In 1987, the Carrier Dome in Syracuse hosted the breakthrough “The Joshua Tree” tour from Irish rock band U2. Spanning over 100 shows, the tour’s third and final leg made 5 total stops across New York State in the fall of ‘87, leading to the documentary film and live/studio hybrid album, Rattle and Hum.
This was not the only show of note at the Dome that month. Within a seven-day span. SU students were treated to Pink Floyd’s “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” tour stop on Saturday, October 3, while U2 arrived on for an installment of “The Joshua Tree” tour on Friday, October 9.
U2 had previously performed in the Salt City, stopping at City Lights in East Syracuse on May 22, 1981 on the Boy tour, and April 27, 1983 at Cayuga Community College in nearby Auburn on the War tour. Now, performing to a sold out campus crowd of 39,157 at a $17.50 ticket cost, U2 was in the process of becoming a global phenomenon, selling out shows coast to coast and across Europe.
The band’s stop in Syracuse followed two nights at Madison Square Garden over September 28-29, and a show on October 7 in Buffalo at the Aud; the final show in New York would be at Silver Stadium in Rochester on October 11, then the ballpark for the Rochester Red Wings minor league team.
While the Pink Floyd show found a band that had been recording and touring for more than 20 years, U2 was still the new Euro-band on the block, and thus a bit overshadowed despite the relative global popularity now for each Rock n Roll Hall of Fame band.
Opening up the night were two bands. The newer Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul, kicked off the night. Formed in 1984 by Steven Van Zandt during a break from Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. The group performed songs from their two albums, “Men Without Women” and “Voice of America.
Second, Los Lobos brought their blend of rock, country, blues and Tex-Mex music to open the night. David Hidalgo, Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano, Louie Perez and Steve Berlin had recently been gaining popularity outside their East Los Angeles homebase thanks to the music of La Bamba for which they scored the title track and performed all songs written by Ritchie Valens (Valenzuela).
The setlist as expected featured much of The Joshua Tree with 8 of the 11 tracks spread throughout the set, plus the previous album The Unforgettable Fire having four tracks in the show, chief among them, “Pride (In the Name of Love),” closing the 15-song set. Earlier albums War, Boy and October each had fewer songs in the show, the ‘deep cuts’ for the hardcore fans who were at the shows in East Syracuse and Auburn earlier that decade.
Luckily, the concert was recorded and a bootleg video circulated for years, being remastered in recent years, both versions you can watch below.
As for the concert itself, to many fan’s surprise, Bono appeared with his arm in a sling. The lack of social media kept the slinged arm under wraps until showtime, while the cause of the injury stemmed from a previous show where he hurt his arm having jumped into the audience, a rock star learning the hard way how to crowd surf as his band skyrocketed in fame. Throughout the show, the stage is somewhat barren and stripped down, little fanfare or production as fans would later see on the ZooTV, PopMart, Elevation, Vertigo and U2360 tours that would follow in subsequent years.
Bono brought a fan onstage to play guitar during “People Get Ready” when Bono realized the sling and one hand did not allow him to play guitar much at all.
Showing signs of the band’s early social justice activism, Bono spotted a “Support Amnesty International” banner in the crowd and encouraged two college students up to the stage, where they displayed the banner/bedsheet as the band performed an extended version of “Bad.” A little bit of The Beatles “You’ve Got To Hide Your Love Away” appeared in “Bad,” with Bono repeating the line, “love will find a way” and later twirling the banner over his head and running across the stage as The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen rocked out.
Later in the show, the video focuses on the Amnesty banner once again during “Pride (In the Name of Love),” Bono mentioned Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison and Martin Luther King – lives cut short – and to much applause, Stephen Biko the anti-apartheid activist from South Africa.
One relic of the past that does surface throughout the show are lighters held high, and often, peppering the audience with sparks of light in an otherwise dark room.
Heading out of the Carrier Dome towards Marshall Street, one fan who didn’t attend the show, Lisa Shepard Morrow, recalled witnessing something unique – “I was up on Marshall Street when the concert got out. It was a HUGE wall/crowd of people descending onto Marshall Street singing “And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
U2, having been the inaugural band at The Sphere in Las Vegas and blasted off with fame over the next four decades, made their mark with The Joshua Tree album and subsequent tour, and with their audience at their lone Carrier Dome show in Syracuse, and final show overall in Central New York.
U2 – The Carrier Dome, Syracuse, NY – Saturday, October 9, 1987
Setlist: Where the Streets Have No Name, I Will Follow, Trip Through Your Wires, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, MLK, The Unforgettable Fire, Exit, (with Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’ snippet), In God’s Country, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Help! (The Beatles cover), People Get Ready (The Impressions cover), Bad (with ‘Love Will Find a Way’ snippet), October, New Year’s Day, Pride (In the Name of Love)
Encore: Bullet the Blue Sky (with “The Star-Spangled Banner” intro), Running to Stand Still, With or Without You (with ‘Shine Like Stars’ coda), 40
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