U2 Vertigo Tour

Vertigo Tour 1st leg: North America

2005-03-28: San Diego Sports Arena - San Diego, California, USA

Rock Icons Content to Do the Things They Do Best

SAN DIEGO, March 29 - "I don't know if I can take it/ I'm not easy on my knees," Bono sang, and in case an arena full of fans didn't believe him, he spent two hours proving it.

Over and over again, during Monday night's sold-out world-premiere concert here, he dropped to his knees to emphasize a point. Kneeling is Bono's way of reminding everyone that he contains multitudes: when he went down, he became a repentant sinner, an eager-to-please lover, an abused prisoner, even - if this isn't too much of a stretch - a grateful 44-year-old rock star, basking in his fans' adulation.

The concert, at a rather plain hockey rink with a rather unplain name (officially, it's the iPay One Center at the Sports Arena), was the first of the band's "Vertigo 2005" tour, celebrating the release of its strong new album, "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" (Interscope). U2 is not, to put it mildly, the kind of band that seems sheepish about its own popularity, and so tonight's concert didn't aim to surprise or confuse or tease the audience.

This was an intensely satisfying performance by a band that has figured out what it does best and seems content to do it. Some bands get swallowed up by big arenas, but U2 was built for them: the Edge's echoey guitar lines are only improved when they bounce off concrete walls, and Bono's lyrics are best when they're delivered by tens of thousands of fans.

If anyone loves U2 more than the fans, it is record executives. Nearly 30 years into its career, the band has evolved from selling lots of vinyl LP's to selling lots of branded iPods. The customers are loyal, and Bono's charity work has only strengthened the brand; he's idealistic and outspoken but not, for the most part, controversial. The band's new live show is sturdy but not flashy; the only special effect is a giant beaded curtain where the flashing beads do double duty as pixels in a huge video screen.

The tour is to continue through the end of the year, with a series of European dates this summer. The band is to play Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, N.J., on May 17 and 18, and Madison Square Garden on May 21 and again for five dates in October.

In 1997, when U2 released the ambitious, electronica-influenced album "Pop," the group didn't seem quite as bulletproof as it does now: you got the sense that, for better and for worse, its members were struggling to stay current.

But these days, current seems less current than ever. U2's old-fashioned earnestness and big, ringing guitars seem right at home in today's old-fashioned alternative-rock world. Not coincidentally, the band has booked old-fashioned young alternative-rock bands to open for them, including the Killers, Snow Patrol and Kings of Leon, who opened tonight's performance. And right before U2 took the stage, the sound system blasted "Wake Up," by the Arcade Fire - a sly way, perhaps, of asking whether the resounding guitar chords and pleading vocals sounded familiar.

As always, Bono put on a show of his own, not only kneeling but strutting and pantomiming and begging for sing-alongs. At one point he lay flat on his back, and you didn't have to be a fan of the provokable basketball player Ron Artest to wonder what reaction might have been inspired by a well-aimed cup of something cold. There were speeches, too: perhaps there is a room where Americans resent listening to an Irishman lecture them about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ("He wasn't just talking about the American dream," Bono explained. "His dream was even bigger than that.") But this wasn't it.

While Bono delighted in playing the diplomat and playing the showman (and in hinting that these two characters have something in common), the rest of the band got down to work, creating the deceptively simple sounds and textures that appear again and again in their songs. Even when the Edge was unleashing one of his jagged shock-therapy solos, it was Bono who gave the outsize performance, jolting in time to the noise.

In 2000, U2 released "All That You Can't Leave Behind," a handsome and self-consciously old-fashioned album that yielded a string of hits, including "Beautiful Day," built around a gorgeous and buoyant bass line by Adam Clayton, whose low notes surged up to match Bono's optimism. The new album has a few more sharp (and sometimes painful) edges, and some unexpected turns. ("One Step Closer," which the band didn't play tonight, is a surprisingly effective bit of Velvet Undergroundish murmuring.)

Mainly, though, the message is the same on both albums: "Atomic Bomb," like its predecessor, pays tribute to the joy of making noise with people you love. Whereas the earlier album had "Elevation" (after tonight's ramshackle version, Bono said, "We can screw up a little bit, right?"), this one has "Vertigo," another tribute to the dizzying power of musical connection. "You give me something I can feel," Bono exclaimed, and he could have been either addressing his fans or impersonating them.

This is a band that has lasted for a remarkably long time without exploding, and the set design echoed the unsplit atom in the album's title. The Edge, Mr. Clayton and the drummer, Larry Mullen Jr., were the nucleus, standing mainly still on the main stage. And Bono, of course, was the electron, orbiting his bandmates on a circular catwalk that extended into the crowd; every time he returned to the stage it seemed like a joyful reunion.

One of the night's final songs was "Yahweh," which sounds faintly ridiculous when it appears at the end of "Atomic Bomb": "Yahweh, Yahweh/ Always pain before a child is born," Bono cries out, and you might wish he were delivering nonsense syllables instead. But when the band played an acoustic-guitar version near the end of the concert, it was transformed into something powerful.

Yet again, Bono tilted his head back and asked the fans to join him - an audacious gesture, but not a misguided one. As Bono knows better than anyone, it's hard to smirk when you're singing at the top of your lungs.