Accompanied by Brian Eno’s 77 Million Paintings—Eno, a longtime producer and collaborator who also joined them onstage—the performance included Bono telling the room, “A lot of rock and roll bands went to art school… U2 didn’t go to school, we went to Brian Eno.” The clip of “The Greatest Show On Earth” is now available on BBC Music’s YouTube channel ahead of the full hour-long concert airing on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on Saturday 28 November at 10.10pm, with an international YouTube simulcast. Jo Whiley, praising the show, remarked that she had never heard the band in better form as they honoured Eno in such a creative fashion.
The Tate Modern concert forms the centerpiece of a dedicated U2 night on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer on 28 November. The evening opens at 8.25pm with U2 at the BBC, gathering notable moments from their 1981 Top of the Pops debut to their 2011 Glastonbury headline performance, followed at 11.10pm by a visually enhanced edition of U2: Tracks of My Years, and concluding at 11.55pm with U2 performing Belfast 1981, broadcasting a full Queen’s University gig outside Northern Ireland for the first time.
Radio listeners can also tune into Tracks of My Years with Vernon Kay on BBC Radio 2 next week from 16 to 20 November—available early on BBC Sounds and iPlayer from 6am this Sunday, 15 November—before Jo Whiley broadcasts the Tate Modern concert alongside a new band interview on Monday 30 November from 7pm.
