climactic fruit fantasia is at least an
intentional homage to you-know-who.
"Spinal Tap is the reason we have the lemon," confirms Bono,
chuckling as he surveys PopMart's oversize props the day before the
tour launch. U2 borrow only from the best—though it remains to be
seen whether any of the 100-plus stadium dates will find the group
trapped inside its pod, a la Tap bassist Derek Smalls. (The lemon
did breakdown during dress rehearsal, so there's always hope .)
U2 had determined to do the world on a grand scale again and
began eommissioning all this "mobile arehitecture" even before
they'd begun recording their recently released Pop album last year.
The record itself turned out rather sober, even though a 12-foot
stuffed olive atop a 100-foot swizzle stick is anything but. At a
stadium level, levity helps bring things back to human Scale, "or
else things get very progressive rock, and we have to watch for
that," Bono explains, munching on chips and guzzling bottled water.
"We
thought, if we really have balls, let's have some fun with our
bigness You know we
