O.C. POP MUSIC WEEKEND : Scoping Out a Bird’s-Eye View of U2

A brief visual exercise, dear reader.

Dig out a dime, if you will. Now, hold it between your thumb and forefinger, at arm’s length, right in front of your face.

Bono Hewson of U2 looked about half the size of that dime on Z TV Saturday night at Anaheim Stadium.

What’s that you say? U2’s tour is dubbed “Zoo TV,” not “Z TV?” Right you are. But we figured we’d see how this concert looked on Z TV--which is what you get when you watch “Zoo TV” from Row Z of Anaheim Stadium’s upper deck, the last row in the house.

This was the first stadium concert in Orange County since 1987, and as they seem to happen so seldom in these parts, we thought we would savor the unique essence of the stadium-rock experience. Also, Bono as much as dared us. Quoth the singer in a recent issue of Musician magazine: “We’ve got to win every last person in the place.”

No goal could be finer. Bands should play in places where everybody has a fair chance to hear what there is to be heard, to see what there is to be seen, to feel drawn in and immersed by the music and by whatever sense of spirit, fellow-feeling and personality the musicians can project.

I had seen U2 play in basketball arenas on the 1987 “Joshua Tree” tour, and in the “Zoo TV” stop last April at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. Both were satisfying, sometimes moving concerts that lived up to Bono’s aim of reaching everyone. Simply put, arenas and amphitheaters that seat 15,000 to 20,000 people are right for rock ‘n’ roll--not perfect, but right. Today’s technology makes it possible to hear clearly if the sound mix is good. And from the most distant seat, you can see faces, costumes, gestures and player-to-player byplay. You can tell whether the guitar players are using Fenders, Gibsons or Rickenbackers. You can see the show.

In transplanting “Zoo TV” to stadiums, U2 has settled for a drastic and needless compromise of quality for the sake of quantity. And if that’s true of U2, it probably would be true of any band. I won’t object if it’s another five years (or forever) until the next for-profit stadium show in Anaheim (I can see the point in staging charity concerts that seek to maximize the amount of bucks-per-bang). Of all the slogans U2 flashed on Zoo TV’s multitude of video screens (few of which I could make out with the naked eye), there should have been one that said, “Play ball, not music.”

U2 seemed to be playing with power and conviction in what was its 100th “Zoo TV” concert, the last to be played in the United States. And yes, you could at least distinguish all the instruments, hear the melodies, follow the voices. Edge, the band’s guitarist, burst across the distance with some blazing moments, and Bono’s falsetto vocal passages were gorgeous. Fans in the upper deck who were happy just to hear U2 play some of their favorite songs in real time probably felt they got their money’s worth (all tickets had a $30 face value, whether you were up there with me in Row Z, or down in front trying not to be blinded by Bono’s shiny, Vegas-spoofing black and silver stage suits).

But, while not so distorted as to be ugly, much of the music sounded fuzzy and garbled. It also lacked the insistent, irresistible tug, the encompassing presence that music should have at a good rock show. From Row Z, “Zoo TV” sounded like somebody else’s loud party taking place down the block. It was telling that fans in the upper deck spent most of the show sitting placidly, stirring to shake the stadium’s concrete only when old favorites like “New Year’s Day” or “Where the Streets Have No Name” came around.

Watching from Row Z, one felt a little like Dudley Moore in “10,” spying on the distant romps of his playboy neighbor who lived in a canyon far below. Lucky Dudley: He had a telescope.

To the naked eye, Bono, Edge, drummer Larry Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton looked like man-shaped matchsticks. When U2 came a bit closer, venturing onto a runway and second stage near the middle of the stadium, the band was lost against a background of audience heads. In the Sports Arena, the acoustic set, played from the middle of the hall, had been a wonderfully warm, intimate moment. It brought no such sense of connection in Anaheim Stadium. High-powered binoculars helped immensely, but few fans in the nosebleed seats had them.

From where I sat, Zoo TV’s vaunted bank of video monitors was rendered puny and insignificant. Two of the three largest screens looked about as big as one of those wristwatch television sets in the Dick Tracy comic strip. As for the third and largest screen, stage rigging partly obscured the view for many fans sitting left of center in the stadium. Little matter, though: Close-up shots of the musicians looked dark and poorly defined, and most of the flashing messages might as well have been at the bottom of an eye-test chart. Anyway, who wants to watch on television what you’re paying to see in the flesh?

From afar, the video concept worked well when it was used purely as a decorative backdrop--when the monitors flashed with colored light, or when large crosses of flame appeared during “Bullet the Blue Sky.” The gutted, suspended automobile frames used as lighting fixtures were nice touches. One of them, speckled with bright bulbs, floated about like some phosphorescent tropical fish. The eye was drawn more to the car than to Bono.

Speaking of lights, somebody forgot to turn them out in Aisle 235, and in several other large sections of the upper deck. At any live performance, part of the magic is to sit in darkness and yet be taken out of darkness, to be drawn in by what’s happening in the light. A $30 ticket ought to at least buy you a piece of the communal shroud.

A U2 publicist said after the show that the concert had drawn a capacity crowd of 48,760 people (thousands of additional seats were not sold because of obstructed views). At $30 a pop, that’s almost $1.5 million in gross revenues. If U2 struck a typical superstar deal, about 90% of the gross, it could have walked off with more than $1.25 million, not counting its cut of the take from T-shirts and souvenirs.

There’s a difference between making money and earning it. By playing well in a venue too big for music, U2 earned money from some lucky percentage of ticket-holders and made money off of thousands of others who deserved better. The next time it or some other similarly hot-drawing band comes through on tour, let it work a little harder, and play nine or 10 arena and amphitheater dates in Los Angeles and Orange County, instead of three stadium shows. If Neil Diamond can play 10 arena shows to meet a Southland ticket demand as great as U2’s, if the likes of B.B. King, NRBQ, and untold others can play 200 to 300 concerts a year, year in and year out, then Bono and the boys, who hit the road one year in four, ought to be able to tolerate a tour that isn’t based on the quick and easy kill. Sure they would have to invest more time and effort, but they would be earning every dollar instead of shrinking to half the size of a dime.