U2eiTOUR Leg Two Pre-Show and Post-Show Songs

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2018-11-28)

UPDATED: November 28, 2018

This article deals with the second leg of the U2eiTour. For leg one, please visit here.

With each tour we track the music by other artists that U2 use throughout the production, including the music used before, after and during the shows. The eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE tour is no different, and this article deals with the music we heard throughout the second leg of that tour, as the tour visited Europe. We’ve been tracking these songs since the PopMart tour in 1997, and all of the tours since can be found in one spot in our Tour Songs news page. As well on that page you can find links to Spotify playlists containing most of the songs if you want to relive a particular tour. The Spotify playlist for leg two of the #U2eiTOUR is available here.

The tour music we hear before the show is something that has been curated by Gavin Friday on past tours, and is something that he continues to do so. The music we hear before shows starts off early in the day with a mix of tracks from one album – one or two artists are featured on a number of tracks in a row. Later that breaks into an actual mix where the songs are all from different artists.

The full albums identified in the early part of the evening are Anohni’s Hopelessness album, Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express album, Arcade Fire’s Everything Now album, Joy Division’s Closer album, LCD Soundsystem’s American Dream album, The Villagers’ The Art of Pretending to Swim, Massive Attack’s Blue Lines and The xx’s I See You album. The xx was heard before Berlin 1 and Cologne. Both the Anohni and Kraftwerk albums were heard before the show in Berlin 2 where Bono struggled with his voice and again during the intermission while fans waited to hear if the concert would be postponed.

Individual tracks from these albums have been identified including Anohni’s “Drone Bomb Me,” “4 Degrees,” “Execution,” “Obama,” “Violent Men,” “Why Did You Separate Me from the Earth?” “Crisis,” “Hopelessness,” and “Marrow”; Kraftwerk’s “The Hall of Mirrors,” “Europe Endless,” and “Showroom Dummies” and The xx’s “Dangerous,” “Say Something Loving,” “Lips,” “A Violent Noise,” “Performance,” “Replica,” “Brave for You,” “On Hold,” “I Dare You,” and “Test Me”; Villagers’ “Ada,” “Real Go-Getter,” “Fool,” “Long Time Waiting” and “Sweet Saviour”; Massive Attack’s “Lately,” “One Love,” and “Safe from Harm” and LCD Soundsystem’s “Other Voices” and “Call the Police.” Not all of these songs have been added to our playlist on Spotify but we have added one track from each album.

After these full albums are played, the mix of songs starts to play, which includes songs from a number of artists. While this mix of songs plays on the screens are a display of “protest posters” by the artist Edel Rodriguez.

Initially as the show started in Europe, up until the shows in Manchester the mix included the following songs:

  • “Israel” – Siouxsie and the Banshees
  • “Angel” – Gavin Friday
  • “Electioneering” – Radiohead
  • “Never Let Me Down Again (Digitalism Remix)” – Depeche Mode
  • “This is America” – Childish Gambino
  • “Think” – Aretha Franklin
  • “In Between Days” – The Cure
  • “Black Panther” – Kendrick Lamar
  • “I Dare You” – The XX
  • “First We Take Manhattan” – Leonard Cohen
  • “Kebab Träume” – DAF
  • “Rock Me Amadeus” – Falco
  • “Humility” – Gorillaz
  • “Kong” – Nenah Cherry
  • “Red Right Hand” – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
  • “Money (That’s What I Want)” – The Flying Lizards
  • “Helden” (German version of “Heroes”) – David Bowie [For shows in Berlin and Cologne]
  • “Héros” (French version of “Heroes”) – David Bowie [For shows in Paris]
  • “Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft” – The Carpenters
  • “Sign O’ The Times” – Prince
  • “People Have the Power” – Patti Smith
  • “Talk” – St Francis Hotel
  • “A Means to an End” – Joy Division
  • “Black Screen” – LCD Soundsystem
  • “Tilted” – Christine and the Queens

Starting with the first show in Manchester a number of newer songs were introduced to the playlist. Some of the older songs are still in the mix, but there are a significant number of new additions. The following is a list of these newly identified songs:

  • “Fashion” – David Bowie
  • “Bodysnatchers” – Radiohead
  • “Everybody Loves You” – Soak
  • “Temptation” – New Order
  • “Personal Jesus” – Depeche Mode
  • “Hong Kong Garden” – Siouxsie and the Banshees
  • “Flesh for Fantasy” (St. Francis Hotel Remix) – Billy Idol
  • “Freedom” – George Michael
  • “We Are Your Friends” – Justice vs Simian
  • “Heathens” – Twenty One Pilots
  • “I Travel” – Simple Minds
  • “How Soon is Now?” – The Smiths
  • “Heartbeats” – The Knife
  • “Cars” – Gary Numan
  • “Unfinished Symphony” – Massive Attack
  • “1979” – Smashing Pumpkins
  • “Freedom” – George Michael

“Red Right Hand” by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and “People Have the Power” by Patti Smith are two of the songs that carried on into this new mix for the latter part of the leg, which was used up until the final show in Berlin. At the final show in Berlin a mix of “farewell songs” was played instead, which we believe was the same playlist used the last night on the U2360 tour in Moncton, NB, as the songs identified played in the same order.

