1981-01-24

Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland

Set List of Show:

Main Set:

"The Ocean"
"11 O'Clock Tick Tock"
"Touch"
"An Cat Dubh"
"Into the Heart"
"Another Time, Another Place"
"The Electric Co."
"Things to Make and Do"
"Stories for Boys"
"Twilight"
"I Will Follow"

Additional Music

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

A Little Night Music

Show Details:

U2 continue the Boy tour with a stop at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. This is the bands first known performance in Glasgow, although they had visited Scotland to play in Edinburgh the previous year. This show is sold out and attendance is 1000 people. The band are referred to as the U2’s in promotion of this show.

During the performance, Bono includes “Cry” and “Send in the Clowns” as part of “The Electric Co.”

U2 have just found out that the album cover for Boy has to be changed for the US market and Bono stops to recognize that, referring to the backdrop on stage behind the band featuring Peter Rowen. “This here is Peter. I’ll tell you about Peter. We’re going to the USA next week, and Peter isn’t allowed in there, because of reasons which people in these Isles don’t seem to be able to understand” and then continues to dedicate “Twilight” to Peter Rowen. The album cover has to be changed, as the label are worried about the impression putting a shirtless child on the cover of their album will leave.

Bono thanks the crowd for “Thank you for everybody who has come to see us and not what they’ve read about in the music papers. This is called ‘I Will Follow.’ We’re going home now. Thank you very much.”

Gavin Martin from NME is present at the show, and interviews U2 after the show: “U2 have just played one of those rare performances where the audience moves in empathy with the performer, gradually becoming enraptured and infatuated with the sways and currents running through the music. The songs are like a series of emotional landslides – shifting from doubt to hope and from loss to discovery, rising to a peak with ’11 O’Clock Tick Tock’ – a dazzling if, by that stage, draining realisation. Inside, the audience proves to be young and demanding, creating the sort of atmosphere that the group revel in. Enjoyment and acceptance come as a natural rather than a ritualistic process and somewhere near the end Bono thanks them for coming to see U2, not the image created by the music press. As he explains later, this wasn’t a jibe, but merely an acknowledgement of the honesty created between the audience and the performer.

The band travel to their hotel with Martin, and later finish the interview in a local lounge.

Officially Released Tracks