Seeing Them Live

S02E08 - Bono Loses His Voice - A Ticket Stub Story

Episode Summary

In this episode of 'Seeing Them Live,' host Charles Zona dives into a special segment called Ticket Stub Stories, sharing memories from his book, Ticket Stub Stories: A Memoir of Live Music. Charles recounts his experience attending a U2 concert in 1985 at the UIC Pavilion, highlighting a moment when Bono lost his voice. The story weaves through the unique perks of being a UIC student, the thrill of live concerts, and the meticulous process of fact-checking memories with actual recordings. Tune in to relive this historic concert and be inspired to share your own concert stories.

Episode Notes

In this episode of Seeing Them Live, host Charles Zona introduces a new segment called Ticket Stub Stories, inspired by his memoir, Ticket Stub Stories: A Memoir of Live Music. Charles recounts a vivid memory from a U2 concert he attended in 1985 at the UIC Pavilion, where Bono lost his voice mid-performance. He delves into the background of the concert, detailing the unique perks for UIC students and sharing his personal experiences leading up to the show. Charles also highlights the editorial process that unearthed a bootleg recording of the concert, offering a fresh perspective on his memories. By featuring these segments, he hopes to encourage listeners to share their own concert stories. For those interested in becoming a guest on the show, Charles provides an open invitation and details for participation. The episode invites listeners to reminisce about live music and the powerful memories that concerts create.

Link to audio recording mentioned in this episode (U2 - Live In Chicago - March 22nd, 1985): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJAcaN2SMBI

VENUES MENTIONED: UIC Pavilion (Chicago)

BANDS MENTIONED: U2

Episode Transcription

[00:00:00] Charles: Hi, this is Charles Zona, the host of Seeing Them Live. I'm trying something a bit different for this episode. I'll be telling a story from my book, Ticket Stub Stories, a memoir of live music. And like the book, I'm calling these segments of the podcast Ticket Stub Stories. From time to time, I'll feature them as we go throughout the seasons here.

[00:00:24] I'm also hoping that segments like this will encourage you, our listener, to share your concert stories. As I've learned from season one of Seeing Them Live, when someone thinks they don't have a memorable concert story to share, it turns out many times they do. Like when my co-host and producer, Doug Florzak, said the only weird thing that happened to him was at a Queen concert, in 1977 at the Chicago Stadium.

[00:00:52] You can hear Doug retell that story and others in Season 1, Episode 7. Today's episode features a U2 concert I attended in 1985, where Bono loses his voice. The story itself is interesting, but while writing my book, my editor helped to uncover more information about this particular show. This kind of thing happened several times during the writing of the book, and as I began recording these stories and writing them down, I would initially, of course, go off my memory.

[00:01:27] But as I began to research fan sites and talk to people who are at some of these concerts, I found that these stories often begin to change and become more refined and clearer. So, this story is about, like I said, a U2 concert. I attended on March 22nd, 1985. U2 were touring in support of their new album, The Unforgettable Fire, and we're playing the second night of a two-night sold out stand at a place called the UIC Pavilion. 

[00:01:59] The UIC Pavilion has a seating capacity of about 10, 000 people. UIC stands for the University of Illinois at Chicago, and it's where I went to college. Back then, and maybe this is still the case, if you were a student at UIC, the box office, would reserve two seats in the first 10 rows right up the center with a two-ticket limit for UIC students.

[00:02:27] And this was, a really cool perk if you were a student. The other cool thing about this was that hardly anyone knew about it. So, I'm going to start with a little bit of a backstory. My first concert, as a UIC student was seeing the Kinks at The Pavilion. The show was scheduled for December 2nd, 1984.

[00:02:50] I wasn't a huge Kinks fan. You know, I was a casual fan. I enjoyed their music, but since they were playing on campus, I figured, well, I'll go check them out. When it was announced what day, the tickets were going on sale, I didn't camp out in front of the box office or anything. I just showed up, uh, maybe, I don't know, like an hour or so before I had to go off to my first class. So maybe, it was around seven o'clock when I got there. 

[00:03:19] When I arrived, there were only a handful of people in line. And after an hour or so, you know, small talk and chit chatting, I started talking to this guy named Dan and mentioned to him that I was going to school at UIC. He told me that he was also a student and he let me in on this little-known secret, at least secret to me, about the 20 seats for the students right up the center in the first 10 rows. Dan said, you know, you had to present your UIC ID when you got up to the box office, and then they would, give you, two of these tickets.

[00:03:57] This seemed too good to be true, so when it was my turn to buy my kinks tickets, I pulled out my student ID and showed it to the person behind the plexiglass and she reached down into a drawer and pulled out two tickets from a short stack that looked like they had been set aside. I handed over my money in exchange for two tickets, in row H dead center and I thought to myself, “you’ve got to be kidding me.” This is, this is a crazy perk for students at UIC. 

