1980-06-07

Half Moon Club, Herne Hill, London, England

Set List of Show:

Main Set (Incomplete):

"11 O'Clock Tick Tock"
"Out of Control"
"Stories for Boys"
"Boy / Girl"

Encore (Incomplete):

"11 O'Clock Tick Tock"

Additional Music

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

Show Details:

Originally this show was listed as June 8, 1980 in our database, but we have uncovered additional information which has caused us to shift this to the earlier date.

The June 8, 1980 date was the original date announced for this show when the tour advertisements went out to the music papers. At some point closer to the show it shifted to the earlier date. And the original ad listed a June 7, 1980 show for The Marquee Club, which we believe did not happen.

We first started examining these dates because the gig guides the week of the shows listed another band playing at The Marquee Club on June 7. A band called White Spirit is listed in all of the papers as being the band performing at the club that night. The opening act, Fashiøn, was also listed as performing at another club that evening, making it unlikely U2 had performed at the Marquee on that evening. Further, the Half Moon in Herne Hill was where U2 were listed as performing on June 7 in the gig guides published the week of the show.

Final confirmation comes via Chris Blackwell. In his autobiography, The Islander released in 2022, Blackwell shares, “Partridge and Stewart were trying to find a way for me to go and see them. A gig was arranged on June 7 in south London at the Half Moon in Herne Hill; I could go there after Bob Marley’s open-air show in front of 15,000 people at the Crystal Palace a few miles away. Marley had been diagnosed with melanoma in 1977, but no one in the audience knew Marley was ill. He had less than a year to live, and some people who saw him perform said he seemed a little tired, a little careful. Bob sang his new acoustic song ‘Redemption Song,’ the first time many people had heard it, just as the sun went down. After the show, everyone backstage headed into central London, but I went off to see U2 with my girlfriend at the time, Nathalie Delon, and one or two others. I did not know it, but I was heading into another adventure, and in the same way Island had Cat Stevens, who brought the spirit of 1960s into the early 1970s, and then Bob Marley later in the 1970s, here was Island’s biggest act of the 1980s.”

Blackwell also shares that he met the band after the show in their dressing room. “Bono was perhaps so animated because he was still in the process of proving to drummer Larry Mullen Jr., who had formed the group and was clearly the leader, that he was going to work as the lead singer, and to bassist Adam Clayton and the guitarist they were already calling the Edge, quiet but clearly smarter than the usual young rock musician. It was small talk, really, but I realized pretty quickly that they were an intelligent collection of people. I believed in them as people even if the music had passed by me.”

The June 7, 1980 date at the Marquee was not added to our database due to doubts that it had occurred. This show, originally listed for June 8, 1980 has been moved accordingly with the new information via Blackwell. As mentioned, Fashiøn was listed as performing at another venue on this evening, so if U2 had an opening act for this show it is unknown at this point.

In a review in Hot Press, published in the June 20, 1980 issue, Peter Owens shares, “Within moments they had stretched it to gargantuan proportions, the Edge doggedly elbowing himself an action space, Bono straining and reaching out and up, and Adam cowing the impressive bulk of the PA beside him into an easy submission. The last date of the first full tour and it seemed like a homecoming, although most of the audience still didn’t know them from Adam – well, from Cain anyway.” Owens shares that “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” both opens and closes the show and that the EP, “Three” is played in full, and in succession. He concludes, “U-2 are like an imminent thunderstorm, inducing an electrostatic breathlessness, the prickling of the skin, the uncomfortable gnawing on the soles of the feet.”

Officially Released Tracks