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Innocence + Experience Tour
The Innocence + Experience Tour (styled as iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour) was a worldwide concert tour by the Irish rock band U2. Staged in support of the band's 2014 album Songs of Innocence, the tour visited arenas throughout 2015. It was U2's first time playing arenas since 2005–2006 on their Vertigo Tour. Comprising two legs and 76 concerts, the Innocence + Experience Tour began on 14 May 2015 in Vancouver, Canada. It visited North America from May through July, and Europe from September through December. Shows were predominantly booked in pairs for each market.
Concerts were structured around a loose autobiographical narrative of "innocence" passing into "experience", with a fixed set of songs for the first half of each show and a varying second half, separated by an intermission—a first for U2 concerts. The stage spanned the length of the venue floor and comprised three sections: a rectangular segment representing "innocence"; a smaller circular B-stage representing "experience"; and a connecting walkway to represent the transition between the two themes. A 96-foot-long (29 m) double-sided video screen was suspended above and parallel to the walkway; the structure featured an interior catwalk between the video screens, allowing the band members to perform amidst the video projections. For the tour, U2's sound system was moved to the venue ceilings and arranged in an oval in hopes of improving acoustics by evenly distributing sound throughout the arena.
The Innocence + Experience Tour was well received by critics. According to Billboard, the North American leg of the tour grossed US$76.2 million from 36 sold-out concerts. In total, the tour grossed US$152.2 million from 1.29 million attendees. The final date of the tour, one of two Paris shows rescheduled due to the 13 November 2015 attacks in the city, was filmed for the video Innocence + Experience: Live in Paris and broadcast on the American television network HBO. In 2018, U2 reprised the tour's autobiographical narrative and stage setup for its sequel, the Experience + Innocence Tour.
U2's previous tour, the U2 360° Tour, visited stadiums in Europe, North America, Asia, Oceania, Africa and South America from 2009 to 2011 and comprised 110 shows. The concerts featured the band playing "in the round" on a circular stage, allowing the audience to surround them on all sides. To accommodate the stage configuration, a large four-legged structure nicknamed "The Claw" was built above the stage, with the sound system and a cylindrical, expanding video screen on top of it. At 164 feet (50 m) tall, it was the largest stage ever constructed. U2 360° concluded in July 2011 as the highest-grossing concert tour (grossing $736 million) and the most-attended concert tour (selling 7.3 million tickets).
On 9 September 2014, after a five-and-a-half-year gap between records, U2 announced their thirteenth studio album, Songs of Innocence, at an Apple product launch event. It was released digitally the same day to all iTunes Store customers at no cost. The release made the album available to over 500 million iTunes customers in what Apple CEO Tim Cook called "the largest album release of all time." Songs of Innocence revisits the group members' youth in Ireland in the 1970s, touching on childhood memories, loves, and losses, while paying tribute to their musical inspirations. Lead vocalist Bono described it as "the most personal album we've written." It received mixed reviews, and some critics and consumers were critical of the digital release strategy; the album was automatically added to users' iTunes accounts without their consent, which for many, triggered an unprompted download to their devices.
As early as opening night of the U2 360° Tour in June 2009, Bono told his friend/band consultant Gavin Friday that their next tour would have to be more intimate. During U2 360°, Bono and long-time tour designer Willie Williams first discussed ideas for their next live venture. One of Bono's suggestions was to begin future shows with the band performing underneath a single light bulb, in contrast to the massive stage structure underneath which they played during the 360° Tour.
Williams was aware that U2's long-time stage designer Mark Fisher was battling an illness and did not have long to live. As a result, Williams invited stage designer Es Devlin to the band's creative team in February 2013. The two previously collaborated in 2009 for the American theatre leg of Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour and in 2012 for Complicite's production of The Master and Margarita. Williams also invited Ric Lipson, Fisher's colleague at the design firm Stufish Entertainment Architects, based on positive experiences with him on past projects.
The first production meeting between U2 and their creative team for the Innocence + Experience Tour was held in March 2013 in the South of France, over what Williams called a "mad weekend". During this first meeting, Williams, Devlin, and Lipson created a scrapbook that served as the "style guide" for the tour's presentation, consisting of cut-outs, drawings, and paintings. Although Songs of Innocence was still in progress at the time and did not yet have a title, the autobiographical narrative that would characterise the album was already a driving idea for their tour. The band wanted to tell the story of their adolescence in Dublin in the 1970s and how they were "trying to figure out how they fit into the often violent and disrupted world outside" their homes. The manifesto for the tour was summarised by two phrases: "I can't change the world, but I can change the world in me", and "I can change the world, but I can't change the world in me." The first is a lyric from the band's 1981 song "Rejoice" and represents the mindset of a teenage Bono feeling powerless to make a difference in a world plagued by the Troubles, who instead views personal psychological changes as a possibility; the second phrase represents the modern-day realisation that the same person could make a difference in the world through philanthropic efforts but still struggle with the complexities of internal change. Devlin said, "The space between these two statements is the territory of the album and of the show." The band intended to stage shows in pairs and alternate the setlist between "innocence" and "experience" motifs night to night. Williams said, "The artfulness in this tour is in the ideas, not the hardware".
