I’ve been going to concerts since 8th grade. In the [REDACTED] years since then, I’ve seen hundreds of live shows (and even reviewed a good number of them). In lieu of having a podcast — which I don’t have time for and absolutely nobody needs — I’ve decided to start ruminating about live music. Every few weeks or so, I’ll draw a random ticket stub from my Jar of Nostalgia and “entertain” y’all with my recollections. Because as we all know, everybody loves Gen X droning on about the Good Old Days.
Our first stub is … U2.
Date: November 22, 1987
Venue: Frank Erwin Center, Austin, TX
Did You Review It? Not unless telling my friend Michelle that night that the show was “bad ass” counts.
Still Have The T-Shirt? Yep.
The Joshua Tree show was probably the biggest I’d attended to date. It was my freshman year of college, and that November weekend offered two intriguing live music options. 1) R.E.M.’s Work tour on Thursday (in College Station, TX) followed by U2 in Austin on Sunday. Or 2) Pink Floyd in Austin on Friday. Reasoning that R.E.M. and U2 were two of my favorite bands growing up and Floyd was Roger Water-less (and the ticket was more than the other two combined), I opted for the former.
Now that I think about it, I probably could have seen all three shows. Should’ve filled out one of those Chase credit card applications they left on all our classroom seats.
The first hurdle was getting tickets. As was the style at the time, one had to appear in person at the local ticket outlet to purchase them (we opted for the H-E-B on Oltorf Drive, though who knows if it was the closest). Me, my roommate “G,”* and a couple other Jester dormitory denizens ended up staying up all night before heading down to stand in line.
[G chose that night to painstakingly learn the guitar intro to Bon Jovi’s “Wanted: Dead or Alive.” He did this by playing the tape for a few seconds, plinking along on his guitar, rewinding the tape, then starting over. If I hadn’t been [smoking harmless tobacco] at the time, I probably would’ve murdered him.]
Anyway, we ended up standing in the pre-dawn line with a few dozen others. When our group got about ten people from the window, we were informed that the only seats left were behind the stage. Some people behind us bailed, but we — being of sterner (and/or stupider) stuff — elected to forge ahead.
The Joshua Tree was certainly my favorite U2 album at the time (now it’s either Unforgettable Fire or Achtung Baby, depending on my dopamine levels). Rattle & Hum hadn’t come out yet, so the band was still in that honeymoon period where they didn’t come across as egomaniacs and “With or Without You” hadn’t yet been hideously overplayed.
Or maybe it had. I didn’t have MTV (or a TV) that year and the CD rotation on the (all-male) 8th floor of Jester West veered between RHCP’s Uplift Mofo Party Plan, Electric by the Cult, and Epicus Doomicus Metallicus by Candlemass (really).
I returned home to College Station for R.E.M., which is a story for another Stub Crawl. Sunday, I got a ride back to Austin with my girlfriend “D” — or rather, her parents (neither of us had a car) — and we made it with about an hour to spare before the show.
My Bon Jovi-loving roommate and his girlfriend accompanied us on the short walk from the dorm to the Frank Erwin Center (RIP). I don’t remember a hell of a lot about the crowd except it was big. The BoDeans opened, and since this was pre-Party of Five, I really can’t tell you what their big song was without looking it up (“Only Love?”). That I remember them at all is a quaint artifact of the period in my life when I’d always catch the opening act.
And as it turned out, we were the Smartest People Alive (sort of). “Behind the stage” our seats may have been, but it was a raised sound system, so we could still see everything. And with the capacity crowd in mind, Bono sang fully a quarter of the songs to the rear of the auditorium.
They played a decent chunk of The Joshua Tree, of course (though not one of my favorites, “Red Hill Mining Town”), “I Will Follow,” “October” (for some reason), and a cover of “People Get Ready,” where he asked someone from the audience to help play. It was a kid named Scott (pictured above), and I remember him sending a letter into the Daily Texan (the UT paper) a couple days later asking if anyone had gotten a picture. I guess they did.
They closed with “40,” and the entire crowd exited singing “How long to sing this song.” I later learned this wasn’t exclusive to our audience, but it was still pretty cool hearing that all the way back to campus.
The review in the Austin-American Statesman the next day said Bono’s voice almost ruined the show. If that’s true, I don’t remember it. What I do remember is my friend Sarah calling me and asking if I wanted to go to Antone’s with her that night because Lou Ann Barton was playing. Being tired and an idiot, I declined. Big mistake, as Bono and the Edge joined Stevie Ray and Jimmy Vaughan for an impromptu jam session after the Erwin Center show. She’s still pissed at me, and I can’t blame her.
This was the first of three times I’d see U2. The second would be at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC on the Zoo TV Outside Broadcast tour in 1992. The third was, anticlimactically, here in Houston for the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree.
*I don’t hide certain names to be cute. Sometimes it’s because I haven’t been in touch with that person for years (“D”) or because “What was the name of your college roommate?” is a password challenge question. For that same reason, I won’t ever write here about my actual first concert.
Fun series and a good reflection on the band. Eagerly awaiting the Motley Crue/Whitesnake reflection from June, 1987