2005 June - Glasgow Vertigo, Magic and Fun

We flew from London to Glasgow where we were seeing the next gig, nowadays it's cheaper to travel long distances and also save time that way. We got the airport bus into the city centre and after a walk up one of Glasgow's hills checked in at the Travel Inn.

We dined in the hotel restaurant and later met our friend Alan from the Scottish U2 tribute band NU2 in the hotel bar later that evening, it was nice to see him again.

Next day Debbi and Julie left early for the stadium, they wanted to get in the queue so they would be sure to get close to the barrier as we had GA tickets. Dianne and I didn't want to do that so we took it easy and left about two hours later. When we got to Hampden we found that the queues were not long and our friends were only about three yards in front of us! Things are never as manic in Scotland as at other venues which is really nice.

As we waited the weather got hotter and hotter as the day progressed, there was nowhere to get any shade and Debbi got badly sunburned. Julie and I also got burned but not quite as badly. the suffering we go through in the name of U2!

The gates opened at 4.30pm and everyone streamed in, up loads of steps and then down loads of steps into the stadium. We got a great position right on the catwalk barrier, almost the same as in Manchester. And, one of those weird coincidences once more, our friend Dawn was right near us!

The support was Black Rebel Motorcycle Gang and Interpol, both pretty boring for me. Then it was U2, and right from the start it was clear Bono was in high spirits and full of energy. During Elevation he lay on the stage and kissed a female photographer. At the beginning of Miracle Drug Bono counted on his fingers and said. "Three notes...." then he looked at Edge who shook his head and mouthed "Four", everyone including Bono laughed.

Later Bono talked about Make Poverty History before singing One and said the band were very proud of their fans for supporting the cause. Then he said. "We're coming back to Scotland for the G8!" He was referring to a concert that was going to take place when the next G8 meeting was in Edinburgh in a few weeks time. It got a huge cheer from the crowd.

At one point he got a pretty young girl out to dance with, she looked a bit like a very young Ali. After the show we bumped into the girl who was still very hyped up. She was called Maria and very sweet. I asked her if Bono had said anything to her and she replied that all he said was. "Shhh," and put his finger to his lips when she first got on the stage, I remember seeing that. At one point she burst into tears and that was when he pulled her close and cradled her head and rested his head against hers. I told her I'd got some photos of her and Bono, she was so pleased, we swapped email addresses and I later sent her copies.

The encore started with Zoo Station followed by a really rocking The Fly. Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own was sung very close to us and brought a lump to my throat, Bono was lost in the music. That song could have also been written for my mother and me, I really relate to a lot of those lyrics.

Bono added a bit of Walk On and Happy Birthday to One in honour of Aung San Suu Kyi's recent 60th birthday.

During City Of Blinding Lights Bono got a helium balloon from someone in the audience and let it go and we all watched it float up into the darkness and drift away. It was a simple thing but it felt special and drew the crowd together, Bono is a natural at those kind of things.

This Glasgow show was one of those shows, where U2 seized the moment and a huge stadium felt small and intimate, that's the genius this band can reach at times. We left feeling uplifted and elated, pure magic!

2001 September - Elevation Tour, Glasgow - The End Of Our U2 Road

The 28th August saw Julie and I sitting on a plane en-route from Ireland to Newcastle. We picked up my car there and drove back to my place in Cumbria, had lunch and then set off north to Glasgow - ahh this jet set lifestyle of U2 fans eh?

We arrived at the SECC at 3pm and one of the first people we saw was our friend Karen. She told us that the queue for the heart enclosure was just up the hall and that we could still join it. I said that we only had seated tickets and she said they were selling standing tickets now at the box office. We didn't have to think twice, we bought tickets and quickly sold our seated tickets for cost prices to grateful fans.

We joined the very organised heart queue. One of the things I love about the Scottish shows is that they are always well organised and most of the more obsessive fans who are at the front of every queue tend not to get that far north!

We were let into the heart at 6.20pm in an orderly manner. After going in we couldn't go out into the main hall, but there was no need to as there was a merchandise stall, refreshments and toilets just for the heart crowd, absolutely brilliant almost like being VIPs!

The support band was a local band The Cosmic Rough Riders which I enjoyed and who the crowd loved. Then it was U2 and the audience went wild! There was plenty of room to move about and even though we are both small we could easily see everything on stage.

Bono seemed very tired, I think all the physically and even more the emotional and psychological strain of the last few weeks were catching up with him. But he still put all he had left into the show. The crowd were great, you can always feel the special Celtic bond between the audience and U2 when in Scotland. Glasgow was a last minute addition to the tour as well and I think the crowd really appreciated that too.

