Zoo TV Tour
If U2's 1991 album Achtung Baby was the sound of four men chopping down "The Joshua Tree", Zoo TV, the accompanying world tour, was the sight of four men trying to reject the white flag waving, achingly earnest stage performances that had typified their previous tours in the 1980s.
The tour also demonstrated immense confidence in the new album, typically opening with six to eight consecutive new songs before playing any old material.
The elaborate worldwide arena and stadium tour began in Florida on February 29, 1992 and ended almost two years, five legs, 157 shows, and over four million audience members later in Tokyo, Japan on December 10, 1993. It was also the highest grossing tour of 1992.
U2 went back into the studio to record their next release during a break at the end of the third leg of the tour. The album was intended as an additional EP to Achtung Baby, but soon Zooropa expanded into a full-fledged LP and was released in July of 1993. Influenced greatly by both tour life and the ideas of media barrage and irony that they were examining through the tour, Zooropa was an even greater departure from the style of their earlier recordings, incorporating techno style and other electronic effects.
The Stage
The stage was designed by frequent U2 collaborator Peter 'Willie' Williams, and featured 36 video monitors, numerous television cameras, two separate mix positions, 26 on stage microphones, 176 speakers, and 11 elaborately painted Trabants, two of which were suspended over the stage, which all required 1 million watts of power to operate: enough to run 2,000 homes.
In order to take this technological monstrosity on tour, 52 semi-trailers were required to transport the 1,200 tons of equipment and 3 miles of cabling, and 200 labourers, 12 forklifts and one 120-foot, 40-ton crane was needed to contruct the stage once it all arrived at the venue.
Irony, Satire and Sarajevo
The tour, largely inspired by CNN's ad nauseam coverage of the Gulf War, was a straight-faced satire on the media overload that came to define the nineties. The tour's television screens displayed an eclectic mixture of seemingly random images and slogans created by artists such as Kevin Godley, Brian Eno, Mark Pellington, Carol Dodds and multimedia performance artists Emergency Broadcast Network in an effort to reflect the desensitising effect of the modern mass-media.
Zoo TV also saw U2 mocking the excesses of rock and roll by ironically embracing greed and decadence - even at times, away from the stage. However some missed the point of the tour and thought that U2 had "lost it", and that Bono had become an egomaniac.
However irony took a backseat on the Zooropa European leg of the tour after the band began initiating nightly live link-ups with people living in war-torn Sarajevo. Inspired by filmmaker Bill Carter's documentary "Miss Sarajevo", they hoped to bring world attention to the suffering of the people living in the war zone that the world media had forgotton about. Aside from bringing much needed attention to the issue, the remarkable link-ups sometimes even allowed people who had escaped the conflict to speak with family members and loved ones within the war zone. The problem was that Zoo TV was a rock show, and being accused of inaction and apathy by people in constant fear of death by shelling or machine gun fire often deadened the mood of the audience, and the band.
Other Highlights
Other highlights of the tour included a nightly duet by Bono and a pseudo-live but pre-recorded video of Lou Reed singing his classic song "Satellite of Love", and an almost nightly phone call to the office of American president George H.W. Bush. Though Bono never got through to the president, Bush did acknowledge the calls during a press conference, noting his confusion about why the singer was doggedly attempting to contact him.
The tour also had a 'Confession Booth' were concert-goers could record a personal confession on camera. These confessions were often incorporated into the video art and displayed on the main television screens.
Bono's Personas
One of the other main highlights of the tour was Bono's array of on-stage personas, the most prominent of which was the Fly, who was also immortalised in the music video for the song "The Fly". The Fly was a stereotypical rock star with wrap-around shades - for which Bono became famous - and exaggerated, blatantly sexual mannerisms. The character was invented in Berlin while U2 were recording Achtung Baby. Bono felt that the shades, given to him by an associate of the band, gave him a sense of de-individuation, and he could really "let loose" when he wore them. The shades came to symbolize the "new U2," a diametrically opposed aesthetic to what fans and critics came to love (and hate) about the previously pious, rootsy U2 from The Joshua Tree-era. The Fly has also been interpreted as Bono giving a middle finger to all the critics who said U2 were filthy rich rock stars trying to pass themselves off as do-gooders. His has stated in interviews, "They [critics] wanted it, and now they're going to get it."
Another prominent persona was the Mirror Ball Man, who typically came out for the last few songs of the main set and the encores. This character was intended to be a parody of American televangelists. Thinking other parts of the world wouldn't understand the televangelist personal, Bono traded in his Mirror Ball Man persona for Mr. MacPhisto on Zooropa and Zoomerang legs of the tour which visited Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.
MacPhisto was imagined by Bono to be a corrupted future version of the Fly character who had become an amalgam of the devil and Las Vegas era Elvis Presley. This character also figured prominently in the 1995 music video for "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" lifted from the soundtrack of the movie "Batman Forever". The video featured an animated version of Bono as a rock star battling between two personas: the Fly and MacPhisto, which was intended to parallel the conflict between Bruce Wayne's ordinary playboy persona and his crime-fighting Batman persona.
Tour Legs
Leg One
Dates: February 29, 1992 - April 23, 1992
Touring: North America
Venues: Indoor arenas
Leg Two
Dates: May 07, 1992 - June 19, 1992
Venues: Indoor arenas
Outside Broadcast Leg (3)
Dates: August 07, 1992 - November 25, 1992
Touring: North America and Mexico
Venues: Stadiums
Zooropa Leg (4)
Dates: May 07, 1993 - August 28, 1993
Venues: Stadiums
Zoomerang Leg (5)
Dates: November 12, 1993 - December 10, 1993
Touring: Australia, New Zealand and Japan
Venues: Stadiums