U2 - Go Home Live
Interscope Records
release date: Nov. 18, 2003

The 'Unforgettable' Castle on the Hill

In June of 2001, while on my way to Dublin from a shore town in Northern Ireland where I had spent the previous week and a half, I made a stop with the mission team I had gone over with at Slane Hill in County Mead. While there, we stood on the same hill where St. Patrick lit a bonfire some 1,500 years earlier in protest of a pagan holiday, glancing over at the castle that graces the cover of U2's landmark album "Unforgettable Fire."

At the time, I didn't realize that about three months later the most famous Irishmen since St. Patrick would make a return visit to a castle where they had recorded portions of that album and a hillside stage that marked the triumphant early beginnings of a band two decades earlier.

With 80,000 screaming, jumping, crying, arm and flag-waving spectators decked out in vintage U2 shirts and Irish football jerseys, they would put on one of the most memorable performances in one of the most active years of the band's two decade career. What had been originally slated as one concert became two, on both Aug. 25 and Sept. 1.

Even the ecstatic joy of the Republic's unlikely victory over Holland earlier in the day to qualify for the World Cup was no match for the intensity, so elegantly captured on U2's "Go Home" DVD.

Featuring footage that originally aired Thanksgiving weekend last year on CBS, the DVD features the band in all of its glory playing 19 songs in the most beautiful of settings ó spotlights bathing Slane Castle in the backdrop of the land and the flowing green countryside where a young band opened for Thin Lizzy in 1981 and the same venue where Bono sang with Bob Dylan in 1984.

As far as concert videos go, it simply doesn't get much better. In addition to the spirited renditions of the band's timeless classics and recent hits, there is the charismatic frontman thanking his late father for lending him the 500 pounds needed to go to London and record and extending the thank you to those present "in his tribe" who have spent somewhere around 500 pounds over the years themselves following the band.

And then there is the "put your hands in the sky, if you're the praying kind make this song your prayer" followed by the screams of "no more" during "Sunday Bloody Sunday," which closes with Bono reciting all 29 names of those killed in the Omagh bombing in the Northern Ireland town in 1998.

Running around the heart shaped catwalk in front of the stage that five months later would be the center of a heartwarming tribute to the victims of terroristic attacks in America for the largest televised event stateside - the Super Bowl, Bono's every movement captured on film seems to have the power to change history. Yet with all of the hope and purity in the songs, his political conscience and sincere humility in his stylist designed wardrobe that will date himself years down the road, never lets you forget how imperfect things are beyond the glow and the sparkle of this enchanting moment that can be relived over and over again on your home entertainment system.

With all of the reminiscing and tributes paid during this 2-hour and twelve minute production, we are reminded how the band has practiced what it has preached, lobbying for the world's poor, sick, persecuted, and disenfranchised. For two hours, it's easy to imagine myself in that sweaty crowd - a number among the thousands being touched by the words and sounds that come from an undeniable force that does have the power to change lives, break hearts, and ensure hope for a better future.

When it comes time for the encore, Bono doesn't do the whole "goodnight" and then return after letting the crowd lose their voices screaming routine. Instead, they stay and play through "One" and "Walk On" with a comment on the year they've had - a year Bono says they don't deserve but will take.

The DVD extras contain an extra track - "Mysterious Ways" and a documentary circa 1985 on the recording of "Unforgettable Fire." The video footage is relatively interesting, but mostly in a nostalgic and humorous, make-fun-of-Bono's-terrible-clothes-and-mullet way. Other features boast some web tie-ins for the computer and an interactive spin cam that will entertain the computer gurus for about five minutes.

Really though, with a concert so majestic and so already nostalgic in one of the most memorable years of our generation, who needs lots of extra features. The music, so evident looking at footage of Bono's old threads, has always been the timeless engine of the Ireland's greatest and most important band.

Add this one to the collection and show it to the grandkids one day and before you get too up there in years pay a visit to Slane Hill and that marvelous castle nearby in the grandest of venues with a long legacy of history making moments.

[ posted 11.16.03 ]

2003 White Elephant Productions