to "One Day Like This". Hairs on the back of your neck time and I was so sure that the evening hadn't even begun yet.

As I looked down over the 10's of thousands of people on Wembley football pitch. There it was the structure I had been reading about for so many weeks! It was absolutely massive. During the interval between Elbow & U2 the stage starts to morph as lights drop down and the bridges out to the outer stages start to circulate.

U2 come to the stage and the whole stadium erupts, 90,000 people singing along to an almost deafening harmony. The lighting and effects just got better and better as the night goes on. The stage and lighting was an engineering master piece.

Half way through the set the centre screen amazingly concertinas, expanding to twice the size. The screen is made up of 100’s if not 1000’s of little screens held together by a complex mechanical frame. Allegedly the stages cost around £18m each and having seen the scale and complexity of it, I can well believe it.

It has got to be one of the greatest productions ever displayed.

Breathtaking!

Thanks to a balls up with the tickets, I managed to get into the stadium just as U2 were coming onto the stage!!!! That was too close to call, and it was a shame I missed some of the anticipation - I only had fustration trying to get in!

I can see what Leroy means in his blog (http://www.gigjunkie.net/blog/post/2009/08/19/Stadium-rock-or-colossal-rip-off.aspx) but actually this was a superb night. I'd listened to quite a few of the tracks off the new album on Spotify so the start of their set was immediately familiar.

WHAT A STAGE! OK, so U2 have been criticised for building 3 stages at a cost of £35million ish, and employing 200 trucks to drag them around. I feel a tad guilty about the carbon, so will plant a basel or flat-leaf parsley in my window box.

As you will see from the pics, the stage really was incredible. The size, the lights, the effects, the video wall which opened up, and the uninterrupted view (for the majority). It was cool to see the fans running around following the band members on the stage.

And the music?! Well, it really was a great gig. The new stuff went down well, and the old stuff clearly made a lot of people v v happy (particularly judging the group of friends a row ahead of me - their voices were like angels ;-) ).

:-)

A great night. I couldn't help but stay behind and watch the stadium empty. An empty Wembley post gig is quite atmospheric - something immense had most definately just happened.