U2 The Joshua Tree Tour Leg 1 Itinerary USA SPRING 1987

Once The Unforgettable Fire Tour finished we had to wait for a couple of years to see U2 on tour again. It was in 1987 when they hit the road again with their amazing The Joshua Tree tour.

Three legs of the tour means in this case 3 different itinerary books, and this one I'm showing is the first one.

The black and white cover shows the Joshua Tree right in the middle with a The Joshua Tour text on the top and a USA Spring 1987 text on the bottom. This is the only original book.

I have also known that there are reprints out in the market with a gold cover with black letters but they are only that... REPRINTS. Those reprints are taken from the original book but not all the information on the original itinerary was copied on the reprints. You can see a picture of a reprint under the original book picture.

The book contains information from April 1st 1987 when a Production Rehearsal took place at A.S.U. Events Centre in Tempe, Arizona to May 17th when the tour was over and they all returned home from New Jersey.

Even though first pages are listing tour events from April 1st, once you take a look at the book you find also information for the previous week.

The band arrived in L.A. on March 24th and the advice on the book for that day is "Acclimatise onesself and accept culture shock syndrome".

It was on that week, on the 27th, when the band recorded "Where the streets have no name" video on the rooftop of a liquor store in downtown Los Angeles. Click on the picture to see some of the information about the video shoot.


Production rehearsals began on March 28th and took place until April 1st, just one day before the opening show.

The group considered as "Group and management" was only 16 people. The rest of staff, considered "Crew Personel" was 38 people.....nothing compared with more recent tours in terms of number of people.

On Sunday May 17th U2 and their management left JFK airport to Dublin and they had a few days off before the start of the European Leg.

My copy of this book was signed in Berlin by Bono in September 2015.














RATING: A
Wanna know what this rating means? Just click HERE

The Collector

U2 The Joshua Tree Tour Leg 2 Itinerary Europe 1987

Only 8 days after they have returned to Dublin once the 1st leg had finished, U2 and their management were flying to Rome. It was the first stop of the European leg of the Joshua Tree tour and a new itinerary book was handed to everyone working on the tour.

Front cover of this book was basically the same that the american one had but orange was the selected colour in this case. Here you can see the picture of the front cover and also the back cover which was signed by Adam Clayton outside Nou Camp stadium in Barcelona on July 2nd 2009 as he was leaving after the recording of some close shots for the "I'll go crazy if I don't go crazy tonight" video.

It was on May 26th 1987 when U2 landed in Rome and they went directly to the Stadio Flamino for the soundcheck.

U2 not only played stadiums on this leg but they also played in front of 5.000 or 6.000 people audiences in some european cities. Worth to mention is Paris, where they played in front of 6.000 people on June 15th to return about 20 days later for a show in front of 80.000 people.

Tour personnel was already growing. Management group was 17 people while crew included more than 60 people.

This european leg was organized in a way that the band could return home to spend a couple of days with their families basically after each concert. So U2 were running away from the stadium while the audience was still cheering them, got on the plane and slept at home. Usually the same day of the next show they flew out from Dublin to the next destination of the tour.

The final show of the european leg was in Cork, on August 7th and even though it is only a 40 minutes flight from Dublin the band decided to arrive in Cork one day before the show and stayed there until the day after the show. They probably partied out to celebrate the end of the leg as they usually do.

Some time ago, I found this picture on internet that made me think that there was a "leather cover" version of this book. It is not actually that way. Even though it looks like an itinerary book, it is a Diary that was given to part of the staff who worked on the tour.




As you can see it had gold letters engraved on the black leather detailing not only U2 and the tour leg but also the words SUPERMICK and LIGHTS.

Once I checked the European itinerary I noticed that SUPERMICK LIGHTS is the company that was in charge of the lights during that leg. So we might think this diary was given to the people from that company that worked on the U2 tour.

This confirms that this leather cover book is definitely NOT an itinerary book.

If you want to know more about these U2 tour Diaries, please check this new entry (HERE)

Next leg.............back in the USA.

