“The anniversary show was brilliant from start to finish…”

I was only 11 years-old when The Joshua Tree was released in 1987. U2 didn’t come to my hometown of Portland, Oregon on that tour, and I wasn’t old enough yet to travel to see them, so I missed out on that occasion.

In fact, it still upsets me that I wasn’t allowed to attend the ZooTV tour! As a high school student, I was obsessed with Achtung Baby, but didn’t yet have my driver’s license and the show was over an hour away at the Tacoma Dome, where I had seen George Michael the previous Fall. Unlike George, who they loved, my parents thought Bono was a leather-wearing troublemaker, outspoken, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. They refused to take me or let me go with other friends.