| Lovetown Tour | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tour by U2 | ||||
| Associated album | Rattle and Hum | |||
| Start date | 21 September 1989 | |||
| End date | 10 January 1990 | |||
| Legs | 2 | |||
| Shows | 47 | |||
| U2 tour chronology | ||||
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The Lovetown Tour was a concert tour by the Irish rock band U2, which took place in late 1989 and early 1990.
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It was limited in scope, but did try to reach places that their 1987 Joshua Tree Tour had missed, all the while avoiding the United States entirely.[1]
The tour's opening night was on 21 September 1989 at the Entertainment Centre in Perth, Australia. The first leg took place over the next 10 weeks in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. A brief second leg hit four countries in Europe for four weeks, ending on 10 January 1990 at the Sport Paleis Ahoy in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Of the tour's 47 concerts, 23 were played in Australia.[2][3]
The Lovetown Tour is famed among fans as it had the greatest set list variety of any U2 tour, including the use of six separate songs to open concerts, which is still U2's record amount of concert openers for one tour. The tour featured the most different original U2 songs of any tour in the 1980s, though it did not have as many total different songs as the Joshua Tree Tour, which featured a large number of cover songs.
B. B. King toured with the band and played the first set each night. At the end of U2's set, King and his band joined them for a short encore.
The tour was plagued by troubles with Bono's voice due to both excessive use and illness - he stated in concert that he caught "some pretty psychedelic germs" in Australia and that they were "having their Annual General Meeting" in his throat. These vocal troubles meant three Sydney concerts had to be postponed. Later, severe troubles meant a concert in Amsterdam had to prematurely conclude; two other Amsterdam shows were cancelled and replaced by four shows in Rotterdam, causing the tour to spill over into 1990 instead of ending on New Year's Eve at Dublin's Point Depot as planned. However, when Bono's voice was not troubling him, he had an impressive singing range, with the falsetto later mastered starting to seriously appear, but without sacrificing the powerful depth of his lower singing range.
As with all U2 tours from 1983 on, the stage and lighting design was done by Willie Williams. The tour name, possibly a contraction of the Rattle and Hum song "When Love Comes to Town", was the first not to be named for the band's then-current album; as of 2009[update], all of their subsequent tours have also had different names from any album.
The 31 December 1989, Dublin concert was broadcast on RTE and BBC radio around the world, giving many fans their only taste of the tour; it was widely bootlegged and ultimately officially released in digital form in 2004 as Live from the Point Depot. It was during the 30 December Dublin show the night before, however, that Bono, apparently dissatisfied with the band's stagnation, famously said:
This foreshadowed the abrupt directional changes the band would take in the 1990s, beginning with Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV Tour.
| Date | City | Country | Venue | Opening Act(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Leg 1: Oceania and Asia[4] | ||||
| 21 September 1989 | Perth | Australia | Perth Entertainment Centre | Weddings Parties Anything B.B. King |
| 22 September 1989 | ||||
| 23 September 1989 | ||||
| 27 September 1989 | Sydney | Sydney Entertainment Centre | ||
| 28 September 1989 | ||||
| 29 September 1989 | ||||
| 2 October 1989 | Brisbane | Brisbane Entertainment Centre | ||
| 3 October 1989 | ||||
| 4 October 1989 | ||||
| 7 October 1989 | Melbourne | National Tennis Centre | ||
| 8 October 1989 | ||||
| 9 October 1989 | ||||
| 12 October 1989 | ||||
| 13 October 1989 | ||||
| 14 October 1989 | ||||
| 16 October 1989 | ||||
| 20 October 1989 | Sydney | Sydney Entertainment Centre | ||
| 21 October 1989 | ||||
| 27 October 1989 | Adelaide | Memorial Drive Park | ||
| 28 October 1989 | ||||
| 4 November 1989 | Christchurch | New Zealand | Lancaster Park | B.B. King |
| 8 November 1989 | Wellington | Athletic Park | ||
| 10 November 1989 | Auckland | Western Springs Stadium | ||
| 11 November 1989 | ||||
| 17 November 1989 | Sydney | Australia | Sydney Entertainment Centre | Weddings Parties Anything B.B. King |
| 18 November 1989 | ||||
| 19 November 1989 | ||||
| 23 November 1989 | Yokohama | Japan | Yokohama Arena | |
| 25 November 1989 | Tokyo | Tokyo Dome | ||
| 26 November 1989 | ||||
| 28 November 1989 | Osaka | Osaka-jō Hall | ||
| 29 November 1989 | ||||
| 1 December 1989 | ||||
| Leg 2: Europe[5] | ||||
| 11 December 1989 | Paris | France | Palais Omnisports Bercy | B.B. King |
| 12 December 1989 | ||||
| 14 December 1989 | Dortmund | West Germany | Westfalenhalle | |
| 15 December 1989 | ||||
| 16 December 1989 | ||||
| 18 December 1989 | Amsterdam | Netherlands | RAI Europe Hal | |
| 26 December 1989 | Dublin | Ireland | Point Depot | |
| 27 December 1989 | ||||
| 30 December 1989 | ||||
| 31 December 1989 | ||||
| 5 January 1990 | Rotterdam | Netherlands | Ahoy | |
| 6 January 1990 | ||||
| 9 January 1990 | ||||
| 10 January 1990 | ||||