My girlfriend and I drove the 450 mile round trip to and from home, to witness her first U2 gig. There's a 10 year age gap between us, placing my own first experience, at age 18, of Edge's ringing harmonics at the same time as her fidgeting behind a desk in junior school. A frightening thought that 24 years had flown by since one of the opening dates of the "October" tour, at the Locarno club in Portsmouth. 24 years. Could U2 deliver, for her, could they impress, a quarter of a century on? Particularly since this was her first visit to a stadium rock concert, I could empathise with Larry's grimace, at the pressure to succeed. Put bluntly could U2 prove an embarressment, to a women who lived through the height of rave culture? The omens were not so promising. It was merely two years after the Locarno when I refused a friend's offer of a ticket, on the basis that "War" was unlistenable (and still is). In 1993 I stood, bored listless, in Wembley Stadium, suffering the worst sound ever in that venue, whilst irony and artifice crushed the soul out of Bono's voice. True there had been ecstatic soaring highs, Adam's twisting funk on "Wire" in 1984, the gospel of "Angel of Harlem" in the Dominion Tottenham Court Road in 1990. In the end, U2 are a band, four very human beings, and we all make mistakes. So how would it be, on the night?

...the most brilliant concert I have been to in my entire life.

The fusion energy level, as band and audience intersected, exploded from the opening "Hello, Hello", "Sometimes..." almost unbearably sad, "Streets" an incandescent celebration, "I Still Haven't Found" the sweetest surprise, and ending on "Vertigo", driving the new, the 2005, the now, the pop, the radio hit, the seize-the-day, condensing all this into five minutes of escalating celebratory rush. It is one thing to sing "I will sing a new song", another to sing a new song, twice. Rock n' roll, in the extreme.

My girlfriend? She loved it. And I suspect thinks that all gigs must be this good. And why not? As U2 would have it the least they can do is not be crap. In truth, they were a good deal grander than that. As good as 1981? Pop over to ticketmaster, and find why that question is irrelevant. They were still selling tickets yesterday for London, and Cardiff yesterday. Worth driving a few miles for, to witness U2 being as on fire as they are now, in 2005.

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