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Articles

U2’s Unforgettable Fire
Concert helps heal Sarajevo’s war wounds
San Diego Union-Tribune, October 5, 1997

George Varga, Pop Music Critic

U2 lead singer Bono was rendered almost speechless Sept. 23 when his band performed the first stadium concert ever held in the war-scarred Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.

An estimated 50,000 fans attended from throughout Bosnia and other former Yugoslav republics, and a Bosnian choir and two multiracial Bosnian rock bands, Sektor and Protest, opened the show. It was a historic display of music-fueled unity in the politically volatile region, where peace is gingerly maintained by NATO forces from the United States and various European countries.

The concert venue, Kosevo Stadium, had been used as a mass open graveyard during the bloody war that pitted Serb, Croat and Moslem factions against one another and killed more than 200,000 people. The food catering area for the concert was in a part of the stadium that had been used to interrogate prisoners of war, sometimes violently and fatally, during the conflict that devastated much of this region of Eastern Europe.

But it was fatigue from U2’s ongoing PopMart tour, not the emotional setting, that left Bono at a temporary loss for words.

“I’ve never lost my voice for a whole concert before,” the Irish band’s charismatic front man said, speaking from the Greek island of Crete two days after the Sarajevo show.

“I performed the whole concert, but I’d say it was rough from the very start. But they (the audience) -- their voice was so strong, and they were very generous and had great grace about it. It was almost like they were going to have the party even if we weren’t there. We were a very small part of what was going on, which was their sense of the future and a return to normalcy.

“As the local newspapers put it, the concert was a sign that the war had really ended. Because of the depth of feeling of the audience, when my voice went (out), I don’t think anyone noticed. They just carried us along. It was the hardest night of my life.”

Bono chuckled.

“It was bizarre,” he continued, “but if I had had a voice, I might have been a right pain in the ass. I think in a way this (voice-impaired situation) let them take over, and they truly did. And the band was on fire, to cover my ass.”

The genesis of U2’s concert in Sarajevo, site of the 1984 Winter Olympics, dates back to the band’s 1993 European Zoo TV tour to promote its then-new “Zooropa” album.

While performing in Italy during that tour, U2 was visited by a TV crew that had slipped out of embattled Sarajevo to interview the band. The TV crew asked Bono if he and his band would come perform in the Bosnian capital, and the singer readily agreed.

“They told us people in (bomb) shelters were playing our music -- and other people’s music -- at deafening volume, to drown out the sounds of shells and mortars overhead,” the 36-year-old singer recalled.

“We very nearly made it happen in ’93, but then things got too dangerous. There was a market bombing, the snipers were (shooting) at everybody, and it was thought it would be unsafe for crowds queuing up to get into the concert.”

Daunted but still determined, Bono promised that U2 would perform in Sarajevo. He publicly reiterated that vow during a brief visit to the city at the end of 1995, just two weeks after the 43-month-long war ended. But the singer’s concern about the bloodshed in Bosnia had manifested itself even before the launch of 1993’s Zoo TV tour, during which the band featured onstage telephone hookups with the city at several concerts.

“We put out that album, `Zooropa,’ because we were so maddened by this concept of `European unity,’ ” Bono said. “It seemed meaningless in light of the war in Bosnia, because (the rest of) Europe was just arguing about what to do, and there was fighting between the British, Germans and French about who should do what.

“I have to say, it was the Americans who were actually the calvary in this. Ten years ago, the U.S. really had a bad rap in Europe for foreign policy and getting it wrong. But the Bosnians really appreciated the support from the U.S. . . . and I felt ashamed to be European; that’s why we called the album `Zooropa.’

“Bosnia suffered a genocide, really. And when our kids ask us about that time in Europe, when these atrocities were being committed, we’ll have some explaining to do.”

U2’s Sarajevo concert was a benefit for War Child, a London-based charity and support organization for Bosnian children and orphans. However, Bono was firmly and politely rebuffed when he suggested the show be staged with a bare-bones production in order to raise more money.

“They told us, “No, we don’t want your pity or your patronage, we want you. We want to be on the map for these kinds of events,’ ” the singer said. “We told them, ‘You won’t make as much money if we bring in (the gargantuan) PopMart (staging).’ They didn’t care, they wanted the full monty.

“At the concert, we tried not to dwell too much on what had gone on during the war, because that’s not what the locals wanted from us. They wanted a luminous time, a vivid rock ’n’ roll show. And it was hard to put things out of our mind, like the fact the stadium we were playing in had been a graveyard during the war.

“The sense we got from people at the concert was, `We want you to do what you do.’ So I kept my comments to a minimum. Before our song `One,’ which has real resonance there, I told them: `To be united is a great thing, but to respect differences may be an even greater thing,’ and that Sarajevo is a city of the future and that it represents multiethnicity and tolerance.”

