Huge Undertaking U2’S ‘Popmart’ Tour Costs $250,000 A Day Just To Keep Operating

Subtlety has never been one of U2’s strengths.

From the days a pugnacious Bono marched around a stage with a white flag, this band has been in love with the grand gesture in its music as well as its persona. It’s what makes U2 both lovable and infuriating.

So what’s left to do after the group’s massive “Zoo TV” tour of the early 1990s, with the gigantic wall of video screens, the on-stage phone calls to order pizza for thousands, the gold lame suit and the belly dancers?

Try to top it, of course.

The “Popmart” tour, which begins skipping around stadiums this weekend in Las Vegas, Nev., is yet another huge undertaking for U2.

With a tour crew of 250, and 200 more hired at each site, “Popmart” costs $250,000 per day to keep operating. The stage set features a 150-by-50-foot video screen, billed as the world’s largest. Speakers will be hidden within a 100-foot-tall golden arch. Five-thousand feet of disco-rope lights will be strung, and a 12-foot-wide illuminated stuffed olive will be perched at the end of a giant toothpick.

Hey, it’s rock ‘n roll.

Some musicians have recoiled at the idea of being the biggest act in the world. Not the members of U2. They eagerly aspire to it.

“That’s always been the thrill of it, isn’t it? Not to be the biggest but the best, to take it as far as it can go,” Bono said as he readied for final rehearsals. “That was part of the momentum of the Beatles and the Stones. It wasn’t happy to stay in its little box.”

Bono bobs and weaves when asked if he believes U2 - himself, guitarist The Edge, bass player Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen - is the best.

But he’s proud the band has remained creatively engaging and willing to reinvent itself after being intact for nearly two decades and having achieved more fame and riches than four teenagers from Ireland could ever have dreamed.

“I still think as a band it is extraordinary, coming from where we’ve come from and having been through what we’ve been through, that we’re still happening, still on fire,” he said. “It feels no different and people are still looking across the rehearsal room with the same mad eyes as when we were getting ready for our first tour - can we pull this off?”

When recording the “Pop” album, the answer was almost no.

U2 became absorbed in the electronic dance music sweeping Europe, as illustrated by the single, “Discotheque.” Yet the effort to combine this with a melodic rock style had largely failed in the six months the band gave itself to finish recording.

“The thought that maybe we weren’t as good as we thought we were was quite humbling and kind of got everybody’s attention,” he said.

“We were trying to take on a lot. Rock ‘n roll bands seemed so boring at the time. That’s one of the reasons we called the record ‘Pop,’ because we were so … (angry) at the word ‘rock’ and looking around and saying, ‘What is happening here?’ This is 30 years old, this music, and the sound, the feeling coming from all these groups just seemed so tired.”

U2 ultimately is a rock band, after all, and its members fell back on that in completing the album. “Pop” is a hybrid, mixing those experiments with songs like “Staring at the Sun,” which are quite traditional for U2.

All these years into their career, band members still consider U2 as perpetually teetering on the edge of collapse, Bono said. In fact, he’s come to the conclusion that “we need this sense of chaos and risk” to thrive.

He seems almost wistful in recalling how the band launched “Zoo TV” when most American music fans were preoccupied with rap and grunge.

“In the middle of this sea of plaid shirts and sneakers, we arrived with plastic pants,” he said. “It was a great feeling. From a financial point of view, we were spending outrageous sums of money every day. If we had done less business than we did, we would have been in big trouble.”

The financial danger is partly remedied by this tour’s $52.50 top ticket price. “Zoo TV” tickets topped out at $30.

At the New York news conference announcing this tour, Bono snapped at a reporter who inquired about the distance between U2’s roots as idealistic rockers and the frequent pose as ironic showmen now. “To you,” Bono said, “I’ll always be the man with the white flag.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean he cringes at those memories.

“There was a haircut I had in the ‘80s that launched a lot of road crews and second-division soccer players,” he said. “I’m embarrassed about that. The naive and sort of gauche aspect of some of those performances, actually I’m quite proud of, because you’ve got to put your head over the parapet.”

He understands that, to many, he’s the walking definition of an egomaniacal rock star. It takes a certain-sized ego to compete with a 12-foot-wide illuminated stuffed olive.

“I get mad if they stop throwing things,” he said. “I like the row. I like to be around an argument. I like to stir it up. I’ve gotten smarter in the way I do it now - the way we do it, I should say. But I still think we’re stirring it, and I wish we had more company.”

Can U2 take things a step further with “Popmart” and succeed? It’s another real challenge, particularly since there’s a general sense U2 was then touring behind a stronger album (“Achtung Baby”) than it is now.

For all the special effects, U2 realizes the music will have to make an emotional connection for the show to work.

“It’s going to be a fun show and funky and all of those things,” Bono said. “But in the end, if it doesn’t move people’s feet and rock their souls, it’s worse than nothing.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: THEY’RE IN THE MONEY With U2, it’s not unreasonable to expect the new album to sell 10 million copies worldwide and the stadium tour to draw around 5 million people over the next year. After all the albums, concert tickets and souvenir T-shirts are sold, the receipts from the “Pop” project could reach $400 million, of which the band could net around $50 million, industry sources estimate.