It was early summer 1983. U2 were on the American leg of their War tour, supporting the album of the same name from the same year. The tour proved highly successful for them, so they decided to do some live recordings for a potential “souvenir album.”
U2 chose the Red Rocks as the location to do the recording; a spectacular, naturally formed stone amphitheatre in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, outside Denver, Colorado. It’s the American West at its rawest and most sublime. With this backdrop, they decided to record the show on video as well.
This was a great idea in many ways, but it brought a lot of problems. In simple terms, the weather failed to cooperate when the day came. Rather than gorgeous and sunny, the day turned cold, rainy and foggy. U2 scheduled an indoor show the following night in Boulder for fans who were unwilling to brave the elements – and as a bonus for those who were willing as well.
Even with that replacement show booked, the band and manager Paul McGuinness refused to cancel Red Rocks. The concert’s promoter, Barry Fey, did want to cancel the show, but was on a plane at the time. U2 had in any case already gone on the radio to tell fans that their tickets would be good that night at Red Rocks, or the next night indoors in Boulder, or on both nights.
Their refusal to cancel may or may not have been influenced by the fact that U2 paid for most of the Red Rocks production themselves. This was a considerable economic stretch at that stage in the band’s career.
About 4,400 people turned up in a venue that could hold more than twice that many, but every one of them was a believer. In other words, it was a perfect U2 moment. The conditions just compelled everyone to huddle together closer and make the event mean something. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be there – and certainly you wouldn’t have stayed.
The band tapped into the exact same energy and commitment, and rose to the occasion like a rocket. The show turned out to be really intense and special. As the review of the event in the Denver Examiner said the next day: “A lot of things had to go wring for U2’s show at Red Rocks Amphitheatre to come off so right.”
The weather produced a setting as wildly evocative as can be imagined. It felt more like the rugged west coast of Ireland than summertime Rocky Mountain high. Flames burned eerily on the rock formations surrounding the venue, looking both celestial and infernal. This setting influenced the name for the resulting live album and video. The title is taken from the lyrics of the song New Year’s Day, originally released on the War album.
Under a blood red sky
A crowd has gathered in black and white
The helicopter that provided swirling overhead shots did so at the risk of its riders’ lives. The helicopter had in fact been trucked to another take-off position earlier, as it had been refused permission to take off in Denver.
in the Red Rocks visitor centre.
(Photo: Arlin Bartels)
The live album Under A Blood Red Sky was released on 21 November 1983. Contrary to popular belief only two of the tracks come from the classic Red Rock Amphitheatre show.
The majority of the tracks comes from the show in Sankt Goarshausen in Germany on 20 August (I Will Follow, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Electric Co., New Year’s Day, and 40), one comes from Boston on 6 May (11 O’Clock Tick Tock) and finally two from Red Rocks (Gloria and Party Girl).
The accompanying concert video is entitled U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under A Blood Red Sky, was released the following year. Unlike the album, the video would exclusively contains Red Rocks footage. Unfortunately it isn’t the complete show, as a camera malfunction during I Fall Down rendered that particular song unusable.
During the performance of The Electric Co., Bono included a 27-second snippet of Stephen Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns. U2 failed to get permission and pay the appropriate licensing and royalty fees for inclusion of that song on the album. When Sondheim objected, U2 agreed to pay a $50,000 (US) penalty for the unauthorized use. They also promised to press all future releases with a new edit that did not include the snippet.
This means that there are now two versions of the album: the original with the full The Electric Co. running 5:18 and the edited version of the song which runs 4:51. However, the various editions of the album pressed around the world all vary when it comes to which edit of the song is used. You can find breakdowns of this online. Instead of listing any of that here, I urge you to go and have fun checking your own copies.
U2 superfan Arlin Bartels was there at the Red Rocks show. “It was my first real rock concert in person,” he says, “and still one of the greatest experiences of my life. I became a fan for life that day at Red Rocks.”
When asked if we can see him in the video, Arlin adds “I’ve fooled myself for years thinking I can find myself. It was raining and we were all in ponchos and rain jackets. Because of the weather there weren’t nearly as many people there as have been claimed since. They moved us all down to the bottom rows so it would be better TV. I was somewhere around row 6-8. The weather was so bad that they played a makeup gig at the University of Colorado right after with Mike Peters and the Alarm as the opener. More people came to that show but everyone claims to have been at Red Rocks… 1983 was a good year.”
Rolling Stone Magazine hailed the show as one of their “50 Moments That Changed Rock & Roll”. It remains one of the most iconic music releases of the 1980s. This was the moment when U2 transitioned into a band destined for the stadiums.
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