With Bono Playing in Pain, U2 Soars

October 1987; reviewed by Dale Anderson

This was the final straw. A fellow in his early 20s leaped onto the stage during the encore in Memorial Auditorium Wednesday night, ran up to Bono, the singer with the Irish group U2, and tried to grab him by the shoulders.

“Don’t touch my (bleep) arm, buddy,” Bono suddenly shouted in the moment before the security staff hustled the guy out. Bono had his left arm wrapped in a sling, having separated his shoulder when he fell on stage at the beginning of this new North American tour a couple of weeks ago. For the second half of the show, he’d been holding it with his good arm. The man was obviously in pain.

Nevertheless, he recovered his graciousness in an instant. “Excuse the bad language, ladies,” he said. “This has been a tough night.”

How tough was it? It was the kind of night when the Biggest Band in the World Right Now had to stop for a few minutes halfway through a sold-out arena show to sort out a nagging microphone problem. And then Bono’s voice started to fail. When he wasn’t holding his sore left arm, he was holding his throat.

Despite all that, U2 delivered a performance powerful enough to keep the entire crowd of 17,000-plus on its feet from start to finish. The band’s entrance was particularly dramatic, sweeping up the audience with the galloping rhythm of “Where the Streets Have No Name,” the invitational song that opens its breakthrough album, “The Joshua Tree.”

They were a study in black and gray on an almost empty black and gray stage that angled up to risers on three sides. Bono had a black jacket thrown over his shoulders.

The guitarist, the Edge, wore a gray shirt and his characteristic black hat. Bassist Adam Clayton was in black leather. Drummer Larry Mullen began the night in a black shirt.

A measure of their new musical potency could be found in the second number, “I Will Follow,” which comes from their 1980 debut album. The Edge sketched it out with ringing rhythm chords, then Clayton and Mullen nailed the beat hard. No longer an innocent-sounding promise, it had become a passionate pledge.

The 100-minute set included most of the songs from “The Joshua Tree,” as well as such vintage winners as “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (during which an Irish flag was thrown on stage), “New Year’s Day,” the title track from their previous LP, “The Unforgettable Fire,” and their tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Pride (in the Name of Love).”

While Bono was having a tough night, the Edge was having a very good one, hitting his high mark in the Hendrix-like distortions of “Bullet the Blue Sky.” He was a master of textures throughout, making his guitar ring with harmonics, race with rhythm riffs and resonate with modal shifts.

Meanwhile, Bono discovered the Buffalo audience was a good singalong partner, particularly on the newer songs. At the end of the evening, when his voice could no longer reach the high notes, he even turned the verses of “With or Without You” over to the crowd. In the end, he exited as they sang, “How long/Will I sing this song,” with uncommon strength. Some of them kept singing it all the way out to the parking lots.

Included in the set were a couple of surprises – a lightly practiced acoustic version of a folk song, “The Springhill Mining Disaster” (“OK if we rehearse in public here?” Bono inquired after waving off an attempt to join in by Clayton and Mullen), and a particularly show and serious version of the Beatles’ “Help!”

Bono remarked to an interviewer earlier this year that he always thought it significant that John Lennon wrote so vulnerable a song when the Beatles were at their peak. Buffalo also has significance in Bono’s regard for Lennon. U2, he noted during the show, was playing its first date here in a club the night Lennon was shot to death.

Opening was Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, a colorful quintet of rock ‘n’ roll gypsies led by guitarist Steve Van Zandt, formerly of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band.

Van Zandt managed to do what few rockers are able to succeed at: combine radical politics (Indian rights, Central American policy, South African apartheid) with a dancing beat. By the time he hit his closing “Sun City,” he had the crowd bopping.