Bono strips emotionally naked in Madrid in his most atypical concert

He goes on stage.

Look to the side.

The Edge is not there.

To her left no sign of the elegant figure of Adam Clayton.

Nor do Larry Mullen Jr.'s drumsticks impact the drums from the background. The audience roars and applauds.

But they don't add up to 40,000, as is usual at a U2 concert.

Only 1,300.

We can also talk about the scenery: neither catwalks nor giant golden eggs nor bulky circular screens.

Indeed, we are in the most atypical concert of Bono's career, that messianic dominator of the masses who last night became a close human being, flesh and blood, our colleague, the one who has lived longer than us and who knows how to tell it. and how to sing it

It was as if the man who has dominated stadium rock for the last 40 years led us out onto the back porch of the pub,

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It happened last night at the Coliseum theater in Madrid, in the heart of the capital.

An intimate show, against the current, delicious, unique.

Bono (born 62 years ago in Dublin as Paul David Hewson), who always wanted to be David Bowie, looked much more like Bruce Springsteen last night and gave a performance along the lines of the one offered by the author of

on Broadway New Yorker.

The basis is the same: the edition of a book of memories.

From there it consists of telling stories from that text, interpreting songs, revealing youthful sins, confessing fears, dwelling on intimacies and dramatizing relevant episodes of his life.

Bono's book has just been published and it's called

(Ed. Penguin).

A 670-page volume (beats Springsteen's memoirs, with 561), a biography of a rocker different from what the genre has accustomed us to: it puts villainism in a corner (perhaps there isn't much to scratch in that sense) and transcends from reflection and philosophy.

Because few musicians have taken a nap in the White House.

Bonus yes.

All spectators had to put their cell phones in small bags that were closed and could only be opened at the end of the concert with a device similar to the one that removes alarms from clothing in stores.

That situation alone (what if something happens to the children while I'm without a cell phone?) led to a special evening.

The entry of press photographers was not considered possible either.

The images that illustrate this chronicle have been provided by the artist's team.

Bono dressed in black clothing and wore his now familiar round orange mirrored glasses.

A couple of tables and some chairs was all the singer needed last night.

The sparse furniture served as a narrative element: the different characters of the story sat there, invisible beings brought to life by the singer with his imagination.

Three musicians accompanied him during the two-hour show: a harpist (Gemma Doherty), a cellist (Kate Ellis) and a percussionist and keyboardist (Jacknife Lee).

They supported the protagonist with their voices when the song required it.

In the background, some screens illustrated the stories and songs with drawings by the singer himself.

The leader of U2 while performing 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' last night.

Ross Stewart

Perhaps it is not possible to speak of a concert because the time was divided equally between music and monologues.

"I feel a little naughty tonight, but I have permission from The Edge, Larry and Adam to do this," he said in Spanish as soon as he started.

It was an exception because he almost always spoke in English and there were no subtitles.

The function was flexible, with moments for laughter, clapping or tears.

After so many years performing before crowds, Bono did not dispense with directing the microphone to the audience on occasion.

The songs played in a slowed down frequency.

A good part of the concert was bathed in a mystical air, almost from a church.

Perhaps the word is spiritual.

And, coming from a man with as much faith as Bono, it's quite possible that he enjoyed the songs more than in a rock setting.

Because U2 songs never sounded the same as last night.

This twilight tone created a magical atmosphere at various times.

The pain was touchable as he described the death of his mother (Iris) from an aneurysm when he was 14 years old.

“So what was once a home became a house.

Three men [he, his brother and his father] full of anger and melancholy ”, he described

The complex relationship with his father (who died in 2001) took up a good part of the night.

The singer emotionally undressed telling how he longed to find his father's approval, but not even when he was a world-acclaimed rock star did he get it.

He staged the relationship with conversations in which he played himself and his father.

He wasted acting skills by moving dramatically and playing with the tones of the voices.

And there was chemistry with the public from the first moment, surely the most participative audience of a tour that has gone through Canada, the United States and some parts of Europe such as the United Kingdom, France or Germany.

The audience cheered him on, he clapped his hands in the songs and chanted choruses.

Of course, he endured sitting until the final triumphant ovation.

Some also complained that the sound from the microphone was not heard well in the part where they were.

The protest dissipated after the first 15 minutes.

Another moment of the Madrid concert.

Ross Stewart

The protagonist also talked about his partner, of course, Ali Hewson, who would surely be behind the scenes and to whom he devotes so many pages in

.

They met when they were studying at the university and have never been apart.

They add up to 40 years of marriage.

"She saved my life," he said on several occasions.

In one of her crisis as a couple, she composed

which she performed last night and all she needed, in an intense finale, was to rip off the buttons of her shirt and show her bare chest.

It was so intimate and earthy what the Irishman offered that what he has shown us the last four decades in stadiums with U2 seems like a parody of rock stars, a kind

of luxurious

he played

… And for the first time we get a taste of the vocal antics he can handle without the tricks of crowd concert technology.

The Irishman during one of his monologues.

Ross Stewart

In the chapter on humor, it is worth mentioning when he imitated Pavarotti, Princess Diana of Wales (her father's meeting with her was hilarious) or his mythical

Paul McGuinness.

And even when she played his surgeon, who operated on his heart in 2014 when Bono, he confessed, was "about to die."

she was heard shuddering, with the strings of the harp performing the function of The Edge's guitar.

And

it emerged with the Live Aid concert logo in the background.

He mentioned, of course, his activism and how much has been achieved to fight AIDS or poverty in Africa (by the way, he thanked Penélope Cruz for her humanitarian work), but he was restrained in this regard.

It was about telling the story of him and his band and this show manages to convey, even more than a group concert, how important U2 has been to pop music.

The evening ended with an

performance of

a Neapolitan piece his father adored in the voices of his favorite tenors.

Right after, Bono left amidst ovations leaving the heart that he had opened to 1,300 privileged people on fire.

It is very possible that his father, wherever he is, will be proud of him this time.