Sign up to The Irish Times Archive (1859 - 2008)My Account »

YOU HAVE to question the wisdom of U2 making a giant claw the centrepiece of the new world tour. I know it’s been three decades since the band started out in an era when the worst thing you could be was a rock “dinosaur” and the intervening years have brought great advances in the use of irony. But even so, I look at the lead singer and his claw now and I think two words: “Bonosaurus Rex”, writes FRANK MCNALLY.

Apparently U2’s preferred metaphor for the stage-set is a spaceship – hence the use of David Bowie singing “Ground Control to Major Tom” to open the show.