The first time I worked for U2 - Turin 04/09/2015

It took me a while to get my head around it, getting the call to go shoot and work for U2.  I’d grown up listening to them. Achtung Baby is still one of my all-time favourite records.  It is an absolute masterpiece from start to finish.

On this occasion, I was there for one gig and a soundcheck and then was gone.  In later tours, my time extended to being there for production rehearsals and a number of shows.  It was a dream gig, like the music photographers' World Cup, and I’d made it to the final.

When the house lights dimmed and the band stepped out on stage, I found myself wiping tears from my eyes, the joy I felt to be here doing my thing for this fucking band.  Man, my heart was racing, my late father’s pride filling my heart. I knew what I had to do…

I could have left this post there, but the truth of my experience is burning holes in my pockets.

I didn’t smash this gig in the way I’d wanted. Using the World Cup final analogy again, I’d wanted a 5-nil win, but I felt like I’d scraped through on penalties.

I know I got some nice images, but I didn’t shoot this gig in the way I know that I can.

10 years later my reflections on this make me feel a little easier on myself. My nerves were running hot, the adrenaline made me second guess myself instead of being instinctive. And I had an incredible amount of show notes.

Before every tour’s first show I sit down with U2’s long term collaborator Gavin Friday, and we discuss the architecture of the show. The standout moments, the best positioning for me, and where each band member maybe during in any particular song.

Those notes were so important to understanding the movement in the 4 different areas of the 2 hour show. And given the size and scale of this stage production, the complexities and interaction between band and stage design, there was a lot of notes. I treated those notes  as a blueprint, and I stuck as rigidly to them as I could. In later tours, when I would shoot more than one gig, I used those notes as guidelines, rather than instructions. So I could find a happy medium between what I was asked to shoot and my instincts, what I wanted to shoot.