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American rock band U2 has announced their new 2023 tour in celebration of their 1991 album Achtung Baby, scheduled to take place in the fall of 2023.
The announcement was made in an advertising video that aired during the Super Bowl match on February 12, 2023, in Arizona.
The band will launch a new venue, the MSG Sphere at The Venetian, in Las Vegas. No dates or ticket information have been released as of yet. Interested patrons can register on U2xSphere or Live Nation's website to get notified about ticket and presale information.
U2's first live show in four years will be without Larry Mullen Jr
The concerts, titled U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at the Sphere, will be the first U2 has ever performed without drummer Larry Mullen since the band's formation in 1976.
In December 2022, Mullen told The Washington Post that he needed surgery to continue playing and that any concerts in 2023 would be without him. Dutch drummer Bram van den Berg of the band Krezip will fill in.
While announcing the Las Vegas concert, the other members of U2 spoke about den Berg replacing Mullen for this year's shows and said,
“It's going to take all we've got to approach the Sphere without our bandmate in the drum seat, but Larry has joined us in welcoming Bram van den Berg, who is a force in his own right.”
U2: Pioneers of Multimedia Concerts
The band is considered one of the pioneers of multimedia concert artists, starting with their performance for Live Aid in 1985, which aimed to raise funds for the then ongoing relief efforts in the Ethiopian famine of 1983-1985. The band was one of several dozen major music groups, which also included Pink Floyd and Queen, to perform at the event.
The band followed the Live Aid concert with a tour for their album Achtung Baby, released in 1991. The multimedia tour titled Zoo TV, performed from 1992 to 1993, was designed to overwhelm audiences with an overabundance of sensory spectacles, having been inspired by the disorienting footage of the Gulf War.
The tour was remarkable for its live broadcast sessions between the U2 concerts and the siege of Sarajevo in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Bosnian War in 1993, during which American aid worker Bill Carter had to traverse the infamous Sniper Alley at night to reach the Sarajevo television station.
The band followed the Zoo TV tour with the PopMart Tour in 1997, marking a trend for the band to perform tours using the best available technology at the time, one that has continued into the 2020s, with frontman Bono utilizing an augmented display visor to play the MacPhisto character in the 2018 Experience + Innocence tour.
Tracing U2's musical career
U2, an Irish rock band, began as a post-punk collaboration between Bono, David Howell Evans, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr. while they were in high school at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Clontarf, Dublin, in 1976.
The band released their first album, Boy, in 1980 to favorable reviews, peaking at number 52 in the UK Album Charts. The album also had one of the first singles by the band to receive airplay in the US, I Will Follow, which they have performed in all concerts since then.
However, it was their third studio album, War, released in 1983, that gained U2 critical acclaim. The album, inspired by themes of political protest, nuclear proliferation, the Polish Solidarity movement, as well as self-doubt and depression, marked a significant departure in the band's soundscape, one that they would not repeat.
War received critical acclaim upon its release for its passionate and intense themes, as well as the band's courage in dealing with such themes, with Rolling Stone magazine eventually declaring it to be the 221st album on their "500 Greatest Album of All Time" list.
The band followed the album with another experimental soundscape in their fourth album, The Unforgettable Fire, this time focusing on ambient music. The album received favorable reviews upon release for continued experimentation in the band's performance.
The band's fifth album, The Joshua Tree, was their ultimate critical and commercial success, winning the band their first Grammy Awards—Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or a Group—in 1988, as well as becoming the fastest-selling album in British history upon its release.
