What's really going on behind the scenes with the world's biggest rock tour?
No better place to find out than Willie Williams' Road Diaries. Check these recent highlights.
18.06.2005 Twickenham Rugby Stadium
U2 sound checked and tried out a couple of new things, including a run at Wild Horses. The doors were opened and the audience came in, preparing themselves to be thoroughly cooked for a couple of hours before much else would happen.
Doves were first on, I haven¹t seen them in a while and they seemed in good form. Athlete followed, but by then I was mostly preoccupied with guest-wrangling.
19.06.2005 Twickenham Rugby Stadium
Much to my surprise, I saw Mike Peters from The Alarm waving to me from the liggers platform in front of our mix position. I haven¹t seen him in the longest time it has to be ten years so I was delighted. We had a chance to chat after the show, as I headed up to the hospitality room. It was jammed but very jovial and all were in high spirits after a triumphant show. Jamie Oliver wandered past ('is he doing the catering?', one wag asks), I had a very pleasant chat to a cabinet minister and spotted Mojo 'Icon of the Year' Siouxsie Sioux who looked fabulous.
20.06.2005 London
Finally a chance to sleep in, of which I took full advantage. On waking, received a text from Sue Godley, 'Larry was in the bar. Got to bed at 6am.' Rock & roll, eh?
23.06.2005 London to Dublin.
Vertigo Air took us to Dublin, though for some reason we left at the crack of dawn, which was highly un-rock and roll. On arrival at the hotel in Dublin the reason for our early departure became clear. We needed to get here to allow plenty of time to sit in the lobby till our rooms were ready. Zzzz
25.06.2005 Dublin Croke Park.
A camera on a large boom-arm placed to stage right proved to be something of
a pain. Its operator didn't seem to have any sense that there was a live show going on in addition to his filming, and had a few moments of spectacularly insensitive intrusion into the show. The most spectacular of these was during the extraordinarily delicate and moving 'Running to Standstill' with The Edge at the side stage piano. In getting a shot of Bono, the boom operator managed to park his crane directly in front of Edge's face. Whichever of my cameras I used, all I could get to show on the big screen was a headless piano player for practically the entire song. I sent my finest lampie in to have a quiet word in his ear...
Read the complete Willie Diaries
here
