Boy Tour: U2 signs their first recording contract with Island after a “multitudinary” performance (2,500 people
) in a venue called National Stadium (which was actually a pub able to have 2,700 people)…October Tour: after a concert in Portland, Bono is stolen his briefcase containing a notebook of the unfinished lyrics of the incoming album “October”. He reports it and, 23 years later, he is given his briefcase with the lyrics.
War Tour: U2 conquer America, and play in the highest point of Colorado: the Red Rocks. There, the heavy rain left the audience reduced from 8.000 to 2.500 people (which in fact were hard-die-fans), and the concert took place just after the rain stopped, but the cold was extreme (The Edge couldn’t play rightly because his fingers were frozen!). They film the show and release it as one of their best videos: Under A Blood Red Sky.
Unforgettable Fire Tour: U2 plays Pride for the first time in Christchurch (September 29th 1984) and since then, Pride has been played in EVERY scheduled show of the band.
Another point of the tour was the fact that they didn’t play very big venues, although they were very popular. In fact, the biggest concert of the tour was in Phoenix (March 1st 1985) which had 23,000 people. Plus, in this concert in Phoenix, there were people fighting in the front row and Bono encouraged the band to play Pride to pacifiy them...
. In addition, the UF-Tour contains the longest Bad ever: 18 minutes! It took place in East Rutherford, on April 15th 1985.Joshua Tree Tour: U2 receives their most magnificent advertising ever: the Magazine “Time” shows them in the cover, saying “Rock’s Hottest Tickets”, referring to their incoming concert in Chicago (April 29th 1987). In addition, the band reaches unimaginable peaks of success, with “Sold Outs” in USA, France, UK, Germany, Spain...
Another highlight was the vandalism act carried out by Bono, who in the frenzy of Pride painted a graffiti in the Justin Herman’s Plaza, where the band was doing an impromptu concert. The graffiti said “Rock’n’roll Stops The Traffic]”, referring to the unannounced concert. Bono is forced to pay a big amount of dollars to repair the Statue, and since then he has NOT painted anymore...
On last, a few of the last shows in America were filmed and recorded and were released as the Live&Studio album Rattle&Hum.
Lovetown Tour: U2 suspends their first concert ever, in Amsterdam (December 18th 1989), due to the serious problems with the Bono’s throat. They schedule 4 shows more in Rotterdam at the beginning of the incoming year.
Plus, the last tour of the 80s contains the famous Goodbye Speech of the show in Dublin 30th 1989, in which Bono says that U2 was going to leave the stages for a while and remake their music. It was widely interpreted as a Final Goodbye, but U2 don’t lie frequently...
Zoo TV Tour: after the Dublin speech and the finishing of the Lovetown Tour, U2 took some months to rest and remake their music. From this resting months (from January 1990 to December 1991) came the Album Achtung Baby, and the later tour of the band, which was called Zoo TV. Zoo TV was a experiment with the most advanced technology (small radio transistors, monitors, radio transmission of the microphones, etc). This only could be the highlight. But we have more. The tour, which lasted from January 1992 to December 1993, had more than 150 concerts all around the world, and this is quite sufficient for a few anecdotes.
The stage was completely different to all the known stages before. It featured a B-Stage which entered more than 30 meters in the crowd.
In almost all the shows, the band made a Lou Reed cover, playing Satellite Of Love on the B-Stage.
Another interesting point of the tour: in a concert in Auburn Hills (Michigan) in March ‘92, Bono ordered pizzas for everyone. That meant 10.000 pizzas for the crowd! Only 100 arrived when the show was coming to the end, but all of them were thrown to the crowd.
Other highlight: the 2nd concert in Stockholm was broadcasted to the house of a fan which had won a contest. Plus, in this concert, Bjorn and Benny (from ABBA) joined U2 to play Dancing Queen.
U2 recorded another album while touring. It was called Zooropa, and its songs were played on the last 2 legs of the Tour.
On the summer of 1993, U2 played a few shows on London. In the first one, Bono called to the Death-threatened author Salman Rushdie; he results to be in the crowd, and comes up to the stage, doing his first public appearance since 1989, and receiving worldwide media attention. In this same concert, Bono did his usual Satellite call to Sarajevo (which was being completely devastated by the War), but the call was not as usual; three women appeared in front of the camera and began to tell their feelings. “Hey, you’re going to come back to you rock concert. And we? We are going to die! You’re there, with your songs and your happiness. And we? We are in War.”. The concert was not very happy after that.