It was quite a short show, no New York or In A Little While. The song that really got to me that night was With Or Without You. Bono said, "This is for my dad - and this is for you" to us. Later he said that the audiences at shows during that time helped him get through those difficult personal times, and by singing that song at Glasgow he was telling us that. It was a very emotional performance and there were quite a lot of tearful people in the crowd including me.

Mysterious Ways was special that night, it wasn't playful and earthy like in London, it was spiritual, that's the only way I can describe it. Bono totally lost himself in the music. He had said earlier in the tour that music is magic, well we saw a bit of that magic in Glasgow that night.

It's always a bit sad at the end of the last U2 show you are going to see on tour. This UK leg of Elevation had been very special because of the illness and death of Bono's father. I was quite emotional myself and related a lot to Bono, because my mother too was terminally ill at the time and died a few months after his father.

Bono shared stories about his dad with us and gave us an insight into what he was like, and it struck me that in many ways Bono was very like him. All this created an intimacy about these shows, a closeness, as we supported Bono emotionally as he poured his heart out to us in each show. It could only happen at a U2 show and I feel really privileged to have been part of it all, they were truly special times that I will never forget.

1993 August - Zooropa Glasgow Two

Next day we skipped breakfast in favour of longer in bed - we'd not got back to our accommodation complete with early hours pizza until 3am. This touring is hard work!

Dianne looked out of the window down onto the quiet Sunday streets of Glasgow and said, "Red light, grey morning", I glanced out too and so it was, just like in the song. We explored Glasgow a little and had something to eat before heading towards Celtic Park. We got into what seemed like an enormous queue but after the doors opened we were soon inside, thanks to the excellent Scottish organisation once more.

This show was good, but for me not as good as the previous night, Bono seemed a little distracted and seemed to get very upset by the Sarajevo broadcast which was very moving, a mother talking about her son who was somewhere in the audience. I think it affected him emotionally and he wasn't able to shake it off. He also wasn't quite into MacPhisto either, he didn't keep the posh English accent up as well as he usually does.

Zooropa was premiered that night though unfortunately it was a mess. As Bono said, "It's great writing the songs, then recording them, but then you've got to learn how to play the fucking things!"

It was an ok show, but for me nothing like the previous night. We headed off home to my place straight afterwards but got stuck in stadium traffic for ages. This meant that we didn't get back to mine until 3.30am 9th August. We had pizza - again - and then bed.

This tour was the most exhausting for me. Firstly because I saw the most shows of any tour during Zooropa. And secondly because of all the travelling it involved, zigzagging across the country from north to south, east to west. Plus inbetween all this I was doing night shifts at work, crazy! Two days after arriving home from Glasgow we were on our way to the next Zooropa port of call, London.

1993 August - Zooropa Hits the UK, First stop Glasgow

7th August found Jane, Dianne and I heading up the M74 to Glasgow. This was the first time Dianne had come over from the US to join us for a tour and we all got along great. The venue was Celtic Park football stadium and once there we met up with our friends Debbi, Jackie and Karen.

In those days U2 were very generous towards fanzine editors, they gave them two free tickets, two hospitality passes and one photo pass per tour. I had been promised the tickets and hospitality passes for this first Glasgow show. I had absolutely no idea where to go for them but eventually saw as sign saying "U2 Guests". It took three attempts to get them. First try they weren't there, second there was an envelope for me but it only had two tickets in it so I had to go back, but had no trouble getting the hospitality passes. Third time lucky. It was my first experience of the general disorganisation around U2, in the end I got used to it! The hospitality passes made me laugh, they were triangular and reminded me of the badges worn by the agents in the 60's cult series The Man From Uncle! But we were very chuffed to have them, the only sad thing was that Dianne did not have one as well.

When the time came Jane and I separated from Dianne who went off with our other friends as we had seats and they had standing tickets. The seats were really good, lower block near the front to the right of the stage. Celtic Park was very well organised, lots of stewards to keep things right, not one door or gangway was blocked by fans and you felt safe in this vast crowd because of that.

The huge papier-mache heads of Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry that comprised Macnas came on, then P J Harvey and Utah Saints, none of them very exciting. Finally, just after "Television the Drug of the Nation" played U2's set started. Bono rose before the symbol of the EEC, the circle of stars, one star fell down and Bono began his jerky dance to the strains of Zoo Station - and we were off! It was the usual Zooropa set until after New Year's Day the new song Stay (my favourite from the Zooropa album) was played. It was wonderful with everyone singing along.

This was followed by Numb which definitely did not work live, everything kind of stopped, people lost interest and started talking while it was being played.

There was a set on the B-stage and then a live satellite link to Sarajevo which at the time was in the middle of a bloody war. Bono spoke to ordinary people from the city. I'm still not sure that was a good thing to do during a U2 show, though I'm sure the thinking behind it was well meant.

