by playboyman

Nov. 4th, 1987 remains the single most sentimental evening of my life. I saw my very first rock'n'roll concert EVER that evening - and by god, it was U2 on the Joshua Tree Tour! What better way to have gotten my concert-going cherry broken (so to speak :)

I was 14 years old, and coerced my parent to drive the 15 miles from suburban Stillwater, MN into Saint Paul, to the Civic Center, where U2 were playing. ON A SCHOOL NIGHT. Now that I look back on it, I really must've put up a heckuva brouhaha to get the folks to do that on a weeknight...I must've flashed 'em w. that famous 'Time' magazine cover or something...anyways, it worked, god bless.

I was a dorky little guy w. eyeglasses at the time, and since nothing's worse when you're a kid then being a dorky little guy w. eyeglasses AND all alone @ a rock concert, I talked my childhood best friend into checking out the show w. me - only at the time he happened to hate U2! He actually had really good cartoon-sketching skills, and was constantly throwing out exaggerated portraits of Bono & his big nose, and the rest of the band looking grim, dour and pretentious-as-hell... and while I & the other 15,000 people @ the show never stopped standing up, my lousy friend sat slumping in his seat for the entire show, the jerk! (Of course, now that 10 years have passed he finally admits he's come to his senses and likes the 'Joshua Tree' album now...when I saw him over the summer I told him I deserve backpay for all the crap he's ever doled out my way re: U2 .)

My most vivid memory of the evening was the opening of 'Streets'. Having gotten tickets just earlier in the week via Ticketmaster, I was sure the seats were nosebleeds, but then we wound up being only 5 rows behind & just to the right of the stage! Then when the lights went down, the band walked on to 'Streets' and Larry's drumming kicked in, and the arena floodlights came up on the sea of 15,000 people all (except for my @#$% best friend) losing their minds, that was the EXACT MOMENT that my 14-year-old soul was sold to rock'n'roll!

(Being directly behind the stage, we were also only around 30 feet away from the speakers hanging over the band. It having been my first rock concert, I didn't completely regain my hearing until 48 hrs. later; for the next 2 days I insisted that my typing-class teacher let me avoid all the noise by working out in the hallway.)

At any rate, Cameron Crowe has his Led Zeppelin formative-youth moments, and I've got my U2. That evening, and for a long time afterwards, I was sure that Nov. 4th '87 was the single greatest night of my entire life. (Now it's just the most sentimental!)

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