U2 Fans Get a Close-Up of Bono

“Did you come here to play Jesus?” asks U2 singer Bono in song. On record the question is left rhetorical, but in concert he adds, “I did.”

Actually, Bono came to the band’s long-running “Zoo TV” revue to play Lucifer. Either way, U2’s “pre-recorded” pay-per-view telecast from Sydney, Australia, on Saturday offered “one last chance to slide down the surface of things” during the tour’s waning days. And it afforded the faithful a close-up view of Bono’s mock-megalomania--warts, horns and all.

This late-date version of the show didn’t differ much from the one that L.A. fans saw more than a year ago, even though U2 has released another album in the meantime. A couple of songs have been removed from the set list and four of the new “Zooropa” tunes inserted, but otherwise it’s almost exactly the same multimedia satire incongruously centered around the “Achtung Baby” material, unfolding with the expert inevitability of a Broadway show.

The live big-screen graphics didn’t quite translate to TV, even with the random word association flashed directly on the home set over the band’s visages. What did work unfailingly was the music itself, of course, and the most theatrical stuff with Bono out front as master thespian.

He looked a little tired in some of the middle going--and who wouldn’t after two years of playing god--but was able to use that weariness to his advantage in the encore stretch, in which he appeared as his MacPhisto character. Bono’s older, genteel devil sleepily sang “Show me the way to go home,” tried to call for a taxi and delivered a hilarious satanic farewell address based on Jesus’ pre-Ascension sermon to the disciples:

“Don’t fear, for I leave behind video cameras for each of you. Tape each other. Tape yourselves. Children, tape your parents,” he advised--imparting extra gifts for various friends met along the tour: “Frank Sinatra, I give you MTV demographics. You’re welcome. . . . Goodbye all you neo-Nazis, I hope they give you Auschwitz.” The sentimental fool.