During "New Years Day", long white banners were lowered from the ceiling, and during "Pride", a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. When "The Unforgettable Fire" song was played, for example, slides with Japanese writings and lithographs from the exhibit from which the song takes its name were projected onto a white backdrop. Pursuing a more subtle stage presentation, the band relied more on the moods transcending from the music and lighting as opposed to Bono's active stage antics of previous tours. Following the largely War Tour setlist and presentation of the first leg, the band adapted the shows to the dreamy nature of the new album, and transformed the visual nature of the show. The tour's second leg consisted of 21 shows in halls and arenas in Western Europe, and ran during October and November 1984. The final Australian show was on 24 September 1984 at Perth Entertainment Centre, and The Unforgettable Fire was released on 1 October 1984. New songs from the album were rehearsed during soundchecks, and " Pride (In the Name of Love)"-which was released as the album's first single in August-and " The Unforgettable Fire" were played from the fourth date onwards. Not having had time to rehearse the new album's songs for live performance, and as they had never played the two countries before, the band played a setlist based on the previous "War Tour". 60,000 tickets were sold for five sell-out shows at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, which was the band's largest audience to date in a single city. Six shows were added when the first nine sold out. The first show was on 29 August 1984 at the Town Hall Auditorium in Christchurch. Although it had taken years to build up an audience through constant touring in Europe and North America, the band started playing sports arenas straightaway in Australia and New Zealand. Plans to visit the two countries were discussed in 1982, and the band had intended to play there in late 1983 but were too tired from the War Tour. U2 performing in Sydney in September 1984ĭubbed the leg "Under Australian Skies", the band's first tour of Australia and New Zealand took place between The Unforgettable Fire's completion and its release. The band's now renowned performance at Live Aid in July 1985, was watched by millions on television and brought them to a new level of fame and exposure. The group had reached the level of popularity where this was possible, but had not yet broken out into widespread fame and familiarity among the general rock and pop audience that would come in 1987 with the release of The Joshua Tree. Songs criticised as being "unfinished", "fuzzy" and "unfocused" on the album, including the live favourite, " Bad", made more sense on stage.įor the first time, U2 consistently played in arenas instead of smaller halls and theatres, and sometimes for multiple nights. Since then sequencers are now used on the majority of U2 songs in performance. Initially challenged by the sonic complexity of the new album's material, the band were able to translate the complex layered atmospheric textures of the new studio-recorded tracks to live performance through the use of programmed sequencers, which the band until then had been reluctant to use. Beginning in August 1984 with the band's first tour to Australia and New Zealand, the tour spanned four further legs which included 43 concerts in Europe and 50 in North America. Below, you watch the band’s performance of “I Will Follow” pulled from that recent DVD release.The Unforgettable Fire Tour was a concert tour by Irish rock band U2 that took place in 19 in support of band's album The Unforgettable Fire. The film originally was released on VHS in 1984 - the companion Under a Blood Red Sky live album actually only features two songs form Red Rocks - and finally came to DVD in 2008. with the support of college radio, Red Rocks was U2’s coming out party to a wider American audience - and while the band would remain a staple of alternative radio throughout the ’80s and ’90s, the site of Bono waving that white flag on MTV changed everything. Thirty years ago tonight, U2 braved a cold Colorado rainstorm to perform at the fabled Red Rocks Amphitheatre just west of Denver, a concert on the band’s War tour that was filmed and released on video as “Under a Blood Red Sky,” cementing Bono and Co.’s reputation as live act and, arguably, marking the moment they truly entered the rock mainstream.Īlthough the band had come up in the U.S.
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