U2 Gross Nearly $60 Million in Europe

U2 dominates the current top grossing concerts with the final dates of a 10-week, 32-day tour of Europe and the Middle East that grossed a total of $58,697,632, drawing more than 1.5 million fans from Ireland to Israel.

The tour included the largest outdoor show ever held in Northern Ireland and the first since the recent IRA cease-fire ended years of violence. A total of 39,362 fans jammed Botanical Gardens in Belfast Aug. 26 to see the group. The Sept. 20 festival-type show at Reggio Emilia, Italy, drew the largest single-day crowd -- 150,000! The $5,294,117 gross came from tickets priced at $34.42. U2's top grossing date was a two-day stand at London's Wembley Stadium, where a crowd of 144,308 paid $6,753,356 on tickets topping out at $53.17 Aug. 22-23.Since the U2 PopMart Tour began April 25 at Sam Boyd Stadium in Las Vegas 2,669,268 tickets were sold for 61 shows grossing a total of $112,495,872. Only four of these shows grossed less than $1 million each, and two of those - Sept. 23 in Bosnia and Sept. 26 in Greece - were due to extremely low ticket prices of $12 and $14.50. The tourreturns to the North American circuit Oct. 26-27 for more stadium dates through mid-December.

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Song Stories

“All Along the Watchtower”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience | 1968

Jimi Hendrix got hold of Bob Dylan's early John Wesley Harding tapes and in late 1967 recorded a version of "All Along the Watchtower" with the Experience in London. Dissatisfied with that first development, Hendrix brought those tapes with him to New York in early 1968 when he began work on Electric Ladyland. Eddie Kramer, Hendrix's engineer at the time, told Rolling Stone that Hendrix "was still looked upon by his basically white audience as the mammoth black guitar hero. There was a constant fight within him to expand himself." Hendrix's successful take on Dylan's work has long been recognized by the songwriter. "I liked Jimi Hendrix's record of this and ever since he died I've been doing it that way," Dylan wrote in the liner notes to his Biograph box set. "Strange how when I sing it, I always feel it's a tribute to him in some kind of way."

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