POP MUSIC REVIEW : U2: Power and Thrills

G rand slam .

On a field where the Dodgers recently completed one of the worst seasons in the team’s history, U2 brought some thrills back to Dodger Stadium with a pair of masterful weekend concerts.

On one of the final stops on a truly magical, mystery tour, the Irish quartet demonstrated once again why it is the only contemporary band with the ambition and talent to once have been considered on the same level as the Beatles.

Previewed last spring at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, the “Zoo TV” tour started as a bold step into the rock ‘n’ roll unknown: a test of the physical and emotional limits of stadium rock, and--in many ways--a test of the character of the band itself.

Now that it has woven its way back to Southern California, the flashy, high-tech tour has evolved in some surprising and reassuring ways.

The most dramatic technical effect of the tour is an elaborate video-monitor system that delivers such a startling sense of intimacy and immediacy to the proceedings that it may become the standard for stadium concerts in the ‘90s.

Equally important is the way the band itself has been able to use all the technical assault for its own purposes, rather than being overwhelmed by it.

Indeed, some of U2’s most powerful moments Friday and Saturday came when the video screens were either turned off or greatly downplayed.

Nothing during the concerts was quite as thrilling, for instance, as when Edge started his distinctive, treble-heavy guitar intro, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. and bassist Adam Clayton joined in the galloping rhythm of a song like “Where the Streets Have No Name.” The music is still what matters most.

Lots of other provocative elements, however, were tossed at the audience . . . including lead singer Bono Hewson’s role-playing.

There were lots of strange, sometimes scary-looking characters in Saturday’s Halloween night audience: a red devil, a swashbuckling pirate, a bleeding accident victim . . . an Elvis and Priscilla strolling regally hand in hand.

But the most unsettling of all was on stage as Hewson, dressed in black leather and dark glasses, portrayed the self-absorbed rock star during the early moments of the two-hour performance.

This was no Halloween extra, but one of the central elements of the provocative “Zoo TV” tour.

As U2 rose to popularity and acclaim in the ‘80s as a group whose music and performances were centered on a spiritually conscious, uplifting stance, there were frequent criticisms that the group took itself too seriously.

The group tried to answer the complaints in interviews by saying that ideals outlined in such songs as “Pride (In the Name of Love)” were about man’s best instincts--instincts the band members themselves often failed to live up to in their own lives.

Concerned, however, that the self-righteous image was beginning to stereotype them, U2 made a deliberate attempt in last year’s “Achtung Baby” album to speak about their own insecurities and doubts, especially in relationships.

At the same time, they substituted a new anxious, contemporary dance-rock sound for the cleansing, liberating musical textures that had characterized much of their earlier work.

The “Zoo TV” tour is a dramatization of the album’s questioning--and Bono’s rock star exaggeration was an admission of his own contradictions: a side of him that loves the adoration and a side that recognizes how dangerous it can be to one’s art and personal life.

That duality was best defined at Dodger Stadium by the song “The Real Thing,” which speaks about how images or fantasies can become so addictive that they become more powerful than the actual experiences.

The mammoth stage at Dodger Stadium took the form of a live broadcast studio--a reflection of the power of the media in this image-making process.

An electronic message board declared, “Ready for Transmission,” at the start of the show as a dozen video monitors came to life with a tape of President Bush, his voice electronically altered so that he repeated one of Queen’s famous opening lines: “We will . . . we will . . . rock you.”

The words were followed by a quick series of shots of Persian Gulf bombings--and then the silhouetted image of Bono, going through a series of self-conscious rock-star twists and turns.

As he walked on stage in the black leather outfit and began one of the “Achtung Baby” songs, he moved about with the narcissistic manner that recalled the self-destructiveness of various rock stars, dating all the way back to Elvis Presley.

At one point during the song, “The Real Thing,” Bono took a tiny, hand-held camera and caressed himself with it, the images immediately flashed on the screens overhead.

He later brought a female fan from the audience on stage and let her hold the camera as he slowly spun around, establishing an undercurrent of erotic tension on screen, and, sure enough, the action on the screen was more intriguing than watching the real thing --Bono--live.

Unlike the Sports Arena show last spring where Bono kept the rock-star charade going for much of the time, he has learned over the course of the tour that the image is so powerful that you don’t need to keep hammering it home.

As Bono moved away from the pose during the concert, he brought a warmth to the evening that the earlier Sports Arena concert lacked. The warmth was especially evident as the group performed an acoustic set, including “Angel of Harlem” and “When Love Comes to Town,” on a second, smaller stage in the middle of the field.

A parallel moment was at the end when Bono closed the show by singing one of Presley’s most famous ballads, “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” The song was a benediction of sorts: both a summary of U2’s own message--the importance of love in a personal and social sense--and a sweet tribute to Presley and all the other rock stars who lost track of the real thing in their own lives. This was rock at its most powerful and passionate.

The package, including the excellent rap group Public Enemy and quirky Icelandic rockers the Sugarcubes, will also be at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium on Nov. 10 and Anaheim Stadium on Nov. 14.