U2 Celebrate The Fall Of The Berlin Wall... By Building A Wall

11/05/09 4:28pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

How's this for ironic? U2, who are due to play a free show in Berlin, Germany to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, are being criticized because they will play the show behind... a wall.

Singer Bono, guitarist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. will play the show in front of the city's Brandenburg Gate for 10,000 fans who managed to get free tickets through the band's website last month. But they'll do it behind a "tarp-draped metal fence" that's about two metres (about 12 feet) high, according to CBC News, which means people who don't have tickets can't see the show.

CBC News reports MTV, which organized the concert, got the city and the police to put the fence in with the "safety and security" of concertgoers, residents and businesses in the area in mind.

"It's a shame that a barrier has been set up," German politician Frank Henkel told BBC News. "It's stopping many Berliners from hearing the concert."

Police say they are now expecting over 100,000 people to show up at the Brandenburg Gate to try and see the show.

"It's completely ridiculous that they are blocking the view," Louis-Pierre Boily, a Canadian fan who went to Berlin to see U2, told BBC News. (Boily does not have tickets to the show.)

"I thought it's a free show, but MTV probably wants people to watch it on TV to get their ratings up."