/ / Elevation Tour / /

Start date March 24, 2001
End date December 2, 2001
Legs 3
Shows 113

The tour's opening night was on March 24, 2001 at the National Car Rental Center outside of Fort Lauderdale, Florida in the United States. The first leg took place in North America that spring, the second leg in Europe that summer, and the third leg back in North America that autumn, ending on December 2, 2001 near where it started, at the AmericanAirlines Arena in Miami, Florida.

The tour was the top concert draw of 2001 in North America, where the band's 80 shows grossed $110 million, the second-highest all-time total behind The Rolling Stones' Voodoo Lounge Tour in 1994.

The stage
The Elevation Tour's stage design was done by Willie Williams, designer of a number of U2's tours. Unlike its predecessor Zoo TV and Popmart tours, Elevation was a simpler, stripped-down affair, hitting indoor arenas instead of outdoor stadiums. The key feature was the stage, which included a large heart-shaped ramp which jutted halfway out onto the arena floor, creating a glorified catwalk. Some general admission ticket-holders were placed inside the heart, on top of which band members could walk, getting closer to the audience on both sides. Visual images were presented on scrims mounted high among the lighting rigs, sometimes in dynamic swirling fashion such as for "Kite".

The show
Shows typically began with the powerful opening duo of "Elevation" and "Beautiful Day", but the setlist overall did not present any major interpretive patterns. The live favourite "Bad" appeared as a regular again after it was only played a few times in the Popmart Tour. Lead singer Bono would reiterate during shows the promotional theme of both the tour and the new album, that after the relatively poor sales of Pop and sometimes poor reception of Popmart, "We're back, re-applying for the job ... And the job is best band in the world."

Bono's Irish Falcon guitar, which he played on the tour. The pickguard says "The Goal Is Soul".Due to the fact that some of the second-leg European cities played on the Elevation Tour did not have an indoor arena or a facility not suitable for the show, several outdoor shows were played, including both shows in Dublin, the show in Berlin, and the show in Turin. To accommodate for this in Dublin, the heart was extended out farther and wider. In Turin, a separate black catwalk was extended out from the stage, but one could not call the shape a "heart" even. In Berlin, the venue was similar to an amphitheatre, so no extra catwalks were needed; however, due to the lack of depth of the venue, the top of the heart was placed in front of the band. During this leg, Bono regularly flew back to Dublin after each show to be with his dying father.

The third leg of the tour began in the U.S. only a month after the September 11, 2001 attacks and in the midst of the 2001 anthrax attacks. This nearly led U2 to cancel the leg, but they decided to continue, starting it at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, home of the "Fighting Irish". While some fans shied away from coming to an ordinarily celebratory occasion or to a large, enclosed public gathering, many other fans did not let these events stop them. The tenor of the times dramatically affected the temperament of the shows, with Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" appearing frequently in the setlist and the band's "Walk On" taking on added emotional weight.

Super Bowl performance

U2 performs at Super Bowl XXXVI Halftime Show, 3 February 2002Following the Elevation Tour proper, the band performed a three-song set during the halftime of Super Bowl XXXVI. The set opened with "Beautiful Day," with Bono entering through the crowd. Next was "MLK". The highlight was a performance of "Where the Streets Have No Name" in which the names of the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks were projected onto a pair of backdrops, scrolling up towards the sky. At the end of the song the backdrops were released, descending to the ground in a gentle revisiting of the World Trade Center's fall. Bono then opened his jacket, which he had worn throughout the Elevation Tour, to reveal the American flag printed as the lining, an image that was widely reproduced in the media.

Concert filming
Two DVDs of the Elevation Tour were released. The first, Elevation: Live From Boston, was released in December 2001, and included material from three different shows filmed in June 2001 in Boston at the then-named FleetCenter. The second, U2 Go Home: Live From Slane Castle, was released in November 2003. Filmed on September 1, 2001, it captured the outdoor variant of the show at the quasi-annual Slane Concert performance at Slane Castle.