PIC: U2 were paid £300, sandwiches, and beer for 80s gig
Nowadays, the group may be used to luxury jets, worldwide tours and teams of people carrying their gear, rigging their lighting and generally catering to their every whim and desire, but at the very beginning the band just wanted sandwiches, beers, and a few bottles of soft drink.
“They were a small band looking for publicity and looking for gigs and they were very personable and easy to get on with,” said Eoin Ronayne, who booked a fledgling U2 for a gig in February 1980.
According to the contract for the gig, which Mr Ronayne recently posted on Facebook during a particularly bad bout of reminiscence, U2’s fee for the gig was a mere £300.
The band also submitted some relatively modest requests — they asked that gig tickets be no more than £2 and wanted 100% billing on all advertising and posters issued. They also asked for some sandwiches, beer, and minerals and access to an electrician for one hour.
“When I left school in Waterford in the 1980s I got involved in pirate radio. I had a Dave Fanning-type rock programme and I also used to run rock gigs,” said Mr Ronayne.
“I came across this band getting reviews from playing in what was the Dandelion Market, now St Stephen’s Green Shopping Centre, and they were called U2. Then I got a phone call saying would I be interested in taking them for a gig and so I did.”
At the time, U2 had just released their first record, ‘Three’, and the gig in Waterford Regional Technical College was to be their first tour outside of the capital.
“They played in the canteen,” said Mr Ronayne. “They were a really small band, and the stage was just the canteen tables pulled together, but it was a sell-out.”
While Mr Ronayne , a self-confessed rock-mad teen at the time, watched U2 play their sound check, he admits he skipped the actual gig.
“The Horslips were playing in St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra so I decided it would be better fun to go to the Horslips rather than stay and watch U2,” he admitted.
“I heard U2 were brilliant that night and anyone I met afterwards said I missed a great gig. They were very successful after that and by the following year they had booked a tour of America and things had started to happen for them. They grew very quickly.”
A few months after he skipped U2’s first Waterford gig, Mr Ronayne travelled up to Leixlip Castle to see them support The Police.
“I interviewed them at that too,” he said. “And I’ve been at every U2 concert in Ireland since, that I’ve been in the country for, apart from this one because, believe it or not, I couldn’t get tickets.”
