U2 Live & Dangerous - U23 Tour

“It was pretty outrageous for them to do a national tour and to play the National Stadium”

I probably first became aware of U2 around 1978 when, as a very young band, they were doing gigs in Trinity College, where I was the President of the Students’ Union. Meanwhile, I was working on the TV show, Our Times, writing scripts while I was working for In Dublin magazine, and doing a bit of pirate radio on the side – and that was where I first came across Dave Fanning. We were both on Big D Radio at the time – and I remember meeting Bono in that context, and him asking me, “What’s this Paul McGuinness guy like?”

I also recommended them to Bill Keating, the producer of Our Times, as a band we should be looking at.

The Black Catholics used to turn up to cause trouble at those famous Dandelion Market gigs. They were a gang of punks who thought U2 were these middle-class kids, and so they had it in for them. McGuinness physically threw those guys out of one show. That’s what it was like in Dublin back then. Trouble was never far away.

The Dandelion itself was a toilet. It was a run-down area which had been turned into this walk-through market. U2 played in a disused corner with all sorts of shite in it: it was really rough and ready. Loads of people say they were there at those gigs – but they were in their fucking holes! The gigs were on Saturday afternoon. There wasn’t an awful lot else going on in Dublin, so they were great craic, but there was nothing glamorous about it at all.

When 2fm started in 1979, I was given the Dave Fanning Show to produce. In September of that year, Paul McGuinness – who was managing the band by now – came to us with the first single. We wanted to offer some support, so we agreed to have the band in on a Monday night. They played the three songs from U2-3 and we asked people to send in postcards to choose the ‘A’ Side. There wasn’t a huge vote to be honest, but the band came back on the Friday, and ‘Out Of Control’ was very clearly the preferred option – so off they went and released the three-track single with that as the ‘A-side’ or lead track.

In the wake of the Miami Showband shooting in 1975, and the effect of the Troubles in general, the whole market for live music had collapsed here. A lot of UK bands decided to give Ireland a miss, and so there were very few touring bands outside the colleges. There wasn’t a circuit as such. The punk thing did make a difference, in that it injected a bit of energy and a DIY spirit into the scene, but there were no venues and it was a struggle to get anyone outside the big cities interested. U2 were one of the very few bands who went out nationally. They played in places like Tullamore and Ballina, but it was hard work. Crowds were small. So when it came to it, it was pretty outrageous for them – as an unsigned band – to decide to do a national tour and then to play the National Stadium, which was where all the big gigs happened in Dublin through the 1970s.

Horslips or Planxty could do it, but it was unheard of for a local rock band like U2. It was a deliberate gamble on their part, hoping to impress UK record companies, and it worked. They didn’t fill it, but they got a very respectable crowd. I was very impressed and we recorded the show that night for 2fm, because I thought it was something we should be doing. I can’t remember when we put it out but we did broadcast the whole show.

One song from that live recording, ‘Cartoon World’, was subsequently released on the deluxe reissue of Boy.

U2 weren’t super-polished at that stage, but they had about an album and a half worth of songs and they had a coherent, organised team around them from very early on. They were signed on the back of that National Stadium gig, and once the first album came out on Island, it was obvious they were starting to make serious inroads.

We did do another radio session with them in 1980: six or seven tunes, recorded straight to stereo, which was broadcast just once the following week, never to see the light of day again. The quarter-inch tapes are carefully put away, strictly labelled “not to be fucking given to anybody under any circumstances.” It’s just too valuable. Can you imagine what that would be worth?