A deeper report on this book can be read by following this link (in spanish though):

http://www.u2eastlink.com/collector/15.php


RATING: A-
Wanna know what this rating means? Just click HERE

The Collector

U2 The Joshua Tree Tour Leg 3 Itinerary USA SEPT-DEC 1987

Third and final leg of The Joshua Tree tour means a new itinerary for the tour staff. This time blue is the chosen colour for a cover pretty similar to the previous book from this tour.

It's curious that the title on the three books we saw from this tour reads "The Joshua Tour" forgetting about the word Tree.

On September 7th, band and management leave for the States, where the first show of this 3rd leg is planned for the 10th at Nassau Colisseum in NY after a production rehearsal on the 9th.

This time the group is growing to 26 people involved in Band and Management and more than 70 people in Crew.

If we check the list of shows on this itinerary, we see some differences versus the final concerts of this 3rd and final leg of the The Joshua Tree tour. For example the book lists a second show in Philadelphia, on September 26th which never happened. We can also see that the show in Rochester was planned for October 7th and the one in Buffalo on the 11th. It really happened the opposite: U2 played in Buffalo on the 7th and in Rochester on the 11th.

Finally, there are some shows that are not on the book but were added later on, once the book was printed. U2 played in Oakland (Nov 14th), Murfreesboro (Nov 28th) and two final shows in Tempe (Dec 19th and 20th).

There is a second version of this itinerary that seems to have been printed later so most of these final changes are already solved on that second book. You can find all the details HERE.

During the first part of this 3rd leg, the band rented some houses on Long Island, as they already explain on "U2 by U2". Those houses are used as a base for about a month, travelling to many shows from there. For the shows at Madison Square Graden they flew to NY on helicopter.





After leaving the houses, they spent some days in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles also travelling to many shows from those locations.

As mentioned before, according to the itinerary the tour ends on December 12th and they all are back home on the 13th. The truth is that they added two shows at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe on December 19th and 20th that were filmed for the "Rattle&Hum" movie.

For those additional dates the staff was given a few paper sheets including all the information related to the dates between December 12th (last show in Hampton) to December 21st (the day after the 2nd show in Tempe).

Final pages on the itinerary book include some Pizza Restaurant adverts and a USA Mileage and Driving Time map.

This was the final leg for The Joshua Tree tour so no more itineraries from that succesfull tour should exist.

Adam Clayton signed my copy of this book in Barcelona in October 2015.

RATING: A-
Wanna know what this rating means? Just click HERE

The Collector

U2 The Joshua Tree Tour Leg 3 Itinerary USA SEPT-DEC 1987 (Album cover)

It happened again....When I was 100% that only 3 different books were issued to cover The Joshua Tree tour, a fourth and different one came up.

It was in February 2016, almost 30 years after the tour ended. Incredible isn't it?

This new book is covering the 3rd and final leg of The Joshua Tree tour, the one that travelled up and down North America from September to December 1997.

Wait......we already knew about a book covering that third and final leg (see HERE). Yes... I know, but this one has got not only a different cover but also some differences.

This time we have a picture of the band on the cover. It looks similar to the cover of the The Joshua Tree album. At the top of the cover we read "U2 The Joshua Tree" while at the bottom we have a "SEPT-DEC 1987" text.

By checking the content of this book I would say this version was printed some time after the blue cover one. I can say this because the shows list is more accurate, more updated than the list on the "blue" book. All dates here are correct and the only information missing belongs to those 4 shows that were added later, when both versions of the book had already been printed. So again Oakland (Nov 14th), Murfreesboro (Nov 28th) and the two final shows in Tempe (Dec 19th and 20th) are missing on this book.

Apart from the cover and the updated shows list there are a few more differences.

This book includes a two pages summary with the band schedule and another two pages with the management schedule. On the top of those pages we see a date that I would consider as the date when this book was printed. That date is September 14th 1987, a few days after the leg had started.




Those pages include not only the shows and days off but plenty of information such as the venues, capacity, kind of venue (indoor, outdoor and dome), base where they would stay and even the day when they should occupant and leave the rented houses in Long Island. Those pages are also summarizing this leg as a "Total of 46 shows in 97 days" with 28 Indoors, 14 Outdoors and 4 Domes.

