Answering Your Questions: Album songs never played live

Today, we are excited to launch a brand new U2gigs.com feature: a Frequently Asked Questions section! This FAQ has three sections at present. The first section is about U2gigs itself and answers questions regarding site usage and the like. The second section deals with questions about our pictures database, such as copyright matters. The centrepiece of the FAQ, however, is its third section. This deals with numerous setlist and concert questions that we have received over the years and that are commonly discussed in U2 fan circles. Accordingly, to usher in this feature, this article will provide a detailed response to one of the most common fan questions: "what album songs have U2 never played live?"

Last updated: 14 March 2009.

Boy: Every song from Boy has been played live. Shadows And Tall Trees has the least known performances and was the first to leave the setlist, being dropped by the band even before the Boy Tour began; its last performance was on 27 July 1980. All the other songs were played until at least the later stages of the October Tour.

October: Two songs from October have not been played live in full. A line of Stranger In A Strange Land was snippeted once, on 28 October 1984, and it never appeared live in any other manner. Is That All? never appeared in its album form, but its musical basis was taken from an earlier creation, The Cry, a mini-song that opened performances of The Electric Co. from late November 1980 to early July 1985, and again for much of 2005. In addition to these two tracks, Scarlet was never played in front of a live audience - its sole appearance was in a closed live set for radio on 14 October 1981.

War: Three songs from War have never been played live. Red Light and The Refugee have never appeared in any form, and rumours that The Refugee was played on 3 June 1983 seem unlikely to be true. Drowning Man appeared only as a brief snippet in 11 O'clock Tick Tock at some North American shows on the War Tour. In addition to these three songs, Like A Song made a solitary live appearance on 26 February 1983.

The Unforgettable Fire: Like War, three Unforgettable Fire tracks have never appeared live. They are Promenade, 4th Of July, and Elvis Presley And America.

The Joshua Tree: This album nearly became only the second U2 album to have every song played live. U2 gave serious consideration to playing Red Hill Mining Town live, and rehearsed it in soundchecks with the intention of playing it in Tempe, Arizona in late December 1987 for Rattle And Hum. The best-known date of RHMT being soundchecked is 28 November 1987. However, the song never moved out of rehearsals and was not played. All other Joshua Tree songs have been played live.

Rattle And Hum: The only studio song on Rattle And Hum that has not been played in full live is Heartland. Its live appearances are simply a couple of snippets over the intro of Where The Streets Have No Name during October 1989.

Achtung Baby: Acrobat is the only track to never appear live. U2 rehearsed an acoustic version in private rehearsals preceding the 7 August 1992 public rehearsal in Hershey, Pennsylvania, with the intention of using it to open concerts as a segue into Zoo Station. This is where widely distributed bootleg recordings of "live" Acrobat come from; it never made it out of rehearsals. Also notable is So Cruel; it was played live just three times, and each performance was solo by Bono. Two performances were of the full song, while the first featured just half the lyrics. A full band version suffered the same fate as Acrobat and stayed a rehearsal piece.

Zooropa: Prior to 2005, three tracks had not been played live. Now, only Some Days Are Better Than Others has not been played. The Wanderer has been performed precisely once, on 2 November 2005; it was a closed live performance for television. The First Time debuted over twelve years after its release and has now been played almost forty times. It is also worth noting that although Zooropa was played three times, all three performances were significantly abbreviated from the album version.

Pop: This album has come closest to replicating Boy's status of being fully played live. 11 songs have been played, and the 12th, Playboy Mansion, was snippeted repeatedly at the end of Streets on Popmart's first and second legs. If God Will Send His Angels also warrants a mention: it was performed in full only once, on 25 April 1997, and all subsequent performances were a stripped-down, abbreviated version just by Bono and Edge.

All That You Can't Leave Behind: The precise count of ATYCLB songs that were played live is bogged down in pedantry and semantics. What can be said definitively is that eight of the album's eleven tracks were played. Peace On Earth may count as a ninth. It was employed as an intro to Walk On on the Elevation Tour's third leg, and while most of these performances were just snippets, extending only to a verse or so, some examples got quite lengthy and are listed independently. It was never played entirely in full, though such a version was rehearsed. Beyond this point, things get easier again. Two songs were never played: Grace made no live appearance at all, while When I Look At The World mustered a single snippet, on 27 November 2001.

How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb: Two songs are yet to make live appearances of any form, namely A Man And A Woman and One Step Closer.

No Line On The Horizon: Five songs have been played live thus far on the NLOTH promo tour. The six yet to be played are Moment Of Surrender, Unknown Caller, Stand Up Comedy, Fez-Being Born, White As Snow, and Cedars Of Lebanon.

In total, from October to HTDAAB, U2 have never played eleven album songs live in any format, while another six - or seven if you count Peace On Earth - have never appeared in full. The least played album live is The Unforgettable Fire, with 30% of its songs never making it to the stage; although War also has three of its ten tracks unplayed, one of those was at least snippeted.

As new songs are debuted, this article will be appropriately edited.

Posted on Saturday, February 07, 2009 @ 14:31:06 CET by Axver