The
Zoo TV Tour (also written as
ZooTV, ZOO TV or
ZOOTV) was an elaborately-staged worldwide
concert tour by Irish
rock band U2. Launched in support of the album
Achtung Baby, the tour visited
arenas and
stadiums from 1992
through 1993. The Zoo TV Tour used multimedia and the video age for
much of its inspiration, as it was designed to instill a feeling of
"sensory overload" in its audience. The stage's 36 video screens
flashed random collections of images and slogans from
pop culture, while performances were
complemented by visual effects on the large screens.
Lead singer
Bono described
Achtung
Baby as "the sound of four men chopping down
the Joshua Tree". The Zoo TV Tour marked a
shift from the band's previously earnest stage performances from
the 1980s to ones that were intentionally ironic and self-mocking;
Bono used the tour to showcase numerous stage personas and
characters he created. Differing from all previous and subsequent
U2 tours, the Zoo TV shows opened with six to eight consecutive new
songs before playing older material.
Tour legs were individually known as
Zoo TV – The Outside
Broadcast,
Zooropa, and
Zoomerang.
The tour began in Lakeland,
Florida
on February 29, 1992 and ended in Tokyo, Japan
on December 10, 1993. It comprised five legs, 157 shows, was
seen by about 5.4 million people, and was the highest-grossing tour
in
North America of 1992. The band's
1993 album
Zooropa was recorded
during a break in the tour, and its songs were played during the
1993 legs of the tour. The tour was depicted in the
Grammy Award-winning concert film
Zoo TV: Live from Sydney. In
2002,
Q magazine called it
"still the most spectacular rock tour staged by any band," and in
2009, critic and writer
Greg Kot said "Zoo
TV remains the finest supersized tour mounted by any band in the
last two decades."
Stage design
The Zoo TV Outside Broadcast
stage
The stage was designed by
Willie Williams, U2's
stage designer since the
War Tour, who
worked with the stage designers
Mark Fisher and Jonathan Park
(designers of the Rolling Stones "Steel Wheels" stage set). The
main stage was 248 feet wide and over 80 feet deep. A smaller
"B-stage" was situated further out into the crowd and connected to
the main stage by a ramp approximately 150 feet long. The stage
design featured 4 mega video screens, 4 vidi walls, 36 video
monitors, 2 Betacam and 2 Video-8 handicam video cameras, and 11
Trabant cars, several of which were
suspended over the stage with spotlights inserted into headlights.
The Trabants featured painted artwork designed by Catherine Owens,
Rene Castro, and Williams.
The concert crew used 12 directors, 5 broadcast cameras, 176
speaker enclosures, 312 18" subwoofers, 592 10" mid-range speakers,
18 projectors, 26 on-stage microphones, 19 video crew members, 12
Laser Disc players, 1 satellite dish, and
two separate mix positions. For the stadium shows, 52 trucks were
required to transport the 1,200 tons of equipment, 3 miles of
cabling, 200 labourers, 12 forklifts and a 40-ton crane, which were
required to construct the stage. The sound system used over 1
million watts and weighed 30 tons.
Overview of show
The tour, partly inspired by
CNN's seemingly
endless coverage of the
Gulf War was, on
one level, a straight-faced satire on the media overload. The
tour's television screens displayed a mixture of seemingly random
images and slogans (an idea that originated from the band's video
for "
The Fly"), featuring found
sounds and live sampling from actual
mass
media outlets. This stream of media was created by artists such
as
Kevin Godley,
Brian Eno,
Mark
Pellington, Carol Dodds, Philip Owens,
David Wojnarowicz, and multimedia
performance artists
Emergency Broadcast Network in
an effort to reflect the desensitizing effect of the modern
mass media.
The 1993 Zooropa and Zoomerang shows opened with a seven minute
piece created by Emergency Broadcast Network, which wove looped
images from
Leni Riefenstahl's
Triumph of the Will
with various war and news imagery sources. Following this, the
stadium was darkened and moments later Bono appeared onstage,
silhouetted against a giant screen of blue and white video noise.
The show began with a fixed sequence of songs. In an interview on
the
Zoo Radio program,
The Edge
described the visual material that went with the first three of
them:
The imagery used during "Zoo Station"'s performance was created by
blending video noise with
stop
motion animation sequences of the band members "filmed" on a
photocopier. Some of "The Fly's" meltdown messages included "Taste
is the enemy of art", "Religion is a club", "Ignorance is bliss",
"Rebellion is packaged", "Believe" with letters fading out to leave
"lie", and "Everything you know is wrong", and real media footage
borrowed from mass media.
