Posted 12.04.2008

U2 at Red Rocks, The Clash at Shea Stadium, plus Warren Zevon revisited

By Mike Cote

THE CLASH — Live at Shea Stadium (Sony/BMG)
U2 — Under a Blood Red Sky/Live at Red Rocks (Universal)

In the early ’80s, the Clash and U2 both vaulted into superstar status, but the British punkers hit the stratosphere just before they flamed out while the Irish rockers were just beginning to stake their claim as the most popular band in the world (sorry Rolling Stones.)

The previously unreleased Live at Shea Stadium presents the Clash in 1982 opening for the Who at Shea Stadium. Pumped by the platinum success of Combat Rock and its hit singles “Rock the Casbah” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” the band commanded the crowd as if they were headliners, pummeling through a 16-song set that included career highlights “London Calling,” “Police on my Back” and “Clampdown.”

The best evidence of the Clash’s impact and the band’s diverse roots comes on the medley of the hip-hop dance beat of “The Magnificent Seven” and the reggae-laced “Armgideon Time,” with Joe Strummer announcing the change in the locale from R&B America to Jamaica. Rarely has any band attempted that kind of musical journey in front of a stadium crowd. The Clash never lost their club roots.

Not that it wasn’t legendary already, but Red Rocks Amphitheatre got a major boost with the international rock crowd after U2 decided to film a concert there in 1983 upon release of their breakthrough album, War. Despite a storm that drenched the crowd and nearly canceled the concert, the band soldiered on as the camera crew recorded the performance with water-fogged cameras.

The eight-song Under a Blood Sky EP actually contains only a couple of songs from that concert (“Gloria” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday”), but the 17-song concert was culled entirely from that show. (The newly remastered CD and DVD editions are available separately and as a deluxe package.)

By now, Bono must be embarrassed by that poofed-up mullet and his overly enthusiastic stage antics. Even though he barely had a right at this point, the singer was already playing superstar. (Trucking out a white flag for “Sunday Bloody Sunday” sends a mixed message when you’re also taking your shirt off for the ladies.)

At one point, Bono makes a point of introducing the Edge (“Do you know who this is? This is the Edge.”), but the guitarist hardly needed an introduction. Though Bono would grow into a much more powerful singer in the years ahead, it’s the guitarist singular style that gave the band its strongest identity then as now. (Check out the opening chords of “Out of Control.”) U2 would climb to much greater commercial heights, but this show was a career defining moment.

WARREN ZEVON Warren Zevon (Rhino)

It’s a testament to the critical acclaim Warren Zevon earned as a songwriter that his first major label disc gets the deluxe two-CD treatment, especially considering that it only sold 80,000 upon its original release in 1976.

Zevon would flirt with stardom a couple of years later when Excitable Boy and its single “Werewolves of London” became major hits, but when Jackson Browne helped him secure a recording contract with Asylum Records, he was a struggling songwriter with few prospects.

Although Warren Zevon would achieve only modest chart success, it became the blueprint for his career, especially after Linda Ronstadt cover four songs from it, having a hit with “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” and using “Hasten Down the Wind” as the title track of her album.

This new edition of the album features a second disc with early takes (“Desperados Under the Eaves”) and alternate versions (“I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead”) that chart the progress of the recordings. Several solo piano demos (“Frank and Jesse James,” “The French Inhaler,” “Mohammed’s Radio”) underscore the strength of Zevon’s songs and his narrative touch.

His fragile vocal on a band demo of “Hasten Down the Wind” shows the vulnerable side of a guy who became much better known for songs about mercenaries and that “hairy handed gent who ran amuck in Kent.”

Last updated on Jan 21, 2009 at 09:08 AM