[00:04:30] Back now to the U2 story. I was working as a dishwasher at the local pizza place where I lived in the suburbs and every Sunday night, because the restaurant would be so busy on the weekends, they would double the dish washing crew. It was always me and this guy, Marty, washing dishes on Sunday night.

[00:04:52] I would bring my boom box and prop it up on one of those chrome wire metal shelves that you see in restaurants, right near an outlet, and we'd listen to the radio as we washed hundreds of dishes, pizza racks, and countless pieces of silverware. 

[00:05:08] As the night wore on, I would eventually break out my U2 cassette tape, Live Under a Blood Red Sky. Marty and I would sing along with Bono and the band, slightly increasing the volume with each passing song, until the manager would come back into the dish room and told us to turn the effing radio down.

[00:05:28] This was our weekly tradition. When it was announced U2 were going to play two nights at UIC, I jumped on getting a pair of tickets, one for me and one for Marty. Because of the student perk that I described earlier, I snagged third row dead center. As you can imagine, we were both totally geeked out about it, and you can check out the ticket stub of that show in our ticket stub museum on the Seeing Them Live website.

[00:05:57] Being so close to U2 live was unbelievable. We could see all of the dynamics going on between the band members and the audience, and the band was on fire that night, to just simply put it. As U2 got deeper into their set, I noticed Bono was struggling to hit some of his higher notes. He began to grimace and was like, you know, putting his hand up to his throat occasionally, as if to signal to the band and to the audience that there was something wrong with his voice.

[00:06:30] So when I was putting together this story for my book, I, you know, naturally thought this would be a great one to add. With my memory a bit foggy from 30 plus years having passed, I went to Setlist.fm and took a stab at the point in the concert where Bono tells the crowd he is losing his voice. I estimated that it happened after the song Surrender, and then paraphrased what Bono said to the crowd, and it went something like this: "I seem to have lost my voice. Can you all help me sing?" And that's how I would usually tell the story to people over the years. And I, you know, I mean, that sounds like something Bono would say, right? Even if it's an approximation.

[00:07:19] But when I gave the first draft of my book to my editor, Jennifer, she returned it several weeks later with literally a couple thousand edits and a very specific correction slash question to what Bono did or did not say that night. She said, "I happen to be a U2 superfan and I listened to a bootleg recording of the show you saw."

[00:07:43] You know, she inserted the link, of this recording, which was posted on YouTube. And then she went on to say, "and Bono said no such thing after Surrender." So, I was like, holy crap, there's a recording of the show? And second, I know Bono said something about losing his voice after one of the songs. So, it must be somewhere deeper into the recording.

[00:08:08] So I began and I went ahead and started listening to the concert again from that link she had provided me. And at the outset I was blown away by the quality of the recording. It's simply fantastic. I encourage you guys to out there to listen to it. It's, it's a really great recording. I was immediately taken back in time to that night.

[00:08:30] The rush of memories came flooding over me and the band really sounds unbelievable, especially the Edge's guitar playing. It's really incredible. And you can check out a link to this concert in the show notes. If you take a listen to the recording from that night, starting with the song, the unforgettable fire, you'll notice towards the end of that song, Bono skips over some of the parts where he has to hit a high note. That night he just couldn't do it, but the fans were more than willing to help him out. 

[00:09:06] So at about the 33-minute timestamp in the recording, after the song The Unforgettable Fire, Bono says, "It's not about voices or guitars or amplifiers. It's much more than that when you're playing a concert to all these people. If I can't sing, well, you can sing for me, and so let's, let's take a listen to that live." 

[00:09:32] Bono: " I keep, keep saying it's, it's not about, you know, voices or guitars or amplifiers, it's, it's much bigger than that when you play a concert to all these people. It's much bigger. If, uh, if I can't sing, well, you, you can sing for me."

[00:10:02] Charles: After being enlightened about that recording of the show, I began to discover others in shows that I had attended and were writing about in my book. So, we'll feature some of those stories in upcoming episodes. And that's, that's the end of this story. 

[00:10:20] And we hope you enjoyed this segment of Seeing Them Live. As always, thanks for listening, and if you have a concert story, we would love to hear it. The process of being a guest on Seeing Them Live is really quite painless. We'll do a lot of the groundwork to help you develop your concert story. And along with the power of editing, you and I and Doug will all sound great. If you're interested in becoming a guest, shoot me an email at czona, that's the letter c-z-o-n-a, at seeingthemlive.com. Thanks for listening.