"
Mysterious Ways" featured a
belly dancer on-stage. "
One" was accompanied by the title word shown
in many languages, as well as
Mark
Pellington-directed video clips of
buffalo leading to a still image of
David Wojnarowicz's "Falling Buffalo"
photograph. People found in the song, as they did with the tour,
many levels of meaning; released as a single as the tour began,
"One" quickly became one of U2's most popular songs. During
"
Until the End of the
World", Bono unleashed a series of egotistical rock star poses
with the chaotic visual approach, this time created from a
rapid-fire jumble of numbers, many of which reflected topics close
to the video artist's and band's heart, including production crew
members' birthdays, the date of
Martin Luther King Jr.'s murder, the
date of release of U2's first 12-inch single in Ireland, the date
of 'Bloody Sunday'. More video montage led into "
Tryin' to Throw Your
Arms Around the World", during which Bono would continue his
long practice of dancing with a young female fan pulled from the
crowd, only now spraying themselves with
champagne and captured each other with a
consumer
camcorder video feed shown live
to the audience.
U2 had used backing tracks in live performance before (such as the
synthesized backdrops to "
Bad" and
"
Where the Streets Have
No Name") but, with the need to synch live performance to the
high-tech visuals of Zoo TV, almost the entire show was synched and
sequenced, with most numbers featuring pre-recorded percussion,
keyboard, or guitar elements underlying the U2 members' live
instrumentals and vocals. This practice has continued on their
subsequent tours.
Zoo TV was one of the first large-scale concerts to feature the
B stage, a smaller stage in the middle of
the floor, intended "to be the antidote to Zoo TV". Here, the four
members played quieter numbers such as acoustic arrangements of
"
Angel of Harlem" and "
Stay ". After that it was back to
the main stage for some U2 classics played straight, but when the
encores began,
Bono's
alter-egos returned.
The concerts usually ended with
Achtung Baby's gentler
"
Love Is Blindness", although
later in the tour, it was followed by a cover of
Elvis Presley's "
Can't Help Falling in
Love".
According to
VH1's Legends:
"Zoo TV saw U2 mocking the excesses of rock and roll by ironically
embracing greed and decadence. However, some missed the point of
the tour and thought that U2 had 'lost it', and that Bono had
become an egomaniac."
Other aspects
Between U2 and the support acts, eccentric Irish
disk jockey BP Fallon
acted as
emcee, playing records and giving a
running commentary while wearing a top hat and cape and seated
inside a
Trabant on the B-stage. He also
hosted
Zoo Radio, a distributed radio special that
showcased selected performances from Zoo TV, audio oddities, and
half-serious interviews with U2 members as well as with sometime
opening acts
Big Audio Dynamite
II,
Public Enemy and
The Disposable
Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Fallon, at the band's suggestion, would
eventually publish a book
BP Fallon - U2 Faraway So Close
about the tour.
Paul Oakenfold, who
would go on to become one of the world's most prominent club DJs by
the end of the 1990s, replaced him on the 1993 legs.
The tour also had a Confessional Booth where concert-goers could
record a personal confession on camera. These confessions were
often incorporated into the show, being displayed on the main
television screens in the intervals between main show and
encore.
On June 11, 1992, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of
ABBA appeared for the first time in years to perform
"Dancing Queen" with the band, which U2 had frequently performed on
the tour up to that point. Other guest performers on the tour
included
Axl Rose,
Jo
Shankar and
Daniel Lanois.
Most later
shows included a nightly duet between Bono and a pre-recorded video
of Lou Reed singing his song "Satellite of Love" (with a real appearance
from Reed on August 12, 1992 at Giants Stadium
), and an almost nightly phone call to the office of
American president
George H. W. Bush.
Though Bono never got through to the President, Bush did
acknowledge the calls during a press conference.
The
novelist Salman Rushdie joined the
band on stage in London
's Wembley
Stadium
on August 11, 1993 despite the author's well-publicized fear of
violence from Islamic extremists, due to the controversy over his
novel The
Satanic Verses. When confronted by Bono's MacPhisto
character, the author observed that "real devils don't wear
horns."
