by Foxy

I managed to get into the Letterman show - 4th row of a small theatre...not
bad.

U2 and the crew had a real nightmare although you wouldn't realise it from the TV. The
techs were not allowed to set up any of the gear before the show began or while the other parts were being filmed, and
they had about an 8 minute gap to do it just before U2 were due to start.
They just wheeled the drums in on a low riser and for some reason Dallas Schoo had
Edges full rack with both Vox AC30's and the pedal board. It was all very
frantic, and predictably when they got going, the sequencer for the start of
New York wasn't working so they had to start again.

It wasn't shown, but Bono made a quip about Letterman not paying his electricity bill either
(referring back to the MTV awards) and that's why on the actual bit shown on TV, you can here Letterman saying "and
here are U2, again".

That also explains what some people thought was a censoring beep. In fact, they
just had to splice the tape together and cut out the false start. All in all
I thought the others (except Bono) would rather have been down the pub
because it was a hell of a work up. Adam's tech confirmed afterwards it was
"pretty stressful".

Interestingly, Bonos green guitar was on stage with his amp so I wonder if
they were planning to do One?

The CBS Band played full instrumental versions of Pride, Beautiful Day Desire, and One during the commercial breaks and they were damned good. It was quite funny seeing Dallas go up to the guitarist (who he obviously knew) at the end, and show him how to play some of the Edge licks correctly.

There were absolutely no cameras allowed in the Ed Sullivan Theatre, but I contribute a couple of the band leaving after the show.

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