My first exposure to U2 came in 1984. I was 13 and heard "Pride(In the Name of Love)" on my local top 40 radio station. Granted, my musical knowledge at that tender age was fairly limited, but I had never heard anything like that song before. I scraped together enough money to buy "The Unforgettable Fire" album on cassette. For weeks I listened to it obsessively, but for some reason, I only listened to the first side. I guess I was afraid that the second side wouldn't be as good, but one day, I finally turned it over, and promptly discovered "Bad", which quickly became my new obsession. Finally, I started to wonder when U2 might put out a new record. And wondered, and wondered. It took 3 long years, but "The Joshua Tree" finally came out in the Spring of 1987, and my brother gave me the cassette version for my birthday in May. It was pretty much all over at that point. Then I had to see them live. Come November, I had somehow convinced my parents to let me travel by bus (by myself) to see U2 play in Vancouver, Canada. This cost me something like 85 bucks, which is a lot of money when you're 16 and have no job. Fortunately, I had friends who generally approved of this kind of fanaticism, so I was able to borrow a few bucks from enough different people to make this fantasy a reality. I think one of my friends loaned me a bunch of quarters that he'd saved in little books as a kid. I encountered a classmate on the bus ride up, and even though we weren't exactly friends, he was clearly as crazy as I was, so we hung out together on the ride up. Once we got to the show and found our seats, we decided that we could do better, so we waited until the kindly Canadian security guards looked the other way, then hopped a railing and made our way down to a prime position in General Admission on the floor, where I got way closer to the band than I had any reasonable right to expect. I watched that show in utter amazement, both at U2's intensity and at the fact that I had talked my parents into this.
What I didn't realize at the time was that seeing U2 would become sort of a recurring milestone in my life. 5 years later, I went with my brothers to see the Zoo TV tour at the Tacoma Dome. Once again we ended up with a magical view, as the lousy tickets we'd gotten through ticketmaster ended up being taped off to facilitate U2's light show. Joel almost got close enough to grab Bono's hand at one point, but not quite. 1997 brought the surreal phenomenon of U2 bringing their Pop Mart tour to Autzen Stadium in my little old hometown of Eugene, OR. While this was possibly my least favorite show of theirs that I've seen, it was still worth it to hear Bono say "Thank you, Eugene!" Plus, their show was so loud that they got fined $1,000 by the city! October of 2001 was a great show at the United Center in Chicago, where people had such a fragile handle on their emotions after 9/11 that many people started bawling when the band played "One" (I was one of them). It was really amazing to be able to experience that kind of catharsis, even if it did cost me $95. Fast forward to 2006, and I thought that I had missed my chance for the Vertigo tour. Except...I suddenly realized that I couldn't miss it. As fate would have it, the band had postponed a scheduled date in Honolulu, and the new date was set for December. Thanks to the miracle of Ebay and maxed out credit cards, I was able to get tickets and took Becky to Hawaii for the final show of the Vertigo tour. Later that night, after the show, we got engaged.
This fall, we'll be at the Rose Bowl for the U2 360 tour along with our friends and neighbors, and 90,000 other of the faithful. This will be my 6th U2 show, and another round of US dates in 2010 could bring on lucky number 7. Time will tell. Follow the link below for the stats on shows 1-5:
http://www.u2gigs.com/myshows/bdsvxozvdhm/9937
1 comment:
Post a Comment