A number
of European shows featured nightly live link-ups with people living
in war-torn Sarajevo
.
Arranged by aidworker
Bill Carter, (who
later with Bono's help made the documentary film
Miss
Sarajevo), it was intended to bring world attention to the
suffering of the people living in the war zone. Carter, while in
besieged Sarajevo, watched an interview on
MTV
where Bono mentioned the theme of the Zooropa leg to be an unified
Europe; feeling that such an aim was empty while it ignored the
plight of the
Bosnians and so decided to
seek Bono's help in breaking Sarajevo's isolation. The link-ups
allowed people who had escaped the conflict to speak with family
members and loved ones within the war zone, or to accuse the West
of inaction and apathy. The link ups though, drew criticism as
being inappropriate for a rock show. In 2002, Larry Mullen 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."
Bono's stage personas
Bono was seen wearing many costumes during the tour. He wore a
military vest for two songs during the main set and a suit jacket
for portions of the main set as well. However, the main three of
them were for his stage personas: The Fly, the Mirror Ball Man, and
Mr. MacPhisto.
The Fly
"The Fly" was a character intended to represent the stereotypical
rock star, wearing wrap-around shades with a full leather outfit,
and carrying himself with exaggerated, sexual mannerisms. Bono
recalls that during the
Achtung Baby recording sessions,
Fintan Fitzgerald, in charge of the band's wardrobe, found a 1970s
pair of wraparound
blaxploitation
sunglasses. Bono would put them on and make everyone laugh whenever
they ran into a problem. The shades came to symbolize the "new U2",
a departure from the pious, rootsy U2 of the
The Joshua Tree-era. Bono described the
character as, "a barfly, a self-appointed expert on the politics of
love, a bullshit philosopher who occasionally hits the nail on the
head but more often it's his own finger-nail he leaves black and
blue." The character featured in the music video for the song of
the same name, as well as the video of "Even Better Than the Real
Thing" and "Lemon".
In Zoo TV performances, The Fly would begin by appearing
silhouetted against a video screen, smoking a cigarette and dancing
wildly as "Zoo Station" opened the show. During the song, he played
around with the "typical rock star" act. He would then play guitar
during "The Fly." Often, he would make a short introductory speech
about Zoo TV after "The Fly," then played with local TV channels
on-screen. Then the band would begin "Even Better Than the Real
Thing," in which he played with a handicam, filming The Edge's
solo, then himself.
Mr. MacPhisto
MacPhisto was created to parody the devil, and he was named after
Mephistopheles of the
Faust legend. According to Bono, regarding the
character, "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." MacPhisto wore
a gold suit with gold platform shoes, wore pale make-up and
lipstick, and wore devil's horns atop his head. The idea of the
horns came from Gavin Friday, according to Bono. He spoke with an
exaggerated upper-class English accent, not unlike that of a
down-on-his-luck character actor. He would make telephone calls
nightly, like the Mirror Ball Man, but the targets would change
with the location of the concert. Bono 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." 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."
MacPhisto's speech at the Sydney
1993 concert
exemplified the character:
This character would subsequently figure prominently in the 1995
music video for "
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss
Me, Kill Me" from the soundtrack of the
Joel Schumacher movie
Batman Forever. Schumacher, who is a fan
of U2, approached Bono with a proposition to have MacPhisto appear
in
Forever as a supporting villain, but Bono asserted that
the character would be retired after the tour ended. However, the
band agreed to contribute the song for the film soundtrack.
The Mirror Ball Man
The Mirror Ball Man appeared during the encores for the first three
legs of the tour. The Mirror Ball Man dressed in a suit of shining
silver with silver shoes and a silver hat. Bono said of the
character, "On the first American leg, we created a character
called the Mirror Ball Man, 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." Mirror Ball Man called the White House nightly in an
attempt to talk to then President George H.W. Bush. "The Mirror
Ball Man would call the White House, where, much to his bemusement,
Operator Two regularly declined to put him through to the
President," said Bono. Bono traded in his Mirror Ball Man persona
for Mr. MacPhisto after the Outside Broadcast Leg.