Another interesting detail is that there are some "rain dates" on the shows list, just in case some of the shows had to postponed. So we have one on December 4th right after the show in Miami and one on the 6th right after the show in Tampa.

One final difference versus the "blue" book is that this one is also including a list with all the companies involved on this leg. This list was missing on the "blue" book but was delivered to the staff on a separate page.

Once again the U2 itineraries bring amazing surprises that you discover here and there every time you take a look at their pages.

RATING: A
Wanna know what this rating means? Just click HERE

The Collector

U2 The Joshua Tree Tour Leg 3 USA SEPT-DEC 1987 (CREW Itinerary #1)

As we saw in the past, it is not rare that the management issues different itineraries for the same leg. It usually happens that one is for the band and management and the other one for the Crew.

We are now in front of one of those Crew itineraries. They are for those teams that travel in advance to the cities where the band is going to play in a few days.  These people are in charge of building up the stage and getting everything ready for the arrival of the band gear.... and the band themselves.

We have already seen Crew books for Zoo TV,  Zooropa and 360º tours but we never saw one from the The Joshua Tree tour so this is at the moment the oldest Crew itinerary we ever saw.

This book is covering just a part of the final leg of this tour. We also know about a second Crew book also related to this part of the TJ Tour, but the thing is that both books are not enough to cover all this leg so we can think that other Crew books were issued to cover the rest of this leg and probably other parts of this Joshua Tree tour.

In terms of design, this is a very simple book. A total of 45 pink pages are held in a plastic folder with no cover.

On the front page we can read "30 day itinerary SYSTEM A     Nº 1" so this was issued for the first of the different Crew teams that worked on the tour. Also on that front page we see the planning for the dates between September 10th 1987 and October 9th 1987, when they where loading in at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburg.

If we check the planning, the first show for this team was in fact the 4th of this leg.

The first 30 pages of this book are a daily plan where the Crew have all the information regarding every specific day and venue, with timings, hotels and some recommendations for their spare time in the area.

As we can see, this A team is only in charge of three of three of the venues that U2 will visit on this first part of the 3rd leg: Meadowlands Stadium in East Rutherford, JFK Stadium in Philadelphia and Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburg.

After those 30 pages, we find 3 different blocks separated by a yellow page. Those 3 block are dedicated to the three  stadiums the team will visit and I just mentioned above. It is rare that no detailed information about Municipal Stadium in Cleveland appears on this books that seems to be 100% complete.

On those 3 blocks dedicated to each one of the 3 stadiums we can find full information including address, operations manager, promoter details, planning for their works at that stadium, staging information, site facilities, and many other useful information the team might need while building up the U2 stage.

RATING: A+

Wanna know what this rating means? Just click HERE

The Collector

U2 The Joshua Tree Tour Leg 3 USA SEPT-DEC 1987 (CREW Itinerary #2)

This is the second Crew itinerary book I ever saw for The Joshua Tree tour. This book is very similar to the other one we saw from this leg of the tour (See HERE).

In fact, it seems to be the second part of that book. Both books were issued for the "SYSTEM A", one of the crew teams that travelled in advance to built up the stage. While the one that we saw has the text "Itinerary #1" on its cover, this one has a "Itinerary #2" text.

This book is quite short, only 12 pages, but the content is very similar to the other one. This itinerary has also two different parts.

First part lists the day to day itinerary from October 29th to November 5th which basically means the arrival of the team to Indianapolis, the load in at the Hoosier Dome, the show day at that venue and the load out.

On the last page of this first part, we can read something that seems very obvious: "A further itinerary will be issued". This means we can expect many other Crew itineraries from this final leg of the tour.

The second part shows all the technical information about the Indianapolis venue, the above mentioned Hoosier Dome (Address, operations manager, promoter details, planning for their works at that venue, staging information, site facilities, and many other useful information the team might need while building up the U2 stage.)


That's it, probably the shortest itinerary we ever saw, with information related to one show only but very focused on the works before and after the show.

RATING: A+

Wanna know what this rating means? Just click HERE

The Collector