1981-03-11

Maple Leaf Ballroom, Toronto, ON, Canada

Set List of Show:

Known Set List:

"I Will Follow"

Additional Music

Snippets of Other Songs Performed by U2:

Show Details:

U2 played the Maple Leaf Ballroom at the corner of St. Clair and Christie in 1981 as part of the Boy tour. It is the bands third night in a row playing in Canada with previous stops in Montreal and Ottawa. On advertising the band is listed as U-2, and the concert was presented by CHUM-FM. The opening act for the show was local group, The Diodes. The venue was a former Odeon movie theatre, and before the show the band does an interview with Jeannie Becker for CityTV’s The New Music at a diner, the Queens Dairy, across the street. CHUM also had cameras at the sound check, and footage from the interview and sound check of “I Will Follow” was a staple on Canada’s Much Music for years .

The opening act, The Diodes, is trying to get the audience going with their show, and the lead singer tried to jump and kick a disco ball, or swing from the ball at the front of the stage, and instead crashed to the floor. U2 get a strong response from the crowd, and at the end of the show when called back for an encore came out admitting they didn’t have more songs, and repeated two of the songs played earlier in the show. Reports say that about 300 people were in attendance at this show. Reportedly this is the first show that Arthur Fogel (CEO of the Global Touring division of Live Nation) saw U2.

Ian Mackay, bassist of The Diodes remembers the night, “We opened for U2’s first concert in Canada in 1981 at the Maple Leaf Ballroom on St. Clair West, which was a bingo hall. The guy who runs Concert Productions International gave us a break. He said, “Let the Diodes do it,” and it was packed to the rafters – but it was only about four hundred seats.” (Note: This was not U2’s first performance in Canada, they’d even performed in Toronto before in December 1980. It was Concert Productions International for which Fogel had worked in Toronto.)

In 2005 U2 changed the lyrics from “Beautiful Day” to remember the “Maple Leaf Ballroom right in front of you.”

Officially Released Tracks