![]() ![]() The album even featured two B-sides, “Party Girl” and “11 O’Clock Tick Tock”, but it’s hard to tell considering the crowd reaction and the band’s energetic performances, which make it easy to visualize Bono strutting on stage. It’s easy to make fun of U2 for their sermons and severity, but this soaked Colorado audience was eating it up-and having a hell of a lot more fun than the cynics. It fits, as it opened October, but more than that, the song serves as a perfect example of Bono’s exceptional ability to work a crowd-so much so that it’s possible to hear the audience singing along to its Latin-sung chorus. It’s sequenced out of order, with “Gloria”, a cut taken from the later half of the Red Rocks set, placed as opener. Instead of putting out a full concert, the band carefully chose 8 songs that represented their promising early discography. It was a smart move to condense the set and release only a mini-LP. “Gloria” and “Party Girl” were the only songs recorded at Red Rocks, while the rest were later recorded in Germany, and only “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” recorded at a stop in Boston earlier that year. Surprisingly, Under The Blood Red Sky takes its recordings from three separate concerts. What followed was a rousing performance-typical of U2-one that Rolling Stone ended up placing in its Top 50 Moments in Rock History. Having too much money put into the production, U2 pressed on even though only a little over half of the sold-out crowd showed up. In fact, openers The Alarm and Divinyls didn’t even play. The tour hit a snag as it was pouring rain before the show-so much so that cancellation was a possibility. In 1983, their third record, War, was the statement U2 was trying to make, and it boosted them to a #1 spot on the British charts and a steady top 20 position on the US charts throughout the year.īeginning an infatuation with the American landscape, evident on later releases like The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum, U2 looked to their Denver tour stop to record and videotape a concert at Red Rocks, an especially scenic venue placed in a rock structure just outside of Denver. Because of this, October felt unfinished. While it had its moments, it was marred by stolen lyrics sheets and music just weeks before recording. Their follow-up, October, briefly let the air out of their bubble. Still, Boy was an auspicious start to what would be a behemoth of a career, with the press already rapturous about the quartet. Though emotionally resonant on songs like “I Will Follow” and “Out of Control”, lyrically Boy wasn’t all there yet-mainly due to Bono taking cues from Iggy Pop, who would improvise lyrics while performing. Releasing their debut Boy in 1980, U2 differentiated themselves from their influences, with a soaring collection of autobiographical songs dealing with the loss of innocence and specifically, the loss Bono’s mother, who passed away in 1974. It would go on to sell millions of copies, pushing U2 to be the huge rock band they had pretended to be. It documents a band on the brink of stardom but without elaborate stage setups or world leaders on speed-dial. The live album from that tour, Under A Blood Red Sky, celebrates its 30th anniversary this week. After a string of three albums, they embarked on their first ever tour in 1983 as full-time headliners, supporting their latest and most-acclaimed album yet, War. wanted to be the biggest band in the world. Yet even in their humble beginnings in 1976, the long-haired Dublin teenagers consisting of Paul “Bono” Hewson, Adam Clayton, David “The Edge” Evans, and Larry Mullens Jr. In fact, U2 was near-indistinguishable from Apple in the mid-aughts with their U2-themed iPod and Spanglish-stained “Vertigo” soundtracking the iPod commercials. It’s 2013, and U2 has long established itself as a worldwide brand, almost as recognizable as McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, or Apple. Of course, it’s become something far greater than that. Three decades later, the record serves as a time capsule of a much smaller band with unparalleled aspirations - just four young Dubliners caught amidst a rainy day in Colorado. In this week’s edition of Dusting ‘Em Off, Staff Writer Josh Terry revisits Under A Blood Red Sky, U2’s mini live album, for its 30th anniversary. ![]()
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