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Innocence + Experience Tour
The Innocence + Experience Tour (styled as iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour) was a worldwide concert tour by the Irish rock band U2. Staged in support of the band's 2014 album Songs of Innocence, the tour visited arenas throughout 2015. It was U2's first time playing arenas since 2005–2006 on their Vertigo Tour. Comprising two legs and 76 concerts, the Innocence + Experience Tour began on 14 May 2015 in Vancouver, Canada. It visited North America from May through July, and Europe from September through December. Shows were predominantly booked in pairs for each market.
Concerts were structured around a loose autobiographical narrative of "innocence" passing into "experience", with a fixed set of songs for the first half of each show and a varying second half, separated by an intermission—a first for U2 concerts. The stage spanned the length of the venue floor and comprised three sections: a rectangular segment representing "innocence"; a smaller circular B-stage representing "experience"; and a connecting walkway to represent the transition between the two themes. A 96-foot-long (29 m) double-sided video screen was suspended above and parallel to the walkway; the structure featured an interior catwalk between the video screens, allowing the band members to perform amidst the video projections. For the tour, U2's sound system was moved to the venue ceilings and arranged in an oval in hopes of improving acoustics by evenly distributing sound throughout the arena.
The Innocence + Experience Tour was well received by critics. According to Billboard, the North American leg of the tour grossed US$76.2 million from 36 sold-out concerts. In total, the tour grossed US$152.2 million from 1.29 million attendees. The final date of the tour, one of two Paris shows rescheduled due to the 13 November 2015 attacks in the city, was filmed for the video Innocence + Experience: Live in Paris and broadcast on the American television network HBO. In 2018, U2 reprised the tour's autobiographical narrative and stage setup for its sequel, the Experience + Innocence Tour.
U2's previous tour, the U2 360° Tour, visited stadiums in Europe, North America, Asia, Oceania, Africa and South America from 2009 to 2011 and comprised 110 shows. The concerts featured the band playing "in the round" on a circular stage, allowing the audience to surround them on all sides. To accommodate the stage configuration, a large four-legged structure nicknamed "The Claw" was built above the stage, with the sound system and a cylindrical, expanding video screen on top of it. At 164 feet (50 m) tall, it was the largest stage ever constructed. U2 360° concluded in July 2011 as the highest-grossing concert tour (grossing $736 million) and the most-attended concert tour (selling 7.3 million tickets).
On 9 September 2014, after a five-and-a-half-year gap between records, U2 announced their thirteenth studio album, Songs of Innocence, at an Apple product launch event. It was released digitally the same day to all iTunes Store customers at no cost. The release made the album available to over 500 million iTunes customers in what Apple CEO Tim Cook called "the largest album release of all time." Songs of Innocence revisits the group members' youth in Ireland in the 1970s, touching on childhood memories, loves, and losses, while paying tribute to their musical inspirations. Lead vocalist Bono described it as "the most personal album we've written." It received mixed reviews, and some critics and consumers were critical of the digital release strategy; the album was automatically added to users' iTunes accounts without their consent, which for many, triggered an unprompted download to their devices.
As early as opening night of the U2 360° Tour in June 2009, Bono told his friend/band consultant Gavin Friday that their next tour would have to be more intimate. During U2 360°, Bono and long-time tour designer Willie Williams first discussed ideas for their next live venture. One of Bono's suggestions was to begin future shows with the band performing underneath a single light bulb, in contrast to the massive stage structure underneath which they played during the 360° Tour.
Williams was aware that U2's long-time stage designer Mark Fisher was battling an illness and did not have long to live. As a result, Williams invited stage designer Es Devlin to the band's creative team in February 2013. The two previously collaborated in 2009 for the American theatre leg of Lady Gaga's Monster Ball Tour and in 2012 for Complicite's production of The Master and Margarita. Williams also invited Ric Lipson, Fisher's colleague at the design firm Stufish Entertainment Architects, based on positive experiences with him on past projects.
The first production meeting between U2 and their creative team for the Innocence + Experience Tour was held in March 2013 in the South of France, over what Williams called a "mad weekend". During this first meeting, Williams, Devlin, and Lipson created a scrapbook that served as the "style guide" for the tour's presentation, consisting of cut-outs, drawings, and paintings. Although Songs of Innocence was still in progress at the time and did not yet have a title, the autobiographical narrative that would characterise the album was already a driving idea for their tour. The band wanted to tell the story of their adolescence in Dublin in the 1970s and how they were "trying to figure out how they fit into the often violent and disrupted world outside" their homes. The manifesto for the tour was summarised by two phrases: "I can't change the world, but I can change the world in me", and "I can change the world, but I can't change the world in me." The first is a lyric from the band's 1981 song "Rejoice" and represents the mindset of a teenage Bono feeling powerless to make a difference in a world plagued by the Troubles, who instead views personal psychological changes as a possibility; the second phrase represents the modern-day realisation that the same person could make a difference in the world through philanthropic efforts but still struggle with the complexities of internal change. Devlin said, "The space between these two statements is the territory of the album and of the show." The band intended to stage shows in pairs and alternate the setlist between "innocence" and "experience" motifs night to night. Williams said, "The artfulness in this tour is in the ideas, not the hardware".