by Marty Phillips

Wow - What a show... (I am writing this nearly 16 years since this event happened & it's still fresh in my mind!)
My first time to see U2 & it nearly didn't happen. This is my story.
A girl @ my school was organising a bus (her father ran the bus company) to see the boys in Brisbane on their current Love Town tour. Knowing how much I loved U2, she came straight to see me & another friend to see if we wanted to go. Shit yeah I said & we paid our $20 deposit there & then. We were told that we didn't have to pay any more until the day before the show. So we saved the rest of the money & went down the bus depot the day before, excited as a cat on a hot tin roof, only to be told that as we hadn't confirmed our bookings the week before, they had sold our seats to someone else. Well I wasn't putting up with that & promptly told them that as we were the first two to sign on, we were going & that they had better find us some other tickets. So they rang the venue & luckily got us two tickets! We were going - YEAH BABY...
The bus ride up was one big sing along as we played every U2 hit we could.
When we got to the Venue, they gave us our tickets which were apart from the rest of the group - thankfully as their tickets were halfway down the venue, on the side & half-way to the roof! Ours were two rows in, right on the side of the stage. You could throw a paper ball & hit Larry's kit we were that close!!! How excited do you think we were when we got to our seats? Happy as a pig in shit? Better! Also ,we were sitting next to this Irish guy & his girlfriend, whom had seen U2 in a pub in Dublin when they were just starting out & hadn't seen them since... What a blast!
Well I was outside getting a drink when this god awemighty thumping came from inside the stadium. I raced back in to see these 4 blokes going hammer & tong on their instruments - it was Weddings, Parties, Anything. An mad Aussie band that play folk-rock. I'd never seen them before & man were they good. Then BB King came on. How cool is he??? (I don't play chords, I'm horrible with chords!) I love the way he claps his hands with the back of one onto the other, soo cool. The support acts were done, now all that was left was the main show & as we were sitting & waiting I saw Paul McGuinness & Adam Clayton walk out from under the bottom of the stage & out to the back. I yelled out their names & they looked up & waved... Man, how good was this gonna be???
Then the room went dark, the crowd went nuts. From where we were sitting, you could see the guys being ushered onto the stage: Larry, then The Edge, then Adam & lastly Bono! As they were making their way to their kits, the opening strains of 'Streets' was building, just like a jet engine warming up. The atmosphere was electric. The Edge started with the riff & then BOOM, the lights came on as they reached the opening creschendo & you could see the whole stadium on it's feet! That feeling was just incredible. That is one way to open a show, with a song like that, you just know it's going to be a fantastic ride. And what a ride it was, a rollercoaster of epic proportions & once it was over the whole stadium was left wondering: Just how much better can it get?
The set list as above is pretty much how I remember it. Only a medium length main set, but a fantastic encore, BB King & all. One song that really took me on the night was People Get Ready. I'd never heard that before & to here them do it was pretty cool.
Long live U2, long live my memory of this fantastic night & long live Rock'n'Roll!

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