How they helped me heal.
The time of the U2 Elevation tour in 2001 was phenomenal in many ways—the band was enjoying immense success with their latest album All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and Bono was rapidly emerging as a global humanitarian.
By August, I’d already seen them in Seattle and Ireland, but I wanted to see a show with my sister, so I booked a flight to Boston so she and I could take a road trip to Providence and attend a fall show.
As the date grew near, everyone around me thought I was nuts not to cancel my trip. September 11 happened just over a month prior and no one was anxious to get in the sky. I had the attitude that I wasn’t going to let fundamentalists from other countries stop me from living my life. Plus, we already had the much-coveted fan club tickets, which would grant us general admission access. No way was I giving that up.
The week before the trip at work was hectic. Holiday advertising deadlines always happen near Halloween, so I was down to the wire on several assignments, plus I was fighting to finish my first screenplay submission for Project Greenlight. In addition, the night before my journey, I decided that I needed to make U2’s drummer, Larry Mullen, Jr. a ‘Happy Birthday’ poster since his 40th birthday was the day after our show. I had the bright idea of making it glow-in-the dark so it would show up at night in the arena, but I didn’t have any supplies, so I made an evening trip to Seattle’s Display and Costume party store. Huge mistake. The week before Halloween at that store is like war zone and the crowds were insane. It took me over an hour to buy one small poster board and a small set of glowing paints.
Couple all of that with the excitement of seeing my sister and going to a U2 show, and I wasn’t eating much. Or sleeping much.
By the time I boarded my flight on the 27th, I was sneezing and feeling a sore throat coming on. It was especially hard for me because I personally can’t stand folks who expose others to sickness, and I didn’t want to be that person.
When I arrived at my sister’s, I had a slight fever and drank Thera Flu in hopes I could sleep off whatever was trying to get me. The next morning, I wasn’t much better, but I refused to stay home. We took a fall foliage drive and visited some witch sites in Danvers, then it was back home to rest up.
The next evening we got to our hotel in the late evening, prepared to camp outside the venue to earn the best spot inside the heart-shaped stage (U2 fans have a very strict self-policing process of numbering everyone in the order they arrive and staying in that order when the venue opens). After leaving our belongings in our hotel room, we went across the street to the Dunkin’ Donuts Center to scope out the line. We went to the main entrance, then the side entrance and no one was there.
Thinking the line just hadn’t formed yet, we retreated back to our cozy room and watched U2 perform on Late Night with David Letterman. Soon, we both drifted off to sleep and didn’t rise until the sun came up.
I wasn’t feeling 100%, but the sleep did me well. I thought that getting some healthy food into my system might help, so we went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast.
Just as I was taking my first bite of hash browns, I saw my sister’s eyes get larger as she looked out the window behind me. “Uh-oh,” she said. “I think we should have gone all the way around the building last night.”
What she was seeing were folks carrying their bags and belongings to their spot in line—underneath the venue near the parking garage where fans had begun gathering several hours before. We wouldn’t have heard them or seen them the previous night during our stroll because of the way the building was configured.
The poor hotel staff must have thought we hated their food. We jumped up as fast as we could, paid the bill and sprinted to our room to get our cameras and coats, then headed down to the line. We ended up as #149 and #150, respectively. Thankfully, we weren’t late enough to miss getting into the heart, but we were still farther back than we’d hoped.
I spent the whole day annoying my sister because I refused to put a hat on (didn’t want to mess up the curls I had) and trying to ‘charge’ my poster for Larry in the limited sunlight. I also ate an entire bag of Ricola cough drops to suppress the throat pain, which was only getting worse.
The crowd was jovial—many were in costume because Halloween was the next day. The band was in fine form, arriving on stage with the house lights still on (I wish they still did that) and balancing their commemoration of the recent terrorist attacks with their usual rousing rock numbers.
By the end of the show, I didn’t feel sick anymore. U2 had healing powers over me, for sure.