The unique circumstances of the concert prompted U2 to perform at least one song, “Miss Sarajevo,” for the first time live. U2 producer (and ambient music pioneer) Brian Eno joined the band onstage for the song.

“Miss Sarajevo” was inspired by a 1993 beauty pageant in which contestants in the war-ravaged city held signs that read: Please don’t kill us. Recorded as a duet between Bono and opera star Luciano Pavarotti, “Miss Sarajevo” appeared on a 1995 album by the U2 offshoot group Passengers.

Because of Bono’s faltering voice, U2 guitarist, Dave “The Edge” Evans, performed a solo acoustic version of “Sunday Bloody Sunday” at the Sarajevo concert. And another song that has long been a staple of U2’s shows, “Bullet the Blue Sky,” took on new meaning at the Sarajevo concert.

Bono wrote “Bullet” in the 1980s as a criticism of U.S. government involvement in the affairs of various Central American countries. But the song took on a dramatically different tone in Sarajevo, he noted, becoming a salute to the American soldiers who helped bring peace to the devastated region.

“We picked up the real value of some of these words that are in our songs -- and the price some people pay for wanting to live in a free society,” Bono said, “because we throw these words around, and sometimes we forget what they mean.”

Bono hailed the resilience of the people of Sarajevo, a city in which “every square inch is pockmarked by gunfire,” he said.

Ireland’s own tragic history of violent religious factionalism is well-documented. When Bono saw the ubiquitous signs of destruction in Sarajevo, did he stop and think: There, but for the grace of God, goes my own country?

“That’s exactly it,” he said softly. “And I think most of the Irish people in our posse were wandering around the city with their mouths open, realizing that this is what happens when this kind of . . . ” (his voice trailed off as he searched for the right words) “ . . . when the . . . lines of communication get . . . cut.

“And it made us realize how important these peace talks that are happening in Northern Ireland right now are. Because this was a civil war (in Bosnia) as you could not have seen it on television or in the newspapers. Just to walk around Sarajevo, a city the size of Belfast, and (realize) these are people who are not `over here’ or `over there,’ but right here . . .

“There was a plea after the second World War to `Never let it happen again.’ Well, we did, we did. I’m offering praise for the United States, because it’s deserved. It could’ve come quicker, but it should have come from Europe first.”

After leaving Sarajevo, U2 performed Sept. 26 in Thessaloniki, Greece, and last Tuesday in Tel Aviv, after which the band’s four members began a vacation. The PopMart tour resumes Oct. 26 in Toronto, and is scheduled to conclude its winter leg Dec. 11 at the Kingdome in Seattle.

U2’s Sarajevo concert took place the same night the Rolling Stones kicked off its world tour at Soldier Field in Chicago. Stones singer Mick Jagger has been critical of U2’s emphasis on new material on its PopMart tour, which Jagger attended at the tour’s second stop in San Diego on April 28.

“There’s no point really (playing new songs). Not in stadiums,” Jagger told Reuters News Service. “If it was in a theater and you were doing more of a showcase, you’d do loads. U2 came out and they played loads of new numbers and it just doesn’t work. I’ve done it so many times and you get all these blank faces.”

Bono, not surprisingly, defends U2’s decision to spotlight material from the band’s latest album on its tour.

“The album was only out a few weeks before the tour, and people didn’t know those songs or where our heads were at,” he said. “So I think it was very brave to try to pull that off in a stadium, when everyone else would be playing (only) their greatest hits. There are some older songs in the set now, but we didn’t want to play them; we wanted people to get to know our newer material.

“This tour is doing exactly as well as the (very successful) Zoo TV tour. We’ve always stuck our arses out the window, and when you do that, there’s a risk.”

Responding to criticisms that the PopMart stage set was simply too large, and that it overwhelmed U2’s music, Bono said: “We finally got the hang of this thing now. The first month out was a bit scary. Right now, I don’t know how it can last, but right now, this is the greatest show on earth. It’s amazing. The band is on fire, the songs are much more powerful than the production, as large as it is, and it’s now working for us, rather than us working for it.”

Bono also acknowledged that he and his band mates were stung by the initial criticism leveled at the PopMart tour, which employs a sense of irony and dry humor about consumer culture that was apparently lost on some American concertgoers -- and critics.

“I think it was a sucker punch, in that we’ve been built up to be -- and I’m sure we played a part in hyping it -- as the biggest tour (ever),” Bono said. “And it got ugly, because people kept talking about money, (but) that’s why we called it PopMart. But people forgot there was a band at the heart of this, and the wit at the heart of it wasn’t fully understood.

“We just played (on Sept. 20) to 250,000 people in Reggio Emilia, Italy. I think it’s the biggest concert any one act has played, and the audience went wild. It’s been like that all over Europe -- they’ve gone mad for us. I could feel it starting in Chicago (on June 27). I think the second part of this tour is really going to take off.”