The Power of the Red Rocks Re-Release

By Tracey Hackett, Contributing Editor

October 7, 2008

No other color in the spectrum symbolizes power, intensity, and aggression like red does.

That’s why the naturally formed Red Rocks stone amphitheater near Denver was perhaps the most fitting site for U2 to record its first live concert film in 1983. Released simultaneously with a live EP called Under a Blood Red Sky, the project captures the Irish rock band during its most elemental drive to carve out a permanent niche for itself in the history of rock ‘n’ roll.

With this year marking the 25th anniversary of U2 Live at Red Rocks, both the film and the EP were recently re-released in a CD/DVD set, giving U2 fans an opportunity to either discover or rediscover the primal force that powered the band through its transition from aspiring musicians to rock ‘n’ roll legends.
Although this marks the first time for the live concert film to be available on DVD format, U2’s blatant determination is still as undeniable now as it was 25 years ago.

“Viewing the 17 performances on U2 Live at Red Rocks, which was filmed on June 5, 1983, you can see a band straining beyond everything it had previously achieved to propel itself to a new, unexplored place,” writes Anthony De Curtis in the liner notes of the re-released set.

The title, setting, and packaging of both the original and re-released film and album, in fact, conjure images of  a new, unexplored place that appears as savagely barren as a Martian landscape. Even the inclement weather during the filming of the concert — which turned the normally clear and sunny Rocky Mountain sky into a shroud of rain and fog — served to solidify that imagery of rugged wilderness.

Because the U2 Live at Red Rocks re-release includes five songs that didn’t appear on the original, however, it more fully illustrates the band’s status as conquering pioneers in that waste howling wilderness. (Those additional songs are “Out of Control,” “Twilight,” “An Cat Dubh/Into the Heart,” “Two Hearts Beat as One.” and “Cry/The Electric Co.”) Even though the power of the band is still potent today, even though Bono still commands the full attention and participation of the audience, Red Rocks shows the band’s daunting presence in the midst of its own evolution. On that epic rainy night, innocence gave way to experience even before the tools of the band’s talents had become as sharply honed as they are today.

Watching Bono stretch and strain on tip-toe toward the audience is almost quaint compared to the more sophisticated yet still subtle ways he reaches out to audience members now. The savage rhythm of Adam Clayton’s bass notes and Larry Mullen Jr.’s drumbeats conjure feral animals on the prowl when juxtaposed against the raw backdrop of Red Rocks. And the high-pitched chords that characterize Edge’s guitar style could instead be the lonesome howl of a desert coyote.

The show was part of the band’s American tour in support of its third album, War, which was “a far more aggressive album” than U2’s first or second had been, De Curtis writes. Therefore, even without the calamitous weather that ultimately turned out to be serendipitous, Red Rocks was an appropriate venue for unleashing the power in songs like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “New Year’s Day.”

G. Brown wrote in a review of the show in The Denver Post, “A lot of things had to go wrong for U2’s show at Red Rocks Amphitheater . . . to come off so right.”

That concert, in fact, might have been the defining moment in which U2 learned that the existence of contrast could be used to the band’s advantage. Only U2, for example, could create an album with the ferocity to be called War that included a song with the submissiveness to be called “Surrender.” Only U2 could introduce a song called “Sunday Bloody Sunday” — whose title comes from a 1972 attack by the British army on Irish protesters — and be accepted when Bono describes it as “not a rebel song.” And only U2 could film a live concert under the black belly of a cloud and get away with calling the film “Under a Blood Red Sky.”

No wonder Rolling Stone hails the film as one of the “50 Moments That Changed Rock ‘n’ Roll.” U2 seems to have earned that accomplishment based only on sheer audacity and raw ambition.

“Sunday Bloody Sunday” is perhaps the most memorable part of the performance, on both the original and the re-release. Not only is the song itself — and this particular performance of it — powerful, but the image of Bono marching out on stage and waving that white flag above the audience’s heads has become a memorable picture to the early-MTV generation.

During that time, the white flag represented the group’s preoccupation with peace and pacifism on an album called War. Anyone who watches U2 Live at Red Rocks in its entirety, however, will realize he intended no sort of gesture of surrender. No, with that white flag planted firmly on the collective memory of global pop culture, Bono claimed the future of rock ‘n’ roll.