09/09/1978 Top Hat Ballroom, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland. U2 & The Hype Concerts 1978.
This is a complete list of known U2 concerts that took place in Ireland in 1978. I have spent many hours trawling the Irish Newspaper Archive, The Dublin Library and talking to those that were there, too make this the most complete document of U2’s early career. This site would not be possible without them, the Dublin Library & the Irish Newspaper Archive.
09/09/1978 Top Hat Ballroom, Dun Laoghaire
Attendance, 2,500
Support for the STRANGLERS
Admission, £2.50
www.stranglers.net
Ticket supplied by Michael Rynne
Set: unknown
Patti Smith concert ticket was over stamped with “The Stranglers September 9th Top Hat”.
Michael Rynne. That was great gig btw. Bono stopped a few songs into the set after laboring under a barrage of hocks and debris. He admonished his attackers who he referred to as ‘Dun Laoire bootboys’. His voice breaking with emotion he said that they hadn’t come there to play for them but for their fans. Then they played on undeterred. I remember thinking it took a lot of balls. And the rest is history as they say.
Bill Graham; Another Time & Another Place
“The next test was when U2 supported The Stranglers before their biggest audience yet at the Top Hat Ballroom on September 9. With no dressing room of their own, they changed behind the stage. Without a sound check, the Edge’s guitar amp spluttered with static & when he broke a string, Bono had an uphill battle against the Stranglers fans who gobbed him & threw lighted cigarettes on stage. But he didn’t shrivel. The band only got £50 & the bonus of some bottles of wine that they liberated from the Stranglers dressing room, but it had been a necessary blooding before a hostile audience. Facing them down, they had definitely won some new friends”.
