Opening Act(s): The Pixies
Setlist:
Zoo Station, The Fly, Even Better Than The Real Thing, Mysterious Ways, One, Until The End Of The World, Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses, Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around The World, Angel Of Harlem, Slow Dancing, Satellite Of Love, Bad-All I Want Is You-Bullet The Blue Sky, Running To Stand Still, Where The Streets Have No Name, Pride (In The Name Of Love), I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. Encore(s): Desire, Ultraviolet (Light My Way), With Or Without You, Love Is Blindness.
Remarks:
Slow Dancing is performed for the first time tonight on the Zoo TV Tour.
Media Review:
Montreal Gazette
Headlong U2 raises frenzied roars at Forum
by Mark LePage
It’s not only rock’n’roll for U2 or its fans anymore.
That boundary was shattered when a prancing, leather-clad Bono obliterated the supermyth that was U2 and danced all over the pieces to the terrifying roar of 16,000 frenzied fans.
The Zoo TV Tour hit Montreal with 20-odd TV and video screens flashing images at synapse-snapping speed, and Bono reaching for the cheap seats.
His performance, part camp and all drunken rock’n’roll passion, made mockery of the band’s holier-than-thou image - and loosed complete abandon in a sold-out building.
Taking the stage to Edge’s grunge guitar in Zoo Station, U2 slammed headfirst into the crowd and the two spun headlong, taking the music to another place.
The crowd’s reaction, from Bono’s lurching entrance to his encore appearance singing Desire in silver lame, carrying a full-length mirror, was easily the loudest in Forum history.
The band goosed it by cranking through the alternately harsh and aching songs from the new album first, then pumping out hits like Bad and Pride that have become a generation’s rock anthems.
After a decade as rock’s great messiahs, U2 arrived at the “tight but loose” place Bono mentioned halfway through the set.
Despite the techno-overload of video screens and the junked Trabant cars hanging from the ceiling, this was the show where U2 obliterated the wall between band and fan, and between the band and its own image.
U2 discovered irony and blasted it wide-screen. Bono hopped out on one leg, puffing a cigarette in a cartoonish rock star parody.
“I’m ready for what’s next,” he sang in a stripped voice, and the next thing turned out to be the proposition that party decadence and serious rock’n’roll can work together.
Ask the fans - if any can speak today after turning in their own performance, one that had the band flabbergasted.
In the place of grand pronouncements were Edge’s industrial guitar in The Fly and Bono’s “Attention, bay-bee!”
Bono was utterly, perfectly graceless and the band, playing into a crowd that had obviously lost itself, was pure muscle. They toned it down briefly when Bono led them out to the platform for acoustic versions of Angel of Harlem and Satellite of Love, but then Edge picked out the intro to Bad and captured the mood of the concert.
From there, it was a series of climaxes. Drummer Larry Mullen brutally kicked the band into its metallic epic, Bullet the Blue Sky. After Bono warned a bouncer who had grabbed an over- enthusiastic fan, the house lights came up for Where the Streets Have No Name.
It ended with Bono and a woman slow-dancing to Love Is Blindness, an appropriate moment of human contact after almost two hours of uproar.
The Pixies torched the crowd with an opening set that indicated Nirvana’s success may not be a fluke - the masses may be ready for punk and post-punk at last.
© Montreal Gazette. All rights reserved.
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This was my first ever U2 concert and it was absolutely magical! As you can read in the article, it was one of the loudest events that took place in the now deseased Forum. Because Bono couldn't get a hold of someone political during his infamous phone calls he called up and ordered pizza! When the woman asked him if he wanted a large pizza he said "Mmmm, how large do you think we would need it for this amount of people" and the crowd roared! Needless to say the woman was a bit confused! : )