1980-09-29

Marquee Club, London, England

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

  • "The Ocean"
  • "11 O'Clock Tick Tock"
  • "I Will Follow"
  • "Touch"
  • "An Cat Dubh"
  • "Into the Heart"
  • "A Day Without Me"
  • "Twilight"
  • "The Electric Co."
  • "Things to Make and Do"
  • "Stories for Boys"
  • "Boy / Girl"
  • "Out of Control"
Encore:

  • "11 O'Clock Tick Tock"

Additional Music

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

    "Send in the Clowns" (Stephen Sondheim from A Little Night Music) / "(Not Just) Knee Deep" (Funkadelic) / "Can't Find My Way Home" (Blind Faith) /

Show Details:

This is the fourth of four consecutive Monday night shows that U2 play in the Marquee Club in London, England. The club is located at 90 Wardour Street. The support acts for this show is unknown, but they were joined by the Marquee resident DJ, Jerry Floyd. Admission for the show is £1.25.

The songs from this concert were released as a fan club gift in 2015. That gift, the album Another Time, Another Place featured most of the songs from the evening but left out “Touch,” “Twilight,” and the version of “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” played in the encore. Bono adds a few snippets throughout the performance, including “(Not Just) Knee Deep” with “An Cat Dubh,” and “Send in the Clowns” and “Can’t Find My Way Home” with “The Electric Co.”

On that recording from The Marquee Club, Bono is recorded doing a spoken remembrance of the club. He remembers the four show residency in September 1980: “Anyway, the Marquee Club on Wardour Street was to be the site of a residency for U2. U2 would play every Monday for four weeks. The first Monday was half-full. The second Monday was nearly full. The third Monday they had to turn people away and the fourth Monday there were queues around the block, across the road, and Wardour Street looked like an A-bomb had landed on it. That’s a Jam reference if you care. Um, of course we thought this was the Irish invasion. It’s incredible what a few hundred people believing in you does for you self-confidence.” The recording on that fan club release was taken from the September 29 show at the Marquee, the last of the four appearances in U2’s residency. The Marquee had been established for years when it moved to the Wardour Street location in 1964. The club operated there until 1988. The club was at ground level in a busy Soho area famed for the night life and close to other clubs. The clubs capacity was around 1,000 people, although a well known performance by Jimi Hendrix saw 1,400 attend a show at the club. Based on Bono’s comments above, it is likely that the first show in the Marquee saw less than 500 people attend, with an increase with each subsequent Monday night.

Jack Barrie, the manager of The Marquee at the time would later remember U2’s run of shows in an interview with Q Magazine: “By the time they came back in September they knew they were in a stronger position. They came to Nigel Hutchings, who was the Marquee’s booking manager, with the idea that they should have a regular Monday night residency. This used to happen often in the ’60s with bands on the way up, but it had stopped, so U2 would be seen to be the first band to get a Marquee residency in many years. Across those four weeks, you could see the build-up in interest as the buzz went around.” Neil Storey, press officer with Island Records added, “The first two nights at the Marquee didn’t sell out, but the second two did and by then they were the hottest new act in Britain, the band everybody had to see.”

Related News

Officially Released Tracks

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