Eight months after U2 released Songs of Innocence, the band's 13th studio album, the Innocence & Experience tour in support of it gets underway tonight (Thursday) at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Canada.
Despite being around for more than 35 years, Bono tells us the band still has opening night jitters. "It's a sickening feeling. It's a nauseous, nauseous feeling, and then there's just a certain sound that a U2 crowd makes and it just makes all that stuff go away."
The Edge adds that while they may be nervous, the opening of a tour is the one show where they "learn more about what we're doing tonight than any other time in the tour. We'll be taking away a lot of lessons from tonight and I'm sure there will a lot of changes come nights two, three and four."
Tonight's show will also be the first time they get to perform songs off of Songs of Innocence in a concert setting. Bono says, "We're gonna find out tonight how tightly people hold onto those songs. That's what you don't know."
U2 will do another show in Vancouver on Friday followed by San Jose, California on Monday and Tuesday.