It’s only rock’n’roll, but for a band of U2’s stature, it sure takes some organizing these days. The 120 trucks needed to freight the 164ft centrepiece of the group’s new 360° Tour emptied out their load two weeks ahead of this, the first of 44 stadium shows.

After opening with four songs from the group’s current album No Line On The Horizon, Bono explained his group’s decision to begin their latest adventure in Barcelona. “This is where we wanted to build a space station, designed by Gaudi in the capital of surrealism." But if the huge green four-legged edifice on the Nou Camp pitch – christened The Claw – was inspired by Gaudi, no-one had told the group’s stage and lighting designer, Willie Williams.

Some weeks previously, he had already said that the intent had been to create something between the Theme Building at Los Angeles Airport and the fairground machine in Toy Story.

If nothing else though, it was a good reminder that the man who persuaded George Bush to sanction the largest ever response by a Western Government to the Aids crisis is nothing if not a charmer – or, as the opening song Breathe put it, the last in “a long line of travelling sales people.”

The product, in this case, hardly needed pushing. U2’s Spanish fans were already cheering U2 before a lone Larry Mullen came on and roused the throng into action. Thereafter, what ensued was a cheer so unremitting that, at times, it scarcely abated.

Dedicating Angel of Harlem to Michael Jackson, Bono – dressed in customary leathers and amber shades – deftly detoured into verses from Jackson hits such as Man In The Mirror and Don’t Stop Til You Get Enough as his group free-wheeled the song to a rickety climax. Better still was a version of 1999’s Walk On, given solely to draw attention to Burmese Prime Minister-elect Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the years since her 1990 election under house arrest by the Burmese junta. As an eerie procession of people, their faces obscured by masks bearing Suu Kyi’s face, paced the outer walkway, the song seemed to draw out the singer’s most tender performance of the evening.

Over the years U2 have experimented with many different ways of presenting their music, and yet the basic thing at which Bono uniquely excels has remained unchanged. The expression of holy love in a pop song fires up something in Bono that – whilst not hugely hip in rock’n’roll terms – utterly disarms you. At the Nou Camp, these seemed to be the songs that teased out the most goosebumps. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For would have still shaken the foundations, even if Bono hadn’t draped himself in a Spanish flag and begun singing Primal Scream’s Moving On Up over the final minute of the song. Having lain dormant for twenty years, The Unforgettable Fire found its way back into the U2 live set, vast ambient synth oscillations and all, sounding as haunting as ever.

Carried on the back of The Edge’s stratospheric guitar lines, Magnificent showed a band who, on a good day, can still match the peaks of their imperial years. But, at times, this fell well short of being one of those good days.

A seemingly scripted satellite link-up with the orbiting International Space Station was intended to remind us that we all had a duty to look after “the beautiful blue earth”. Instead, it reminded us that satellite link-ups can drain even a packed Nou Camp of all its atmosphere if allowed to go on for long enough.

Their attempt to reimagine I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight as a mid-set trance-techno wig-out did their dignity no favours whatsoever.

And, impressive as the huge quadruped was, you couldn’t help feeling that this “claw” – designed to engage all of the crowd no matter what their vantage point – was ultimately an impediment to intimacy. Playing directly beneath the structure, the four members of U2 had never seemed so tiny. Using the walkways and bridges to reach out to their fans was fine, but only as long as the technology served to assist them. For whatever reason, the group seemed to lose all contact with each other for One. As The Edge soldiered on, his guitar wildly out of tune, a visibly agitated Bono lost his place altogether. He instructed his guitarist to stop, but the ensuing version was no less agonizing.

Some 40ft away, Mullen and Adam Clayton’s mortified corpsing said it all. And yet, to a crowd who had come to celebrate their favourite band, it all seemed to go unnoticed. Having donned the hallowed Barcelona shirt a few minutes before, the last in a long line of travelling sales people led his band into an intense valedictory With Or Without You. As a lesson in keeping the customer happy – regardless of the product – you had to admire it.

Tour continues: Barcelona Nou Camp, July 2

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