  • “The Final Countdown” – Europe
  • “This May be the Last Time” – The Staples Singers
  • “The Last Time” – Rolling Stones
  • “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” – Elton John
  • “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” – The Byrds
  • “Goodbye Girl” – Squeeze
  • “Then I’ll Tell You Goodbye” – The Easybeats
  • “What A Way to End it All” – Deaf School
  • “It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over” – Lennie Kravitz
  • “Leaving on a Jet Plane” – Chantal Kreviazuk
  • “The End” – Kings of Leon
  • “Don’t Dream Its Over” – Crowded House
  • “Hello, Goodbye” – The Beatles
  • “Goodbye Mr. Ed” – Tin Machine
  • “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” – Bananarama
  • “School’s Out” – Alice Cooper
  • “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” – R.E.M.
  • “I Wanna Be Sedated” – The Ramones

This “farewell mix” is curated by Willie Williams, and not by Gavin Friday who has worked on the prior mentioned mixes. In 2011 we identified many of the same songs, in the same order at the final show of the U2360 tour in Moncton NB. We believe this mix to be the same one used in 2011, we’ve just been able to identify additional songs.

For those wondering, the songs are in the same general order each night of the tour, however, they may not always start in the same spot, and the mix is not always at the same spot when the intro music is heard. For instance, night one in Berlin, the last song was by Falco before the intro music, but on the second it was The Carpenters, and in Munich it started after Patti Smith, and for the first night in Paris, the show started after Nick Cave. The mix being used during these four shows was the same, but the intro music started after different songs each night.

Intro Music:

Mid-way through the first leg of the tour, the band started taking the stage to “It’s A Beautiful World” by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds. The song had also been used in the rehearsals for the tour but didn’t get used in an actual show until Las Vegas. This song continued onto leg two of the tour in Europe and was used before each night. On the set list for leg one the song was listed as “It’s a Zootiful World”, a reference to some Zooropa era voices you can hear throughout the mix including “What do you want?” For the European leg of the tour however, it is just referenced as “Noel Gallagher / Chaplin” on the set lists.

After the intro music there is a brief instrumental piece, overlaid with sounds from an MRI examination. The voices are saying “Breathe, Breathe in please, Breathe in, Breathe in, Exhale, Thank you. Exhale. Thank you.” Under the voices the music that you can hear is Hans Zimmer and Benjamin Wallfish’s “Rain” from the Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack.

In Europe, the band dropped “Love is All We Have Left” in favor of a new introduction with the music from “Zooropa”‘s long introduction, over which is heard Charlie Chaplin’s voice taken from the film, The Final Dictator (1940).

During the Show:

  • “Sunday Bloody Sunday” Ending

While the band was playing “Sunday Bloody Sunday” an audio mix played as the song ends that features a number of audio clips that Tim C identified back in 2015 when the mix was first used to introduce “Raised by Wolves”, although these days it sits before “Until the End of the World”. Included in the mix is Terry Jacks’ “Seasons in the Sun”, Mud’s “Tiger Feet” and Donny Osmond’s “Any Dream Will Do” can be heard in the mix. For a full look at the included pieces see the original article where Tim identified the components in the mix. This piece of the show was dropped mid-way through the second leg.

  • “The Sick Rose” and “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” – Gavin Friday, Regine Chassagne, U2

Gavin Friday, longtime friend to Bono, and former lead singer of the Virgin Prunes is featured during the Experience and Innocence Tour. Over the music for “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” Gavin can be heard reciting William Blake’s poem, “The Sick Rose” from Songs of Experience, and then continuing on to sing “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”. Regine Chassagne from Arcade Fire joins Gavin on vocals for the song. The music accompanying these vocals is a remix of “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me” by St Francis Hotel done for this tour. In 2015, during the Intermission, the band started out using a variety of videos before settling in on a cover of “The Fly” by Gavin Friday, newly recorded for that tour. This time, Gavin’s vocals are back for the Intermission, accompanied by an animated video that walks through a twisted comic book take on the band complete with super powers, and mysterious strangers. The remix of “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” featuring Gavin’s vocals was released as a limited 12-inch record for Record Store Day’s Black Friday event in 2018.

  • “Women of the World”

“Women of the World” is a song that was first recorded by Ivor Cutler and Linda Hirst in 1983. In 1999, Jim O’Rourke released his album Eureka, which included a cover of the song titled, “Prelude to 110 or 220 / Women of the World”. O’Rourke is probably best known as a musician and a producer, and worked with Sonic Youth.

In the early shows the O’Rourke version of the song was accompanied with added vocals by Madison Ryann Ward. As the tour has gone on the band has added other voices into the mix, recording the audience at the Ellen show singing the song, and later inviting people to submit their own vocals singing the song.

Outro Music

On the first leg of the tour in North America U2 switched back and forth between two songs, their own “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)” which has been remixed and is titled the “Ambient Mix”, and “This Must Be the Place” by the Talking Heads. The Talking Heads songs was used throughout the European tour, at every city on the tour. “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)” was resurrected for the last three nights in Dublin on the tour. Each of the three nights featured Bono singing a portion of the song over top of a backing track as he left the stage after “13 (There is A Light)”. On the set list on the final night in Dublin this was listed as “Miraculous Metal” and listed as being played from Terryworld. This addition to the tour was dropped after Dublin, and was not heard in the final show in Berlin.

Thank you and other lists

A big thank you for the help from Joe, Remy, G’lies, Nico, Tassoula, Elva, Vasco, Joni, Allison, Beth, Remy, Amra, Harry, W. Tonis, and U2Start and any others who helped along the way.

You are able to access all of our news stories about the pre-show songs going back to coverage of the original Joshua Tree tour, in one spot, here. The page also includes links to all of our pre-show playlists at Spotify going back to the PopMart tour.

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