It was Wednesday, November 4, 1987.<\/p>\n
The U2 concert I’d waited for in line for hours to get tickets for<\/a> had finally arrived.<\/p>\n Fact is, I only remember so much of the show; it was chilly out; it was dark when I arrived at the show; the girl I’d asked to come to the show – someone I’d met at a B. Dalton bookstore in Maplewood and had been talking with for a few weeks – had bowed out the day before, so I’d sold my extra ticket to a friend of a friend.<\/p>\n I walked into the old Saint Paul Civic Center, and found my seat; it was the seat on the far right of the first row of bleachers, in the section closest to the walkway between the stage-left side of the stage, probably six feet from the stage itself.<\/p>\n The BoDeans came onstage first; Rolling Stone had been raving about them for months (they were going to be voted “Best New Band of 1987” in a few months), but I’d found their single “She’s a Runaway” dreary and irritating; I expected the worst…<\/p>\n …and was surprised that I actually liked ’em a lot.<\/p>\n After the BoDeans’ set, I hunkered down for the long grind as the stagehands turned the stage around for the headliner. My seat was elevated a few feet above the floor, so I had a pretty decent view of the audience. The thing that struck me about the sell-out crowd was that there were so many people waving signs. Now, this isn’t unusual in and of itself; all sorts of people waved signs around at concerts. Most of them involved trying to get the singer’s attention; I remember all sorts of signs from real and imagined “Jersey Girls” at the Springsteen concert I’d attended in ’84, before Julianne Phillips pretty well gutted that fantasy.<\/p>\n But the signs at the U2 gig were…serious. <\/em>Air-from-the-room-suckingly serious. I suppose we just accept today that U2, or at least Bono, are as much a social advocacy group as a rock band, but it was still kind of new back then.<\/p>\n So the auditorium was sprinkled with signs condemning apartheid, calling for a freeze on the homeless and food and housing for nuclear weapons (or something), bashing Reagan (some things never change).<\/p>\n The one that I remember? At the front of a block of seats on the floor sat a couple of girls in impeccable punk-chic; perfect hair, impeccably-scrubbed, they looked like Saint Thomas kids. Not victims by any stretch. They carried a banner between them; “I Shall Be Released”.<\/p>\n I tired of watching the crowd, eventually, and turned to the stagehands and the contortions they were going through to get the stage ready for the show. U2’s later tours – especially “Pop” – were famous for the campily excessive staging, so it’s easy to forget that the Joshua Tree <\/em>tour brought (as I recall) the biggest light rig that had ever been stuffed into the Saint Paul Civic Center; huge trusses of fresnels and leakos hung over the stage, while the mezzanine was ringed with follow spots. As the stage itself came together, a group of guys – six or eight – climbed up chain ladders into the huge truss hanging over the stage, looking not a little like sailors manning the rigging of a man o’ war of the sail age, to work follow spots right above the set.<\/p>\n Eventually – I think it took nearly 90 minutes to clean up the BoDeans gear and set up for the headliner – the lights dropped, and (after another long delay) the long-familiar synth line from “Where The Streets” have no name started over the speakers. I looked up and to my right. Adam Clayton walked out, carrying a maroon Fender P-Bass (or a Jazz. I don’t remember). Then Edge started the tinkly guitar part (with a gorgeous cream-white Les Paul)…<\/p>\n …and they threw a concert.<\/p>\n