One speech of his is a clear parody of televangelism:
Recording and release of Zooropa
U2 recorded their next album,
Zooropa, during a break at the end of the third
leg of the tour. The album was intended as an additional
EP to
Achtung Baby, but soon expanded
into a full LP and was released in July 1993. Influenced by both
tour life and the ideas of media barrage and irony on the Zoo TV
tour,
Zooropa was an even greater departure from the style
of their earlier recordings, incorporating
techno style and other electronic effects. A number
of songs from
Zooropa were incorporated into the
subsequent Zooropa and Zoomerang tour legs, most frequently
"
Numb" and "
Stay ", with "
Daddy's Gonna Pay For
Your Crashed Car" and "
Lemon"
worked into the MacPhisto persona during Zoomerang, and "
Dirty Day" in the main set during the same.
Broadcasts and recordings
The
Zoo Radio special included live selections from 1992
Toronto
, Dallas
, Tempe, Arizona
, and New York
shows. Portions of another 1992 show were
taped and later broadcast as a one-hour
Fox network television special.
The
27 November 1993
Zoomerang show in Sydney was
broadcast in the United States on tape-delayed pay-per-view and then aired later as a regular
broadcast in other countries, and was subsequently released as the
Grammy Award-winning concert video
Zoo TV: Live from
Sydney. It is difficult for any video footage to
capture the full effect of Zoo TV, since the multi-input sensory
overload nature of the show is lost by a single camera focusing on
any one particular aspect.
On 9
September 1992, a portion of U2's performance at the Pontiac
Silverdome
near Detroit, MI. was broadcast live to the
MTV Video Music
Awards. The band performed "Even Better Than the Real
Thing" while Video Music Award host
Dana
Carvey, dressed as his
Wayne's
World Garth persona, accompanied the band on drums in Los
Angeles.
The first leg of the US Tour dubbed "indoor broadcast" was
comprised of indoor arena shows, rather than the large stadium
shows that made up the majority of the concerts.
Shows including the concerts on June 11 in Stockholm and October 27
in El Paso were broadcast into the homes of fans who had won
contests.
Vertigo Tour homage
During U2's 2005
Vertigo Tour, the band
often played (usually as the first encore) a mini-Zoo TV set - "Zoo
Station", "The Fly", and "Mysterious Ways" - using some of the
original Zoo TV video effects. "Zoo Station" included the
interference in the background and "The Fly" had the flashing words
on the screen, originally similar to the originals from Zoo TV, but
which progressed into its own original words and phrases later in
the tour. As the tour progressed, "Until the End of the World" also
appeared with countdown timers which were very similar to the
images used on Zoo TV.
Itinerary
- Leg 1 - Indoor Broadcast
- Dates: February 29, 1992 – April 23, 1992
- Location: North
America
- Venues: Indoor arenas
- Shows: 32
- Supporting act: Pixies
- Leg 2
- Dates: May 7, 1992 – June 19, 1992
- Location: Europe
- Venues: Indoor arenas
- Shows: 25
- Supporting act: Fatima Mansions
- Leg 3 - Outside Broadcast
Ticket from Zooropa leg of Zoo TV Tour
See also
References
Further reading
Sources
- McCormick, Neil (ed), (2006). U2 by U2. HarperCollins
Publishers. ISBN 0-00-719668-7
Notes
- Hot Press, "Closer to the Edge (pt. 1)", 4 December 4 2002. Edge
says: "... we got the idea of taking images, taking TV as an idea,
and putting screens on stage. That started us down that road
..."
- U2:
U2faqs.com - Live / Concert FAQ
- Q Magazine, "10
Years of Turmoil Inside U2", 10 October 2002.
- "A Fistful of Zoo TV". Documentary. Zoo TV:
Live from Sydney, Special Edition. DVD, 2007.
- u2propaganda.com
- Zoo TV Tv Special, Dec 1992
- "Zoo TV: The Inside Story." Documentary. Zoo TV:
Live from Sydney, Special Edition. DVD, 2007.
-
http://www.atu2.com/news/tdih/search.src?TYEAR=1992&Key=
- Zoo Radio program, 1992
- VH1 Legends episode on U2, first aired 11 December
1998.
- Bill Flanagan, U2 At the End of the World, 1996, pp.
121-123, p. 348.
- Fools rush in - bill carter
- Fools rush in - Bill Carter p170
- McCormick (2006), pp. 224-5, 232.
- "Desire", bonus track. Zoo TV:
Live from Sydney, Special Edition. DVD, 2007.
- U2 ZOO TV Tour - U2 on tour
-
http://www.atu2.com/news/tdih/search.src?TYEAR=1993&Key=&TYPE=&Start=426
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