Los Angeles: Irish rock band U2 announced a series of concerts in Las Vegas this fall celebrating their 1991 album ‘Achtung Baby’ in a cryptic 15-second ad aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday evening (US Time), reports ‘Variety’.
Drummer Larry Mullen Jr, still recovering from surgery, will sit out this run of shows. Dutch drummer Bram van den Berg will fill in, ‘Variety’ adds.
The concerts, titled ‘U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at the Sphere’, will see the band launching the new venue, MSG Sphere at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Further details were not immediately available. The unspecified “special run of shows”, however, will mark the band’s first live performances in four years, according to ‘Variety’.
It seems likely to be a kickoff for a world tour (presumably next year, and including Mullen), notes ‘Variety’, celebrating the anniversary of ‘Achtung Baby’, similar to the band’s blockbuster tours around the 30th anniversary of their 1987 album ‘The Joshua Tree’.
Those tours, which took place in 2017 and 2019 (interspersed with the band’s ‘Experience + Innocence’ tours of 2015 and 2018), were seen by more than 3.2 million people and grossed nearly $400 million, ‘Variety’ adds.
Recorded in Berlin and released in November of 1991, ‘Achtung Baby’ and the follow-up ‘Zooropa’ album, says ‘Variety’, effectively rebooted the career of U2, introducing new sounds, influences and songwriting styles and distancing them from the anthemic rock style that had made them one of the world’s biggest bands in the 1980s.
Their audience remained with them every step of the way: The ensuing ‘Zoo TV’ tour lasted for nearly two years and was seen by more than 5 million people.
–IANS