Bad followed and it was scintillating, the hairs stood up on my neck, it was so powerful and emotional and it made me cry as it often does. It was incredible.

MacPhisto was in great form that night he was into Macbeth. "Is this a phone I see before me?" he said as he rang the Scottish minister Lang. He was asked to spell his name and he spelt it out, "M-A-C, I think you're familiar with that, P-H-I-S-T-O." He didn't get through to the minister but shouted, "Out, out damn Scot!" as he put the phone down. Great stuff and very funny.

At the end of the show it took Jane and I a while to find our way to the hospitality area which was within the football stadium's buildings. It wasn't that exciting really, we were obviously the z-lister guests, we saw no one famous but we got a couple of free drinks all the same!

1992 June - Glasgow the Last of Zoo TV

Jane and I left Sheffield at 5am to catch the train to my hometown in Cumbria. We arrived at my apartment at 8.30am and had a meal and a rest before heading off in my car to Glasgow a couple of hours later. Talk of rushing about, I couldn't be bothered or manage trips like that now, but I was 16 years younger then!


I'd never been to the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre before but it was very easy to find and we soon had the car parked and walked the short distance to the venue. Again the weather was lovely so we sat in the sunshine to wait for the band arriving. We saw Larry, Adam and Edge arrive in Mercedes cars but none came over to the fans. Shortly afterwards another Mercedes arrived with a dark haired man wearing sunglasses in it and we thought at first glance that it was Bono so we waved, the person inside ignored us with an icy stare and set face - we realised we'd waved at Phil Joanou! Talk of feeling stupid.


Not long afterwards the real Bono arrived and opened the window and shouted and waved at the fans. And, of course, he came across to meet us. The group was quite excitable and soon a crowd of people surrounded Bono, Jerry the security man carefully managed the situation in his own diplomatic way, he was such a lovely man with great respect towards the fans.


I was almost up to Bono when two large men pushed right in front of me, I could just see in between them and saw Bono motion with his hands to move aside which they did and there I was right in front of him. He's seen what had happened and I was so chuffed he made sure I got through. He looked very tired and pale and didn't talk very much, he seemed exhausted, yet he still found time for the fans. I got my ticket signed said thanks and then got out of the crowd.


Jane and I then joined the queue and got into the SECC at 6.30pm. We were amazed to see there were still places available at the B-stage. A Trabant was sitting on it so people hadn't stood there thinking their view would be blocked, but we knew the car was lifted at the beginning of the show so we got an ace position right at the front of the B-stage. We bumped into some of our friends who were already there and chatted before the show started.


Once the show got going there was quite a crush where we were, especially when any of the band were on the B-stage. But I am quite tough and wasn't too bothered by that, I had a perfect place right at the front and I was going to hang onto it!


The SECC's roof nearly blew off during this Zoo TV show, I think the band were really buoyed up by the Glaswegian crowd, who were behind them from the word go. I've since found that U2 gigs in Scotland have always been special, I think it is the Celtic connection between the Scots and the Irish, there always seems an extra-strong bond between U2 and their Scottish audiences. Another thing I love about Scottish shows is that they are always very well organised .


Highlights of this show, well, there were many. In Bullet the Blue Sky Bono changed the words to make a scathing attack on BNFL and Edge did the same with an amazing guitar solo. I was reduced to tears during Running to Standstill, it was so beautiful and Bono's hallelujahs were heart-rending. It was very moving and beautiful performed just about six feet in front of me on the B-stage. It was wonderful to be so close to see every expression - I also noticed that the sole on one of his platform shoes (though nowhere near as high as he wears nowadays!) was loose, it's surprising he didn't trip up! During Streets the whole bulding seemed to be bouncing up and down and the crowd drowned out the band - as they often did that night. It was one of those emotional roller-coaster U2 shows where you are laughing, crying, happy, sad, in other words a U2 show at its best.


After Love is Blindness that was it for me and Zoo TV, but it was good to see it out on such a high. We had sweated so much crammed up against the barrier that we were literally wet and the cool air outside hit us, we quickly scooted to my car to take off our tees and put on light jackets we had.


We actually got to meet Larry after the show which was really nice! He was charming and chatty, freely signing autographs, but declining photos which is fair enough. People were asking him about the Sellafield thing but he was very non-commital in his answers.


Bono came out just after Larry and a big crowd soon formed around him, we stood back as we'd met him earlier and let others have their turn. He looked really tired again, and it amazed me how he could be exhausted before and after a show, yet perform full of energy during it, it's amazing what adrenalin can do! Edge and Adam did not stop that night.


Jane and I went back to my car still high on the adrenalin from the show ourselves. The drive home seemed to pass in a flash and we fell into our beds as the sun was rising at 3.30am!