U2 fans gathering since Monday for opening gig of world tour

U2 fans have been gathering for the past three nights under the overpasses surrounding the stadium where the band begin their iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE world tour on Thursday night.

There are flags from Brazil, Germany, Valencia in Spain, Italy and the United States. The queue began on Monday night and now extends along the front of the sidewalk in front of the concert venue.

Scott Holbech, who came a relatively short distance from Edmonton, Alberta, described U2 concerts as “international events, not shows. Seven million people saw the last tour. That tells you something. We represent the U2 community.”

Mina Pezzini, a Brazilian living in Orlando, brought her 10-month-old baby Julia. “She doesn’t know it yet, but she will be a U2 fan.”

U2 mania has not gripped Vancouver. There are still tickets on sale for their two shows at the Rogers Arena, the home of the Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team, but the band still managed to land prime slots on the front pages of the two local newspapers, The Vancouver Sun and The Province.

The Province reports that documentary maker Patrick Stark will appear on stage with the band during one of the two concerts. He is making a documentary called One Life No Regrets about confronting personal phobias – his being singing in public.

The band have been rehearsing in Vancouver for the past month. As they are playing two nights in most venues, The Edge revealed that they had considered doing two different shows, but decided to combine them into one show.

“I feel it even for rehearsals. I don’t know what it is going to be like in front of a live audience. A lot of the songs are very personal. It is going to be an emotional rollercoaster, especially for Bono,” he said.

“We’re looking forward to playing a lot of different songs as the tour gets up and running,” he said, but he promised “no weird and extraordinary B sides that leave everybody else behind”.

The band received some flak for releasing the album Songs of Experience free of charge to all iTunes subscribers. The Edge said some 25 million have downloaded the album but the band will not know how its tracks have been received until they play them live.

Bono revealed that the song he wrote for his late mother Iris, who died when he was 14, will feature in the show. “You will see something that is eerily poignant which is that I have very little memory of my mother because in our house we didn’t talk about it. That’s how Irish males dealt with it,” he said.

“Her visual representation wasn’t there. There was no photographs. Years later this film turned up which is from a friend of a friend of the family. It is black and white footage of her playing rounders on the beach in Rush. I put it on and it was very moving and it is in the show now.”

Bono revealed that the memories of his mother, who inspired the song Iris - Hold Me Close, were too painful to think about for a long time. He admitted that for many years he “never went once” to his mother’s grave.

Bono described the iNNOCENCE + EXPERIENCE tour as a “DNA mindfuck” with the song Cedarwood Road, named after the road in which he grew up, figuring prominently. His son Elijah will play the young Bono in a film accompanying the show, which will also feature his old bedroom.

He said the bedroom in 10 Cedarwood Wood represents the “incubator” that every teenage boy’s bedroom is. “You will see me as a teenage boy in that bedroom. It will look like me, but it will not be me. It will be my son Elijah.”

Bono joked that his bicycle accident in Central Park in January was a “deep offensive to my machismo” and he was rescued by a New York firefighter.

His injuries have left him with a left hand that “doesn’t feel like my own”, he said, and unable to play the guitar.