U2 360 Tour production in progress in June 2011. Roman Gokhman/STAFF.

This story originally appeared in the Oakland Tribune.

OAKLAND – It’s the largest touring concert stage ever built – but the claw rising above Overstock.com Coliseum this week for the U2 concert Tuesday is just one of three built for the U2 360 Tour.

“The band wanted to make sure this show would be intimate,” tour production manager Jake Berry said earlier this week during a tour of the structure he simply calls “It.” “We wanted to come up with a structure that would make a stadium look small. We’ve made the stadium seem like an arena. The stage is closer to the audience, so it’s a more intimate setting.”

Each stage structure – which resembles both a spaceship and a four-legged crab that encircles a round stage, known to U2’s loyal fans as “the Claw” – is more than 200 feet wide, nearly 150 feet deep and more than 190 feet tall to the top of a lit-up mirror-ball spire. Add to that a 54-ton video screen with 500,000 pixels and 16 miles of production cables, and the entire stage comes out to be about 400 tons.

It takes about 130 travelling crew members and an additional 100 hired at each tour stop about four days to build the Claw and another three to tear it down.

The idea for the tour concept was that of U2 lead singer Bono, who wanted a stadium tour that played to every seat in the house, similar to what the band have done in arenas since 2001. In arenas, the production crew could hang set pieces from the ceiling. That was not feasible for a stadium show – until U2 did it.

Tour designer Willie Williams came up with the practical design of the Claw based off of the Theme Building at the Los Angeles Airport. The initial idea was a square stage 80 feet per side with vertical legs, a typical looking concert festival stage.

“Curved legs are more impressive, aren’t they?” Berry asked.

Each of the four legs of the structure supports about 125 tons of equipment, he said. Berry said he’s still impressed every time he sees the stage take shape in each new city, particularly when he can see the stage in combination with a city skyline behind it.

The stage takes several days to set up. On the first day, specialized flooring is laid down that allows trucks to drive onto the field without destroying it so construction can begin. Another two or three days are spent assembling the stage and Claw. Lighting, audio, video and musical equipment is laid out on the fourth day. The entire production is taken down the day after a concert. Because of this long process, three Claws leapfrog each other around the country; one is used for a show, one is being set up and one is traveling to its next destination.

“We’ve been on the road now for two years,” Berry said. “That has given us a chance to get our act together. It’s running very smoothly.”

The Irish band is about a fourth of the way through the final leg of a tour that will have played 110 concerts worldwide since 2009. It has already been certified as the highest grossing and most attended of all time.

How does U2 top this next time?

“I don’t know if it’s the size you have to top or the quality, or the technology,” Berry said. “With U2, every time you think they’ve gone as far as they can, they go another step. Whether it’s something innovative in video or sound, it doesn’t have to be this huge of a show.”

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.