Irish rock band U2 paid tribute to women icons of the country during their maiden performance in Mumbai, putting the spotlight on Union minister Smriti Irani, author Arundhati Roy and journalist Gauri Lankesh among others.
The Irish rockers closed ‘The Joshua Tree Tour 2019’ – their final show of the tour after Seoul, Auckland, Brisbane, and Melbourne – in honor of their 1987 album at the DY Patil Stadium on Sunday.
Frontman Bono, guitarist The Edge, drummer Larry Mullen, and bassist Adam Clayton opened the concert with their classic “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and ended with a visual montage of women icons across the world, including India.
The night also saw performance by academy award winner composer A R Rahman, who along with his children, joined U2 to sing – for the first time.
In their special segment, called ‘Herstory’, the musicians featured photos of women – projected on a giant screen at the backdrop of the stage – as the band played their track “Ultraviolet”. The names were of Women and Child Development Minister Irani, Roy, Kalpana Chawla, Karuna Nandy, Lankesh and Rana Ayyub among others. U2 also acknowledged the contribution of Greta Thunberg.
To highlight the security concern women face the world over, the band also included pictures from the recent protest march in Hyderabad after a young vet was raped and killed.
The tour celebrated U2’s fifth album, The Joshua Tree. Their playlist included songs from the seminal record including “With or Without You”, “Where The Streets Have No Name” and “Bullet The Blue Sky”. Bono, in his greeting to the audience which began with “namaste Mumbai!”, acknowledged that it took them a while to visit the country.
