/ / Elevation Tour / /

Start date March 28, 2005
End date December 9, 2006
Legs 5
Shows 131

The tour grossed $260 million in 90 sold-out concerts in 2005, making it the top-grossing tour of the year. In North America alone, the tour grossed $138.9 million. The Vertigo Tour won the 2005 Billboard Roadwork Touring Awards for Top Tour, Top Draw, and Top Single Event.

By the time it finished, the Vertigo Tour had sold 4,619,021 tickets — with all 131 shows a sellout — for a total gross of $389 million; the gross was the second-highest such figure ever, bested only by The Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang Tour (which took place at roughly the same time but was longer overall).

Itinerary
After rehearsing for several months in Vancouver, the tour's opening night was on March 28, 2005 at the iPayOne Center in San Diego, California. The first leg through North America consisted of 28 sold-out indoor arena shows and finished May 28 in Boston, Massachusetts.

U2 performs "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in Azteca Stadium, Mexico City, February 16, 2006. The symbols of Islam, Judaism and Christianity form the word "Coexista" (or "Coexist").The second leg was a European stadium tour, commencing on June 9 in Brussels, and finished on August 14 in Lisbon. They played in a number of venues including Amsterdam, London, Dublin, Milan and Oslo. U2 broke Irish box office marks with ticket sales for these Croke Park concerts in Dublin, after more than 240,000 tickets were sold in record time. In The Netherlands, Belgium, France and Austria, the tickets were all sold within 60 minutes.

The band then returned to North America for the third leg in the autumn, playing 50 shows in indoor arenas, starting on September 12 in Toronto and finishing up on December 19 in Portland, Oregon.

A fourth leg of outdoor stadium shows began in February 2006 in Mexico, and ran through March 2, visiting Brazil, Argentina, Chile; many of these locales had not seen a live U2 performance in nearly a decade.

On March 9, 2006, it was announced the final 10 shows in New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Hawaii were postponed due to a serious illness to guitarist The Edge's daughter Sian. (The initial start of the tour had been postponed slightly for the same reason, although this time prior to any tickets being sold.) On July 20, 2006 it was announced that those dates were now on for November and December, with some adjustments and additions of dates. The fifth leg started on November 7 in Brisbane, Australia and after 13 shows in stadiums it finished on December 9, 2006 at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii.

The stage

The LED curtain and the stage, from the rear; Wachovia Center, Philadelphia, May 22, 2005.The Vertigo Tour's producttion was designed by Mark Fisher, with video and show direction by Willie Williams. Key elements were an ellipse-shaped ramp on the floor connected to the stage, with some fans inside it and some outside it (similar to the heart-shaped ramp used on the previous Elevation Tour), and, in the North American shows, a set of seven retractable, see-through LED-based lighted bead curtains behind and to the side of the stage, that were used to show abstract patterns, maps, moving figures, and occasionally text. Dynamic, "moving" lights were also embedded in the stage and the ramp, as well. Four screens suspended above the stage showed close-ups of each member of the band, another element reused from the Elevation Tour.

For the European and Australian stadium shows, the bead curtains were replaced by a giant LED screen, similar to the one used for Popmart, behind the band. The ellipse was also replaced with two catwalks leading to two B-stages in the style of the 'Vertigo target'.

The show
The show's set list varied, with notable differences between each leg of the tour.

Main set
The arena shows of the first and third legs usually began with the same trio of songs: "City of Blinding Lights" , "Vertigo", "Elevation". On the first leg, "City Of Blinding Lights" would alternate with "Love And Peace Or Else", and sometimes "Beautiful Day" appeared in the opening trio. In contrast, the stadium concerts of the second leg opened with "Vertigo", "I Will Follow", and "The Electric Co.", though "I Will Follow's" position was occasionally occupied by other songs. By the fourth leg, "City Of Blinding Lights", "Vertigo" and "Elevation" were the standard opening trio, that was only altered once - early on in the fourth leg. After the opening trio, songs from U2's early days were played at the arena shows, while the stadium shows featured more anthemic rock songs. "New Year's Day", "Until the End of the World", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", and "Miracle Drug" were examples of songs that oftened appeared in the main set. Beyond this point in the setlist, the stadium and indoor sets became roughly similar. "Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own" was played at every show as a tribute to Bono's father. Then there was then a sequence of politically-based songs (usually "Love and Peace or Else," "Sunday Bloody Sunday," and "Bullet the Blue Sky"), based around the theme of "Coexist" (written to show a Muslim Crescent, Jewish Star of David, and Christian Cross). Later, with flags of African nations displayed on the screens, "Where the Streets Have No Name" followed "Pride (In the Name of Love)." This led to a plea from Bono to participate in the ONE Campaign, while the opening of "One" played.

