From the Review-Journal archives: A look back at U2’s first shows in Las Vegas

U2 and Vegas have history.

When the Irish rock band first played here in 1987, their breakthrough album The Joshua Tree had been out for just over a month. They were big but not yet superstar big, though that was close. With about 9,000 in attendance, their show at the Thomas & Mack Center wasn’t even sold out.

Immediately after that gig, the band shot their now-iconic “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” video on Fremont Street.

Now, with U2 back in town to play 25 sold-out shows at the newly opened Sphere in Las Vegas, and possibly set to play more next year, let’s take a look back at how the Review-Journal has covered the superstar Irish rock band’s first visits to Sin City — and what those concerts meant for the band and the city.

First show in Vegas

On April 12, 1987, U2 played its first show in Las Vegas at the Thomas & Mack Center as part of the first leg band’s The Joshua Tree tour. The tour had only begun ten days earlier in Tempe, Arizona. Of the band’s two North American legs of the tour, which included both arena and stadium venues, the Vegas show had one of the lowest attendances, with just over 8,900. (In fairness Vegas was one of the smallest markets on the tour.)

But that night in Las Vegas would be huge for the band.

“It’s April 12, 1987, and U2 is about to become the biggest band in the world,” Review-Journal music writer Jason Bracelin wrote in a 2017 story of the “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” video shoot.

The video, which features the band hanging out on Fremont Street while Bono sings and The Edge plays guitar, helped make u2 a household name.

But what of the 1987 show in Las Vegas?

The concert itself was part of a joint review with a Billy Joel concert the night before, also at the Thomas & Mack Center.

“Joel’s show, with few exceptions, was upbeat, lively and light. U2’s, with few exceptions, carried ominous overtones,” wrote the Review-Journal’s Lynn Feuerbach in the April 14, 1987 review. “The band’s driving, muscular rock and bleak lyrics paint a dark picture of the world.”

But the love affair with Las Vegas was apparently cemented.

“U2 was so impressed with the reception it received that the band promised TMC (Thomas & Mack Center) administrators it would include Las Vegas on its West Coast tour next fall,” Feuerbach wrote.

That didn’t happen.

But according to the website U2gigs.com, the band will have played Vegas 39 times by the time its Sphere residency is done. That includes the group’s “Atomic City,” video shoot in September, in which they performed a surprise show on a flatbed truck in downtown Las Vegas.

Zoo TV, 1992

Because of the relatively low attendance at the band’s 1987 show in Las Vegas, U2’s now legendary Zoo TV tour almost didn’t make a Las Vegas stop. But thanks to bands like the Grateful Dead, Guns N’ Roses, and Metallica, which played sellout or near-capacity concerts in Vegas in the years since then, U2 was booked to play the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl on Nov. 12, 1992.

In the leadup to the concert, the Review-Journal ran an article that previewed U2’s second concert (see above) in Las Vegas and a front-page photo of the stage under construction:

But perhaps most interestingly, a Nov. 11, 1992 article by the Review-Journal’s Mike Weatherford headlined “Silver Bowl show could revive Vegas as concert draw” outlined how those other other bands like the Dead had proved that Vegas was a worthy stop for touring rock giants:

After U2 “decided to back away from an Australian tour,” Las Vegas, Anaheim and San Diego were added to the Zoo TV tour when it was being organized.

The attendance at U2’s Zoo TV stop in Las Vegas was 30,000.

The day after the concert, the Review-Journal’s Nov. 13, 1992 front page was splashed with a photo of Bono and the band on the stage at the Las Vegas show with a news story about the concert by Michael Paskevich and a review by Mike Weatherford:

“Do you wonder why U2 is one of the greatest bands in the world?” Weatherford asked in his review.

“They’re just the best band in the world,” said J.R. Broadbent, a then-21-year-old University of Utah student in Paskevich’s article.

Weatherford described Bono as “one of the real rock n’ roll greats” and wrote of “U2 emerging from a near-overwhelming display of technology to reassert the basic honesty that won fans over in the first place.”

Weatherford also wrote of the band’s already established relationship with Las Vegas:

“Whether it was Las Vegas or the band’s euphoria of being nearly finished with 100 concerts this year, U2 and Southern Nevada seemed to bring out the best of each other.

“When Bono cried, ‘This place is even more Zoo TV than Zoo TV, he was probably talking about Las Vegas as a whole, not the problems audience members had trying to get through the crowded aisles.

“But the band seemed to have a genuine fascination for Las Vegas. Bono called it “a very, very weird and wonderful place.”

Now, fittingly, U2 is back in this very weird and wonderful place over three decades later to open the near-overwhelming display of technology that is the Sphere.

Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com.