by Elliot Manger

First time ever seeing U2 after many years wanting to but never being in the right place at the right time. Paid €75 euros for seats, when I would have much preferred to have been down in the standing area, paying less and feeling part of the action.

After hearing such amazing things about the previous gigs, and also hearing how some people had suffered from bad sound depending on their location, I was really hoping that the night would go well.

As it turned out, it was a pretty pedestrian affair. There was a really great concert going on but it wasn't anywhere near where I was standing. I was peering around a concrete pillar trying not to wake the couple next to me while tapping my foot and attempting to feel something of the passion that was obviously consuming the rest of the stadium.

When Bono spoke, a garbled mumble reached my ears, when I looked at the large screens to try and see what was going on, time-delay made the speeches comical.

Only on real crowd-pleasers like 'Bad' and stadium staples such as 'streets' and 'Still haven't found..' did any of the crowd enthusiasm reach up to our level. All other songs were filtered through varying levels of apathy as the people around us failed to engage with the music.

Only during the 2nd encore, when some people had left and we could clamber down from the dizzying heights did we get a vague feel for the real concert.

So, my first experience of U2 was pretty poor. Bad sound, no atmosphere and to make it all worse, we could see that most other people we're being blown away while we fought against sleep.

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