U2 ready to rock at celebrated UK music festival

MILLIONS LOGGED on to the Glastonbury Festival website last October when tickets for this year’s event went on sale, but only 140,000 people were lucky enough to secure the hot tickets.

The most over-subscribed cultural event in the world kicks off in earnest today with high expectations for U2’s headlining slot on the main Pyramid Stage tonight. The band will play from 10pm to midnight.

The fuss about U2’s appearance is because this is the first time the now official biggest band in the world are appearing at the world’s greatest music festival.

Because of the BBC having to break coverage of the band’s appearance from 10.30pm to 11pm tonight (to accommodate the Newsnight programme), Irish broadcaster Setanta will be showing the full uninterrupted set.

There is an added frisson to U2’s appearance as the political lobby group, Artists Uncut, who bill themselves as “Direct Action Tax Protesters”, say they will stage a symbolic protest from the audience during the band’s set.

They say they will hold up a giant “Bono Pay Up” placard and pass fake money from an Irish flag to a Dutch flag – a reference to U2’s controversial 2008 decision to move some of their music publishing business from Ireland to the Netherlands to avail of lower tax rates.

U2’s current “360-degree” tour was in Baltimore on Wednesday night and the band fly straight back to the US late tonight to make their show in Michigan on Sunday. The band will not be bringing their bespoke “Claw” stage set-up along as it was not logistically possible.

Group members have been arguing among themselves about the set list for tonight's show, with drummer Larry Mullen saying: "Everybody has a view on how it should go. There's the Where The Streets Have No Namescamp and there's the more subtle approach – the Achtung Babydynamic approach where you build slowly. Then there are those who think we should open with 40 [from their 1983 Waralbum]."

The band were booked to play the festival last year but had to pull out when Bono needed emergency surgery on his back. “I am now Bono 2.0 – through the wonders of German science, I’m not just fixed, I’m better,” he said.

Guitarist The Edge is the only band member to have previously played at the festival – last year he was a guest guitarist with the British band Muse.

“Tonight will be something really special for U2. To be able to play on that iconic Pyramid Stage is a great honour,” he said.