In opener of 34-city trek, Irish quartet returns to heart, heat, soul and showmanship

By Greg Kot

SUNRISE, Fla. — When U2 swept the Grammy Awards recently, Bono held one of the statues his band had won and proclaimed, "We're reapplying for the job. What job? The best band in the world job."
On Saturday, as the Irish quartet wrapped up the first show in a 34-city, 50-concert trek across North America, the singer stood in a leather jacket, drenched in sweat, and applauded the audience, saluted his bandmates — guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. — and asked, "Have we got the job?"

Judging by the response of the 20,000 faithful who packed the National Car Rental Center in this suburb of Ft. Lauderdale, the band's employment application had been gleefully accepted.

Remarkably, U2 triumphed not with more of the same, but with less.

The band performed 22 songs in two hours, but left out a few standards from previous tours, notably "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." Also gone was the high-tech gimmickry of its '90s spectacles — the Trabant cars dangling from the rafters of the Zoo TV extravaganza, and the 40-foot artificial lemon and 170-foot video screen of the Pop Mart invasion. By those standards, the Elevation Tour 2001 is lacking in flash but compensated by reaffirming the attributes that enabled U2 to matter to so many listeners in the first place: heart, heat, soul and showmanship.

This was essentially a club show transported to an arena, an illusion enhanced by a simple but brilliantly executed stage design. A heart-shaped walkway framed the performers and a portion of the audience, and when Bono or The Edge ventured around the rim, they were surrounded by fans. The design also created natural barriers that mitigated safety concerns because of the festival-seating arrangement on the floor of the arena, a practice that will continue throughout the tour, including four soldout dates at Chicago's United Center (May 12, 13, 15 and 16).

In fact, the closest anyone came to getting seriously injured was Bono himself, when he tumbled from the walkway during the night's third song, "Until the End of the World." The singer quickly arose, however, and by the end of the night was running wind sprints around the walkway.

Though backing tapes filled in some of the orchestrations, the sound generally was stripped down and less bombastic, especially when Bono and The Edge teamed up on "The Ground Beneath Her Feet," from a Wim Wenders movie soundtrack, accompanied by only a single guitar.

One or two old crowd-pleasing tricks were reprised, including The Edge's guitar solo in "Bullet the Blue Sky," illuminated by Bono's high-powered flashlight, and the dramatic lead-in for "Where the Streets Have No Name." And it wouldn't be a U2 concert without a little over-the-top cheesiness, as when Bono lounged atop the video image of an undulating dancer during "Mysterious Ways."

But the band confidently framed the show with six songs from its latest album, "All That You Can't Leave Behind," instead of relying on well-tested warhorses the way many veteran rock acts do. The Edge's falsetto backing vocals transformed "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of" into a plush soul ballad, and his call-and-response interchange with Bono galvanized a recent B-side, the lilting "Sweetest Thing." Gospel undertones also were apparent in Bono's Otis Redding-like testifying on "Bad."

Whereas past incarnations of the band emphasized earnest struggle (the flag-waving U2 of the '80s) or the search for salvation in a media-saturated era (the ironic U2 of the '90s), the Irish quartet now speaks of perseverance and triumph in a world where nothing can be taken for granted, even the continued relevance of a rock band that has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Remarkably, U2 is 20 years into its career and still not acting like a self-satisfied dinosaur act. Instead, they're still out there job-hunting, like the little Irish post-punk band they once were.