2023-12-01

Sphere, Las Vegas, NV

Set List of Show:

"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"
"A Rainy Night In Soho"
"Desire"
"Two Hearts Beat as One"
"Sunday Bloody Sunday"
"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" - Brittany Howard (Vocals)
Pre-Recorded Exit Song: "What A Wonderful World" - Louis Armstrong

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

"Drive My Car" (The Beatles) / "My Sweet Lord" (George Harrison) / "Young Americans" (David Bowie) / "Purple Rain" (Prince) / "Love Me Tender" (Elvis Presley) / "Paint it Black" (Rolling Stones) / "Love Me Do" (The Beatles) / "Rescue" (Echo and the Bunnymen) / "Viva Las Vegas" (Elvis Presley) / "My Way" (Frank Sinatra) / "Gloria" (U2) /

Show Details:

After a three week vacation due to the F1 races being held in Las Vegas, U2 return to Sphere tonight. It is their eighteenth night of twenty five shows being held in 2023 at the Las Vegas Sphere. An additional 11 shows are currently announced for 2024, and 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.

The show opens with a run of songs from Achtung Baby and then takes a break for “All I Want is You”. There are new visuals for “Tryin’ To Throw Your Arms Around the World” – Bono continues to take the balloon for a walk around the stage, but then comes to a door at the back of the stage. He rings the bell, and we see him from the other side, peeping through the peep hole. He leaves the balloon at the door and walks back with The Edge. During “All I Want is You” Bono transitions into several verses of the Pogues’ “Rainy Night in Soho” for Shane MacGowan who passed away this week, asking the crowd to sing for MacGowan. After the first verse, The Edge also transitions the music into “Rainy Night in Soho”, and calls out for Terry Lawless to join in from below the stage.

“MacGowan’s song is never over,
We may never find out what it means.
There’s a light, I hold before me.
You’re the measure of my dreams.
The measure of my dreams.”

The band is introduced after the medley of “All I Want is You” and “A Rainy Night in Soho” – “let me start by introducing you to a man who started as a fan of U2 on the Pop album in 1998, 1997 sorry, very good, as a student of Larry Mullen, a PhD student at this stage. The first time we were in a room together, the band were rehearsing for this Sphere show, I was a few days late. And well letting the musicians do what musicians want to do which is not be with the singer when they are getting on with it. I came into the room, into the dressing room, with Edge and Adam. This big guy bounds in, looks at me. I just thought to myself. First of all, he’s too good looking, he’s too tall. Then this Dutch mouth opened and he went ‘so there is a fourth member of U2’. This is Bram van den Berg, have you anything to say to us, apart from saving our ass? No not tonight!” He then invites the crowd to give it up for Larry Mullen Junior who isn’t present for these shows.

Adam is introduced as “our wild card turned royal flush, Lord Adam Charles Clayton on the bass, the first manager of U2, the first man who believed we could go all the way.” The Edge is introduced as “in a town of magicians, a true alchemist, turning our shite into gold on a daily basis, and turning his guitars into anything he wants to turn them into.” On vocals? “If you’re not talking about him, he ain’t listening, mouth almighty, a giant in his own mind…”

After “Desire”, Bono talks again about the plans to do an acoustic segment from their albums in the middle section after the two songs from Rattle and Hum. The Edge wants to do their greatest hits. Bono wanted to do War so tonight the middle is a mix of things. “Two Hearts Beat As One” follows “All I Want is You” this evening, only its second appearance in these Sphere shows. The song includes a snippet of “Rescue” by Echo & The Bunnymen, with Bono sharing that Will Sergeant from Echo & the Bunnymen is at the show. Bono speaks about the Peace process in Ireland, dedicating “Sunday Bloody Sunday” to the peacemakers, praying that there is more of them out there. The band return to Achtung Baby to finish off the album after “Sunday Bloody Sunday”.

“Elevation” opens with a remix of the song coming out of the encore, and band break in after returning to the song. During the song, Bono stops to mark that it is World AIDS Day. The song ends with Bono singing “My Way”. Bono opens “Vertigo” with “What’s Spanish for luck? Suerte. Uno, dos, tres, catorce…” Ahead of “Beautiful Day” Bono shares the band knows people are coming from far away for these shows, “Thank you, again, we know many of you have made long trips to get here. Really we know that. We have drones. We can see everything. We don’t take anything for granted! This has been a wild ride, an extraordinary ride. Thank you very much!”

A snippet of The Beatles’ “Drive My Car” was heard ahead of “The Fly”. “My Sweet Lord” and “Young Americans” make appearances during “Mysterious Ways”. Prince’s “Purple Rain” makes an appearance at the end of “One” before Bono goes into “Love Me Tender”. “Paint it Black” is added to “Until the End of the World”. “Love Me Do” makes an appearance at the end of “Desire”. “Viva Las Vegas” has its usual spot at the end of “Love is Blindness”. U2’s own “Gloria” is added to the end of “Beautiful Day”.

Lady Gaga is spotted among the crowd at Sphere this evening. She was seen in attendance earlier in the run of shows at the Sphere in the crowd, and later appeared on stage with U2 one night, making this her third known show. Eddie Vedder from Pearl Jam has also been to multiple shows and is back this evening for another. James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich from Metallica are also present, as is Thom Yorke from Radiohead, Will Sergeant from Echo & the Bunnymen, and Justin Timberlake from NSYNC.

The show started at approximately 8:35 this evening. A number of new T-Shirts have been added to the line up of merchandise available at the show, including a number that include the dates for the 2024 shows for the first time. Two new posters were also available in merchandise tonight, more information on the new merch is available in our article here.

Thank you to U2Chile, Michelle and Nicole for information used in the piece above.

Initially five shows in Las Vegas were announced, quickly followed by seven more, and then five more taking us to the end of November. On May 12, the final shows for December were added, with all eight shows being available via a U2.com presale offer, where you could apply for the shows you were interested in. The offer ended on May 15. Face value on tickets range from $140.13 – $501.35 at four different price points for seats for face values. A General Admission floor will be priced at $267.88, and at each show there will be a (RED) Zone riser at the back of the GA area which will hold 50 people, priced at $600.00. Although these were face values, tickets in seated areas were subject to Platinum pricing in the general sale.

Officially Released Tracks