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Rating:
Scary stuff.
We entered the stadium before the very modest and usually useless supporters, and we were immediately frightened.
Something huge, never seen before.
One would expect Siloni or Klingons to come out in fleets, to take hostages.
The giant spider that everyone knows is really impressive when seen live. With its four gigantic arms, its tip as high as the third ring, and the circular screen, which rises and falls, stretches and shrinks.
We thought, even from the U2 themselves, that we had already seen everything. But here, they managed to twist, rewind, and elaborate an absolute architectural-scenographic masterpiece.
Something new. And in itself, it deserves praise.
We are in a stadium, in full market economy, in front of the most important rock band in the world together with the Stones, and we cannot and must not be picky.
The picky ones should stay home and only pay attention to the substance.
We care about the form as well, we savor at the restaurant but also judge the tablecloth and the background music. We gaze at the spaceship, we are captivated like children, we get emotional and enjoy.
That's how we are, and you can't blame us. We know that music is what you make on a small stage with a single spotlight (trust me: I know a thing or two), but it's also this.
It's entertainment. It's "to divert," in the pure and etymological sense of the term.
Any "taleban" position is ontologically wrong. Those who look down on these things often hide a poorly concealed envy, and are often a musician of clear hunger, who despises the world of success just because it hasn't dealt with him. Others, on principle, do not like spaceships that distract from the seven notes, others still couldn't care less and just want to have fun, regardless of whether what they have in front of them are people or sequences, whether it’s people playing or pretending.
U2 satisfy all tastes, and in this, too, they are as skillful as they are clever.
If there are sequences in the choruses for sure (and I wouldn’t swear on the authenticity of some background guitar...) otherwise they play, as always and better than ever: Bono regained most if not all of the voice he once had. Less strong but also less shrill, certainly more "technical" (he sings more "with head" compared to the heavy "from the throat" singing of the eighties, and the clever falsettos and embellishments of the nineties...), while the other three do their duty with commendable precision and professionalism.
Bono's daughter grabs a champagne and a Party Girl from the stage which hopefully, she will cherish for the rest of her life.
The audience is more and more captivated and amazed. And involved.
And there's everything you expect. The civil battle, the pointless appeal to Berlusconi (they, poor foreigners, don't know that our beloved dwarf gets away as always with a smile, a pat on the back, to then do absolutely nothing). There's the intimate moment and the dance moment.
All expected, but beyond what was expected. Difficult to imagine a further step forward (the next stage, in fact, would have to be larger than the stadium, I fear...).
And anyway, the "divertere," that halfway point between the incomplete translation of "entertain" and the perhaps more correct "distract," is perfected in the most absolute way.
You go home happy, having heard the greatest joyful music machine currently on the market.
Knowing that rock has been something else, in the past, and perhaps even much better.
But knowing that today it's also this.
And, let's admit it, also much, much worse.
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