99.1 PLR celebrates 50 years! This week we are celebrating another great year in our history: 1987!
That year PLR welcomed U2 to New Haven Coliseum. U2 hit the road in 1987 to support their fifth studio album “The Joshua Tree,” which featured major hits like With or Without You, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Where The Streets Have No Name and In God’s Country. Joining them at the Coliseum was special guest Mason Ruffner.
U2’s New Haven show occurred between two stadium shows. The night before they played in front of 55,000+ in Foxborough and two nights later over 86,000 at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. At the time U2 was perhaps the biggest rock band in the world. New Haven Coliseum’s 10,500 capacity was one of the smaller venues on their North American Tour. It’s believed that their stop in New Haven was U2’s way of saying “thank you” to the city that first welcomed them with open arms on their very first tour in the United States in 1980.
U2
Tour: The Joshua Tree
Special Guest: Mason Ruffner
Wednesday September 23, 1987
New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum
Ticket Price: $14.50
Band Lineup: Bono (vocals), The Edge (guitar), Adam Clayton (bass), Larry Mullen Jr. (drums)
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
- Bullet the Blue Sky
- Running to Blue Sky
- Exit
- Sunday Bloody Sunday
- Help! (The Beatles cover)
- Helter Skelter (The Beatles cover)
- Bad
- October
- New Year’s Day
- Pride (In the Name of Love)
- Trash, Trampoline and the Party Girl (encore)
- With or Without You (encore)
- 40 (encore)
*source: setlist.fm
Check out these live clips of U2 in 1987