U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere is an ongoing concert residency by the Irish rock band U2 at the Sphere in Paradise, Nevada, in the Las Vegas Valley. Scheduled to consist of 36 concerts from 29 September 2023 to 18 February 2024, the engagement is inaugurating the Sphere with performances focused on the group's 1991 album Achtung Baby. The shows are leveraging the venue's immersive video and sound capabilities, which include a 16K resolution wraparound interior LED screen, and speakers with beamforming and wave field synthesis technologies.
The show was conceptualised over an 18-month period by U2's longtime production designer Willie Williams, in collaboration with artist and designer Es Devlin and architect Ric Lipson. Several artists were commissioned to provide video artwork for the concerts, including Devlin, Marco Brambilla, John Gerrard, and the effects studio Industrial Light & Magic. The stage features a minimalist design in the shape of a record player, borrowed from Brian Eno's art piece "Turntable". The band's creative team faced numerous challenges while developing the show, which included building a production for an unfinished venue with brand-new technology, designing a suitable playback system, and sharing the space with the crew for Darren Aronofsky's film Postcard from Earth.
The residency is not featuring U2 drummer Larry Mullen Jr., as he will be recuperating from surgery, marking the first time since 1978 that the group is performing without him; Dutch drummer Bram van den Berg from the band Krezip is filling in. First rumoured in July 2022, the residency was announced in a Super Bowl LVII television advertisement in February 2023, followed by date confirmations and ticket sales in April and May. To coincide with the start of the residency, U2 released a Las Vegas-themed single called "Atomic City".
The inaugural Sphere show received wide critical acclaim, with many reviews highlighting the successful fusion of U2's anthemic music with the spectacle of the venue itself. Initially scheduled to run from September to December 2023 over 25 shows, the residency was extended into February 2024 with 11 additional concerts, following the positive reception and high demand for tickets.
Background
The Sphere was announced in February 2018 as a joint project between the Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) and Las Vegas Sands Corporation. The venue was marketed for its potential to immerse audiences with revolutionary sound and video capabilities. Measuring high and wide at its broadest point, the Sphere is located east of Las Vegas Sands' Venetian resort, just off the Las Vegas Strip. Groundbreaking on the venue took place in September 2018 with expectations that it would open in 2021. In March 2020, MSG Entertainment announced that construction was being halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. By August, the company said that construction had resumed and that the Sphere's opening had been rescheduled until 2023.
The idea to stage concerts for the 30th anniversary of U2's 1991 album Achtung Baby first emerged in 2021 as the band wondered if they should commemorate the milestone in some way during the pandemic. The group also considered the possibility of following the same model as their 2017 and 2019 concert tours that commemorated the 30th anniversary of their 1987 album The Joshua Tree. For bassist Adam Clayton, their biggest question was how potential anniversary concerts could possibly build upon their 1992–1993 Zoo TV Tour that supported Achtung Baby. He said, "how do you update the Zoo TV concept? Because all the predictions of Zoo TV have come to pass: fake news, media overload, the MTV generation, wars fought on television with camera systems that could follow a missile down the street, as it was in the Iraq-Kuwait war at that time. So we just thought: we can't take this out [on the road]."
Booking
U2 guitarist the Edge said that the band first heard about the Sphere around 2021, as they were interested in staying informed about emerging technologies for concerts, particularly live audio. Concert promoter Peter Shapiro, who was a producer for the band's concert film U2 3D, first approached lead vocalist Bono in autumn 2021 with the idea of the group opening the venue. Interest in a potential show that would commemorate Achtung Baby coalesced around the idea of not touring a complex concert production in the post-COVID era. Negotiations subsequently began in earnest early in 2022.