The last remarkable point of the tour was the filming of the last concert in Sydney, which later was released as “Zoo TV live from Sydney”.
PoP Tour: after the incredible worldwide success of the Zoo TV Tour, U2 decided to give another direction to their music. This turned out in the album POP, which was so more experimental, with some Dance influences. The PoP Tour began in Las Vegas in April 1997, and it was completely different to the Zoo TV Tour, at least in the terms of the success. Although the stage was amazing (with a LED Screen more than 25 meters width), U2 were NOT Solding Out (something that they had done since the Unforgettable Fire Tour). The tour was a complete economic disaster, with some concerts under the 30% of the tickets sold. Anyway, the POP tour had its moments. The most remarkable point is the concert in Sarajevo (September 23rd 1997) which took place in the only venue that had not been destroyed in the War: the Kosevo Stadium. This concert (Sold Out) was the first public act since the War, and it was plenty of feelings. There were old enemies singing together, both Serbians and Croatians. In addition, the crowd carried the band all through the show, because Bono lost his voice on the sixth song played. The most moving moment was the end of the show: the crowd began to applaud the UN soldiers who had taken care of the show, and the soldiers return in kind, applauding the crowd. The peace had arrived.
Elevation Tour: U2 returns to roots. After the complete disaster of the POP Album-Tour, U2 decided to change radically their sound & style. The worst and most unpleasant moment of the tour was the death of Bob Hewson. He had carried a painful disease and he finally died surrounded by his family on August 21 2001, just three days before of the first show of the Tour in Ireland. Bono was not in agreement with the idea to suspend the next concerts. Instead of that, he converted the concerts in the last tribute to his father. One of this lasts concerts (in fact, the last in Europe), which took place on Slane Castle, was recorded and released as the DVD “U2 Go Home”. In it, the feelings are mixed. On the one hand, the band is sad because of the death of Bob (a week before) and on the other hand, they are happy because the Irish Football team had just won the match against Holland. The ambient in the Slane fields was a strange but great mix of those feelings, and it made the concert a Great One!!
Another painful point of the Tour was the fact that just three weeks before U2 travel to America happened the attacks against the World Trade Centre in NYC, and U2 was in a dilemma: to Play or not to Play the scheduled concerts. They decided to play, and the first concert in New York was (as the related one of Sarajevo) was plenty of feelings. The U2 concert (as in Sarajevo) was the first event since the attacks. The songs “One” and “Kite”, and also “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “Pride” took a special meaning there. When the flash of “Where The Streets Have no Name” came out, a tearful Bono said the crowd “New York, you look so beautiful tonight!”, and it is here from where the refrain of City Of Blinding Lights comes. Nice to know, huh?
Vertigo Tour: The highlight of the Vertigo Tour is probably the sentence “CoeXisT. Jesus, Jew, Mahoma, it’s true”. With a band on the forehead which said CoeXisT, and put on his knees, Bono asked for Peace in Palestine-Israel, Iraq, Iran and all the other conflicts where the Religion has became a problem. He particularly asked for peace here in Madrid, which had suffered Islamic terrorism a year before the concert. He asked us to live brotherly and carry each other, no matter which Religion, Race, Colour, Language, etc. he is. One of the highlights of the tour was the concert in Anaheim, in April 2nd 2005, in which Bono dedicated the song “40” and his Rosary to the day-before-died Pope John.
Bono also asked all through the Tour to finish with the extreme poverty in Africa, and claimed against the Governments which do nothing with the AIDS and all the other diseases, including the famine. The Vertigo Tour has been one of the most politicised since the Joshua Tree one...
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Sorry for the extremely long text, specially on Zoo TV and Elevation tours.
Since there are less concerts, I have selected only one Highlight from the Boy, October and War tours. And due to the 150 shows of Zoo TV, I had to select more!
I hope you like it... And I hope you post your Highlights!!!!!
PS. WOW!! I'm 50 posts away of The Fly subnick...
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