I heard an interview recently in which former Virgin Prune and long-term U2 creative collaborator Gavin Friday said “the best place in Las Vegas is your bed”. It might be one of the wisest things anybody has ever said about Sin City. This is impressive when you consider how much has been observed about the place by many prominent celebrities and great minds over the years.
“In Las Vegas, nothing ends very well,” said American playwright Walter Wykes while Frank Sinatra reckoned “Las Vegas is the only place I know where money really talks – it says, Goodbye.” Well done, Walter. Nice one, Frank. Have you anything to add there, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas author Hunter S Thompson? You’re dead right, Hunter. In my very limited recent experience, a little bit of Las Vegas does go an awfully long way.
Your bed is the best place in Vegas. I thought about the simple truth of Friday’s words, while lying jet lagged and teary from exhaustion on the crisp white cotton of my giant bed on the 28th floor of the Venetian Resort, a hotel which incidentally has 7,100 rooms. It is one of the largest hotels in the world. It could also win an award for being the most head-wrecking. It’s like that Escher drawing with the stairs that go everywhere and nowhere. The place is like an optical illusion. My phone tells me I walked 10km around the hotel in one day while never once actually leaving the building. I am surprised I found my way out of it when, after three hectic days, it was finally time to depart.
I was in Las Vegas for work. They are not words I ever thought I’d type but life is nothing if not unpredictable. A good while ago, when I heard that U2 were playing around the time of my birthday in Las Vegas in a brand new venue called the Sphere, I did a bit of what the youngs call “manifesting”. I didn’t really know how the “manifesting” lark worked, but I figured it was a mix of visualisation, optimism and delusional thinking. Turns out I’ve been “manifesting” things for years without ever putting a label on it.
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Anyway the “manifesting” came good and off I went to “work” in Las Vegas. I say “work”, but the Irish journalists who were flown over there to report on U2′s takeover of the city in the largest spherical structure in the world, a venue which has changed forever the idea of what a music venue can look and sound like, were not in the business of kidding ourselves. We couldn’t believe our good fortune. “We’re so lucky,” we kept telling each other over the hotel’s relentless soundtrack of gaming machines, sports broadcasts, blackjack tables and people losing their shirts.
Occasionally, I had to take to my massive bedroom to recover. Everything was luxurious and high-end and extra in the bedroom, but it also felt dark and gloomy, as if the gods of Las Vegas didn’t really want you to stay there very long when you could be out spending your money. There was a phone beside the toilet for those emergency calls from the jacks and a button you could press which made the curtains close. I mean, God forbid you’d have to get out of the best place in Vegas – a vast scratcher – to draw the curtains yourself.
I was grateful to be there. I was grateful for the bed. I worked out at one point that between travelling and “working” I’d been up for 28 hours. Look at me, Ma. In Las Vegas. “Working”. On Friday night my “work” was talking to fans who had been to U2′s opening night gig and relaying their uniformly ecstatic responses to Irish Times readers. On Saturday afternoon my “work” was writing down what Adam Clayton and the Edge told us about how the experience had been for them. Late on Saturday night, having watched U2′s second night at the Sphere, my “work” was writing down my own thoughts about the audio visual spectacle I had witnessed. I could only hope I did the event justice. Truthfully, I was not entirely sure.
The next day a friend wrote a text complimenting me for dialling down my “fangirling” in my article. I knew what he meant. But I don’t have to dial things down here. So I won’t. There are things you can’t write in a review of a U2 concert for The Irish Times. You can’t write about how you cried uncontrollably for much of the gig, clutching early and often at the arm of Something Happens singer and broadcaster Tom Dunne while he, equally overcome, turned to tenderly embrace the music journalist (male) who sat next to him in an acknowledgment of the exquisite beauty and power of an unforgettable evening. You can’t say how grateful you are to U2 for being, by virtue of their artistry and authenticity, the entity that makes you most proud to be Irish. You can’t talk – I mean you’d be shot – about Bono being a beacon of truth and kindness and joy and hope.
[ U2:UV Achtung Baby Live at Sphere in Las Vegas: What the first reviews sayOpens in new window ]
They say your bed is the best place in Las Vegas. They say money talks loudly there. They say nothing ends well in this most unreal of places. Mostly, they tell you what happens in Vegas stays there. Not so. My night with U2 in that city will stay with me forever. It’s everything I can’t leave behind.