2023-11-04

Sphere, Las Vegas, NV

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

"Zoo Station"
"The Fly"
"Even Better Than the Real Thing"
"Mysterious Ways"
"One"
"Until the End of the World"
"Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses"
"Tryin' to Throw Your Arms Around the World"
"All I Want is You"
"Desire"
"When Love Comes to Town"
"Love Rescue Me"
"Acrobat"
"So Cruel"
"Ultra Violet (Light My Way)"
"Love is Blindness"

Encore:

"Elevation"
"Atomic City"
"Vertigo"
"Where the Streets Have No Name"
"With or Without You"
"Beautiful Day"

Additional Music

Pre-Recorded Intro Song: "Lemon" (Remix) - U2
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "Glorify" - U2 featuring Brittany Howard
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "What A Wonderful World" - Louis Armstrong

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

"Drive My Car" (The Beatles) / "Love Me Tender" (Elvis Presley) / "Paint it Black" (Rolling Stones) / "Landlady" (U2) / "Into the Mystic" (Van Morrison) / "Viva Las Vegas" (Elvis Presley) / "My Way" (Frank Sinatra) / "Moment of Surrender" (U2) / "Gloria" (U2) / "Blackbird" (The Beatles) / "Glorify" (U2 featuring Brittany Howard) /

Show Details:

Tonight U2 plays their seventeenth night of 25 shows in 2023 at the Las Vegas Sphere. An additional 11 shows will bring the total to 36 with these newly added shows going on sale recently. The full listing of shows can be found in our U2 show archive. U2 are performing these shows without founding member, Larry Mullen Junior, who is missing due to surgery to repair damage suffered from years of drumming. A Dutch drummer, Bram van den Berg replaces Mullen at these shows in Las Vegas. After this show U2 take a break from the performances in Vegas while the F1 race rolls into town. U2 will resume their shows on December 1, 2023.

The first song Bono references tonight is The Beatles’ “Drive My Car” at the start of “The Fly” after thanking Pauli the PSM, who is using the song in his opening sets as he starts driving a Trabant around the crowd. The band launches “The Fly”, and Bono messes up the second verse of the song, coming in with the “Achtung Y’all” part early, but quickly recovers, making up a few lines to get over his flub.

Introducing “Mysterious Ways” Bono talks about Sphere, “Oh there you are! How are you up there? Are you ok? Welcome to the Sphere. What is this strange orb where science serves art!” and continues, “It’s a cave, it’s a club in Berlin in the 90s. It’s an Elvis mega-chapel. It’s an Elvis cathedral! Where love and luck fight it out on a daily basis.”

Like he has on the previous two shows, Bono takes to the space between the front rail and the main stage during “Until the End of the World” interacting with the front row as he sings, and turning around to watch the screen from the audience. While he is there he does a piece of “Paint it Black” by the Rolling Stones.

At the end of “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World” Bono says a brief “Honey I’m home…” a reference to the upcoming weeks off. He then talks about the balloon “Thank you my friends. So the balloon is taking me for a week, we don’t fully understand the symbolism of the balloon. It’s a very expensive trick! We need to understand it better. Bono continues, “I think we should put the baby to bed The Edge, even for 20 minutes you know what I mean? In fact, when we finish tonight, we’re going to be putting the whole show to bed for nearly a month, three weeks. We’re going to take a little break from Las Vegas. Just three weeks. Had an amazing time here. Really amazing time.” During the long introduction he speaks about Morleigh coming up with the concept of the balloon, a night at the Bahama Breeze where they met to plan out the show, and ends it with “U2, we’re the luckiest band in the world. But I don’t believe in luck. I believe in the people who gave it to us. And come October we’re gonna be singing for them.”

Last night the band started the middle section with “All I Want is You” followed by three songs from War, none of which had been played to date at Sphere. Tonight the segment is back to the “4 songs from Rattle and Hum“ variation, and none of the songs introduced the previous night are present.

Tonight after “All I Want is You” Bono mentions the band are “giving Las Vegas back to Formula 1 actually” He tells the crowd that Formula 1 is “a sport where very tidy, lean, mean men and some extraordinary women, climb onto rockets and try to stay on Earth and not achieve orbit. A little like rock n’ roll. Less dangerous!” Bono’s introductions are quick tonight, continuing in the F1 vein, naming all the band for current F1 drivers, Bram starts “Desire” but Bono stops it saying, “no…not yet”. Bono’s introductions are “One of the great things out of Holland, on the drums, Max Verstappen. On the bass, the most elegant man on the circuit, who is it? Who is it? Lewis Hamilton on the bass. And on guitar, the Monaco marvel himself, Charles Leclerc. I’m at home with country music and metal. I am the right person to bring peace between Formula 1 and Nascar, on vocals, Daniel Ricciardo”.

Introducing “When Love Comes to Town” Bono shares a story about an early road trip with Adam, asking him, “What was the name of the bus driver who saved your life, when you tried to get out of a speeding bus, in the middle of Texas, in the middle of the night…naked! It was your birthday! Do your remember the name of the man who saved your life?” Adam whispers a name in Bono’s name. Bono says no, and reveals his name was Jack. “Adam had a little too much birthday cake…”

Ahead of “Beautiful Day” Bono stops to thank the audience, “Thank you, thank you so much. We know you came a long distance a lot of you. Thank you so much for coming all this way, and getting us to our destination. Thank you so much.” Bono also shares, “I’m just realizing I’m out of mind all of the time when I’m up here. I mean really seriously. What a feeling this is. It’s very ecstatic. Thank you very much. Dizzying to the extreme.” At the end of the song he also introduces the band members again, “The Edge. The Adam. The Bram. A Bono. Wishing you the best time. Thank you for giving it to us.”

Other songs that Bono works into U2’s songs include U2’s own song “Landlady” at the start of “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World”. “Into the Mystic” is featured during “All I Want is You”. “Viva Las Vegas” has its usual placement at the end of “Love is Blindness”, and “Elevation” has it’s usual ending with Sinatra’s “My Way”. “Moment of Surrender” is added at the start of “Where the Streets Have No Name”, U2’s own “Gloria” is one of two snippets in “Beautiful Day” along with The Beatles’ “Blackbird” tonight. As the show ends, and the band take their leave of the stage, the vocals of Brittany Howard can be heard over the PA singing “Glorify”. Before leaving the stage, Bono sings along for a few lines, but tonight he does so without the microphone.

Initially five shows in Las Vegas were announced, quickly followed by seven more. These all went to pre-sale and verified fan sale at the same time. During these verified fan sales an additional five shows were added on April 27 and went immediately on sale without a pre-sale. This show was the final one of these five. U2.com did offer a special sale for these shows after the Verified fan sales had happened. All sales outside of the U2.com sales were subject to Platinum pricing. Ticket face value ranged from $140.13 – $501.35 at four different price points for seats. A General Admission floor was priced at $267.88, and at each show there was be a (RED) Zone riser at the back of the GA area which will hold 50 people, priced at $600.00.

Officially Released Tracks