We’ve talked about how the current U2 tour -- which was supposed to happen last summer, but got bumped to this summer because Bono had to go heal the sick someplace or something -- has been disrupting the baseball schedule. See, their stage setup is gigantic and it takes several days on either side of the concert for construction and break-down, so when they’ve gone to Anaheim or Miami or wherever, it has caused the team to have to go on the road for a long time.
The current U2 exiles are the St. Louis Cardinals, who turned their ballpark over to the band as the All-Star break began and won’t be back until Monday. But as Dan O’Neill reported yesterday, it’s not just the schedule that gets messed up: it’s the turf too:“This is pretty much a complete destruction of your field,” Findley said of the concert. “When they bring this thing in here, and set it on your field for a week, no grass is going to survive that.”
The “thing” to which Findley referred to is better known as “the Claw,” a massive superstructure that houses each U2 performance. It is the largest concert stage ever assembled, a four-legged, spiderlike structure that hovers over the concert floor, holding speaker systems, lights and video elements.
The steel assembly is 167 feet tall and transported to and from concert sites by 120 trucks. The U2 tour includes a production crew of 137 workers, which is supplemented at each concert location by some 120 hired hands. Daily costs of the production are estimated to be around $750,000, which does not include the actual construction of the stage.
Nothing says rock and roll like a team of hundreds setting up an elaborate performance space at the cost of millions. Indeed, I’m pretty sure we’re reaching Hotblack Desiato and Disaster Area territory here. All that’s missing now is a space ship crashing into the sun to create a solar flare and The Edge spending a year dead for tax purposes.
