U2 Live at the US Festival, 1983: a bev davies photograph of some significance!

The following relates to my Georgia Straight feature about the Dream Syndicate, who are playing Vancouver this Monday. As explained there, the second-to-last time they played Vancouver was in 1983, opening for U2 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre (my upcoming blogpost -- not finished as I type this, but which will be visible here later today -- has more deets of that and an expansion of my interview with Wynn.) There is a bit about U2 in that post, too! 

But Bev -- who I profiled here -- was keen to also share another, somewhat more famous photo she took of U2, capturing an even more remarkable moment than in the other blogpost I'm doing. This is Bono at the US Festival (pronounced like "us," not U.S., by the by) in May of 1983, about to (deliberately) fall into the crowd. 

U2 by bev davies, May 30 1983, by bev davies, not to be reused without permission

Bev explains: 

I saw them [at the Queen E] just before I went down to the Us Festival. And I saw them at the Us Festival, where he fell into the audience - that makes it sound accidental, but it wasn't like he dived. I had run into him in the pit earlier before they played. The reason its important is that they still had the rule that you had to ask the band if you could photograph them, so I asked him, and he said sure. 

And no one knew who they were, so they went on in the daytime. What he was doing onstage, later, when they played, he was storming around at the front of the stage area, and I quite recognized what he was doing: he was figuring out a way to fall into the audience, and I photographed that. That's one of Nardwuar's favourite photographs; he always bugged me about it. And the other photographers standing around me said, "You got that, how did you know?" I knew that because I'd watched Jello! 

And everyone was saying after they played, "We're never going to see those guys in the daytime again, they're going to be a nightime act!" Because they were so good. That was before everyone hated them, poor things.

Note: Bev also shot maybe her best shot of the Clash at that festival, as seen in the Montecristo piece. Really it's a shot of Joe Strummer looking pensive, but it was the original Clash lineup playing. It wouldn't last much longer... 

It's kind of sad how far U2 have fallen, perhaps undeservedly, and interesting to remember back when they were the coolest band around. Me, if I had free tickets to the Dream Syndicate and free tickets to U2, I'd go see the Dream Syndicate. But I do remember buying War, and thinking it was a pretty great record! Poor things indeed. 

Meantime, check out the Dream Syndicate! More to come.