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It will be a beautiful day for U2 fans on May 24 — the day the Irish rock band performs at Rice-Eccles Stadium — but also for the Utah economy.
In an exclusive interview, U2 tour director Craig Evans said that the largest tour ever to roam the Earth will employ some 1,500 Utahns and is expected to pump between $20 million and $40 million into the local economy.
That's one big rock stimulus package.
"It will have a huge economic impact on the community," Evans said in a telephone call from his Los Angeles office. He's leaving May 7 for Mexico City, where the band will play three shows between May 11 and May 15 before moving on to Denver on May 21 and then Salt Lake City on May 24.
Local crews will be involved in nearly every aspect of the show's build-up, the show itself and the disassembling, which will take eight days to accomplish. The jobs, Evans said, will include steelworkers, client services, show security, operations personnel, catering, concessions, plus a small army of people needed to help assemble the largest concert set in history.
Utah crews will supplement the tour's full-time crew of more than 200 workers from 17 countries. "Without a doubt, it's an expensive show," said Evans, who declined to say how much money the show costs. "It's definitely the most ambitious and most challenging tour ever."
The reason this tour is the largest in music history is because of what Evans calls the "steel structure," but what audiences and media around the world have dubbed The Claw.
The Claw is a 164-foot-tall in-the-round set, which spans the width of a stadium and is perched on four legs with sound systems inside each. The steel set supports a whooping 72 separate subwoofers and holds a 360-degree video screen custom designed by Belgian company Stageco.
U2's elliptical main stage is linked to a surrounding B-stage runway via two automated tracking bridges powered by hydraulics. A cigar-shaped obelisk loaded with lighting fixtures towers over the set and crowd.
"The whole concept came at the end of the [2005-06] Vertigo Tour," Evans said. Bono had talked to Evans about an idea to make U2 shows more intimate. As more people became involved into the process of designing a set design to support the band's 12th studio album, 2009's "No Line on the Horizon," tour designers came up with a way to make The Claw big enough to make the stadium seem small.
The Claw's look, designed by longtime U2 show director Willie Williams, was inspired by Los Angeles International Airport's Theme Building, home to the eye-catching Encounter Restaurant and Bar, with 135-foot-high parabolic arches and a futuristic design.
The design, coupled with the band's unmatchable catalog of stadium anthems, has made audiences and the media swoon since the tour began in June 2009.
"When you see [The Claw] for the first time, there's a 'Wow' factor," says Ray Waddell, senior editor for touring at Billboard magazine. "Be prepared to be blown away." The music journalist estimates the tour costs $750,000 per day, whether the band is playing a show or not.
"They put a lot more thought into this than anyone else," said Steve Kandell, deputy editor of Spin magazine, who interviewed the band before the launch of U2's 360° Tour. "It's ridiculous," Kandell said. "It's a complete spectacle. It's almost grotesque — in a good sense."
Now on one of its final legs, the tour has already become the highest-grossing concert tour in history, tallying more than $558 million in ticket sales in April.
It has surpassed the previous record held by the Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang Tour. By the time U2 concludes the tour in July, it will also hold the record for highest-attended tour of all time with more than 7 million tickets sold. That will top the Stones' previous record of 6.3 million tickets sold for their Voodoo Lounge Tour in 1994 and 1995.
The broken records are even more impressive considering that just before it was to begin a tour leg at Rice-Eccles Stadium last summer — with part of The Claw already assembled — lead singer Bono injured his back, forcing the postponement of the North American tour leg.
Evans was in Salt Lake City when he got the news. He and the tour staff immediately called crew members all over the world who were scheduled to come to Utah to help work on the show. "We got people who were checking in their bags," he said.
Bono's recovery has been "miraculous," Evans said, and one of the three touring Claws will be arriving on the streets of Salt Lake City very soon. With a capacity of more than 40,000 seats, Rice-Eccles will be "one of the smallest stadiums we've played, by far," making the show even more intimate, Evans said.
The U2 team is focused on finishing this tour before thinking of what's next. "That is a great topic for us all at the end of the tour," he said. "You're always looking for ways to top it."
One way to top it for the next tour: Bring Utah's unemployment rate down to 0 percent.
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Twitter: @davidburger —
Put on your boots U2 with The Fray
The U2 360° Tour previously scheduled for June 3, 2010, has been rescheduled. Original tickets will be honored. There are still a couple of thousand tickets available.
When •Tuesday, May 24, at 7 p.m.
Where • Rice-Eccles Stadium, 451 S. 1400 East, Salt Lake City
Tickets • $30 to $250 at SmithsTix —
What is The Claw
The steel structure is a 164-foot-tall in-the-round set that looks like a space station — albeit with a curving, veiny membrane that suggests it's a living organism — perched on four legs with a 360-degree video screen. —
Transporting The Claw
In all, The Claw requires 115 trucks to transport it. The structure spans the width of a stadium and, with its height, is twice as high as the stadium set for the Rolling Stones' 2005-07 A Bigger Bang Tour.