The encores

Telstra Stadium, Sydney, Australia, November 13, 2006The encores varied from leg to leg, and night to night. The first encore was frequently a musical and visual look back to U2's famed Zoo TV Tour, usually featuring "Zoo Station", "The Fly", and "Mysterious Ways". However, for many shows on the third leg, this was discarded in favor of an acoustic encore. The second encore often showcased recent material, and almost all second leg shows as well as rare first and third leg shows ended with a repeat of "Vertigo", in homage to U2's early concert days when they would run out of songs to play. The usual concert finisher in the first leg was "40" where Adam and Edge would switch instruments, but over the course of the tour, many other closing songs would be used as well.

At the start of the much-delayed fifth leg in Australia, the usual first Zoo TV-style encore was used initially, but several shows into the leg "Zoo Station" was dropped in favour of "Mysterious Ways" with "The Fly" opening the encore, making the first encore "The Fly", "Mysterious Ways" and "With Or Without You". The second encore, however, showcased three songs that had not been played until this point on the entire tour. "The Saints Are Coming" was played, following U2 and Green Day's using it to reopen the Louisiana Superdome. Up next was a full electric performance of "Angel of Harlem". Making its Vertigo Tour debut and closing a show for the first time ever was "Kite", which hadn't been played since the end of the Elevation Tour five years prior. Kite was accompanied by a didgeridoo and the show ended with Bono releasing a kite from one of the B-Stages. During the band's second show in Auckland, "One Tree Hill" replaced Kite as the show closer. The encore of the final concert of the tour in Honolulu included "The Saints Are Coming" featuring Billie Joe Armstrong and Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" featuring Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready. The tour ended with the song "All I Want Is You".

The tour outdoors at Croke Park, Dublin, June 24, 2005.
Diversity of material played
The Vertigo Tour was notable not only for its diversity of material — it was the first tour since the Lovetown Tour to feature at least one song from each of their currently released albums — but for the rarity of some songs played. Most notably, "The Ocean", which debuted on tour on 6 April 2005, previously had not been performed since December 1982. Tracks from their debut album Boy were chosen ahead of tracks from their biggest-selling album, The Joshua Tree. A number of other songs returned to the setlist after absences of more than fifteen years, including material from October, while "The First Time", from 1993's Zooropa album, was played in full live for the first time on this tour. "Miss Sarajevo", a song from U2's side project Original Soundtracks No. 1, became a concert regular despite previously only being played live twice since its release in 1995. Although Luciano Pavarotti sang the operatic vocals on the original, "Miss Sarajevo" featured Bono competently singing the operatic vocals. The Vertigo Tour has also featured Larry Mullen Jr. on vocals on "Elevation", "Miracle Drug" and "Love and Peace or Else". All but two songs ("A Man and a Woman" and "One Step Closer") from How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb were performed on the tour. "Fast Cars", a bonus track on some countries' editions of the album, was also performed. "Walk On", the Grammy Award-winning song from All That You Can't Leave Behind, was played only sparingly on the tour, and often then in a limited acoustic rendition.

Concert filming

U2 performing "The Fly" in Brussels at King Baudouin Stadium on European leg's opening night, June 10, 2005.Two nights of the band's four-night engagement in Chicago, Illinois in May 2005 were filmed for the live DVD U2 - Vertigo 2005 - Live From Chicago. During the European stadium leg of the Vertigo Tour in the summer of 2005, four more concerts were filmed: two in Dublin and two in Milan. Songs from the Milan shows were featured in a band profile on 60 Minutes and on U2.COMmunication. Ten songs performed at the Milan concert appeared as a special edition bonus DVD in U2's November 2006 compilation album U218 Singles. The February 20, 2006 show in São Paulo, Brazil was broadcast live by Rede Globo. Additionally, 700 hours of footage from seven South American concerts were filmed in 3D HD for a 2007 release in Real D Cinemas.[5]. On November 18, the Melbourne concert at Telstra Dome was recorded.