U2 in Vancouver: Super-fans line up for prime front-row spots

Diehard U2 fans started arriving at B.C. Place Stadium Tuesday night, hailing from the U.S., Chile, Mexico, Australia, Holland and everywhere else in the world.

They braced the wind and stayed out of the rain huddled under tarps, but unlike the lyrics of the song, they found exactly what they were looking for: front-row views (or as close as they can get) to watch their favourite band kick off the Joshua Tree’s 30th-anniversary tour.

That album was the one that shot U2 to mega-stardom, and many of those fans in line are coming full-circle with the band, after a lifetime of fandom, to rekindle the passion that first brought them to the music.

“Their music just speaks to me, it’s my therapy,” said Pat Dalugdug, an American from Arkansas, who first saw U2 as a seventh-grader in 1987 at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, Penn.; he has seen them 58 times since and arrived in Vancouver early enough to be first in line for his 59th show Friday night.

Dalugdug also came to Vancouver in 2015 to line up early for the first show of the band’s Innocence and Experience tour, which makes him part of a community of U2 fans in a globetrotting pilgrimage to rack up as many shows as they can.

U2 opens the Joshua Tree 30th-anniversary tour in Vancouver this weekend. Fans have been lining up for prime general-admission position since Thursday.

As of 8 a.m. Friday morning, B.C. Place staff counted 500 fans who had gathered in the general-admission line, which for U2 concerts has evolved into a semi self-policing community with an informal numbering system and check-in times that allow people to come and go for breaks without losing position in line.

Because for most of them, up front is the only place that they want to be when U2 strikes up the opening chords of Where the Streets Have No Name.

Getting right next to the front security rail, a couple of metres away from the band members and close enough to interact with band members in a down-to-earth manner, is what the diehards are after, said Scott Holbach — a fan in town from Edmonton for his 26th U2 show.

Holbach was up front for one of the band’s Vancouver shows in 2015 and held up a sign that read “lean on us,” to express condolences to drummer Larry Mullen Jr., whose father had died just before the tour’s start.

Ramona Satar, in the general-admission line to try and score a front-row position to watch U2 play its Joshua Tree concert in Vancouver on Friday.

“He leans down and says thank you,” Holbach recalled. “That’s the type of stuff, the engagement with the band at fan level.”

Holbach has tickets to see U2 at four more stops, culminating with the July 22 date for his 44th birthday in Dublin.

“It’s the emotion,” added Alex Romero, a fan who flew into Vancouver from Mexico from further back in line. “They get emotion from you as an audience and you get emotion from them as artists.”

“From far away, it isn’t the same,” Romero said.

Ramona Satar, sporting a colourful denim jacket covered in U2 patches, recounted a lifetime of fandom that started when she watched on TV as U2 frontman Bono jumped from the stage to dance with a fan at the 1985 Live Aid concert.

“I wanted to be that girl,” Satar said, and got her chance during one of the band’s Vancouver shows during the Vertigo tour in 1985 when Bono pulled her on stage from the front row for the song Mysterious Ways. Recovering from a severe injury, Satar said she held up a sign that read “I just ditched my wheelchair to be here.” 

“This is my church,” Satar said, gesturing to B.C. Place behind her.

And the sense of community that forms in line, among fans who come to know one another, is another element that keeps drawing them together.

“It’s like a big reunion,” said Dalugdug, as he remarked on catching up with friends from Brazil, Chile and Spain. “We all have that same bond; the music speaks to us.”

depenner@postmedia.com

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