04072511 said:
I was looking through the form and found this thread. STING2, I was wondering if you have this book, could you post the exact attendance and gross figures for each U2 tour, including the Boy tour, October tour, War tour and other early tours stated separetely rather than together. Thanks a mill.
For tours before WAR its very difficult to come up with any real accurate total. The book does not attempt to. The reason is that there is very little information on attendance at most shows. I just tried to put together an estimate for the BOY tour.
For the BOY tour, I did not include any shows that were festivals or where U2 was opening for another band because these shows are NOT U2 shows, but rather shows that U2 appeared at or opened for another artist at their show.
From September 1980 to June 1981, U2 played a total of 148 BOY tour shows. Of the 148 shows, attendence figures are only listed for 38 of them and all 38 listings are estimates, not official figures from amusement business.
With this in mind the only estimate I could arrive at as far as a total, was to add the estimated attendance of the 38 shows, which was 32,862 and then find the average for these 38 shows. The average was 864 per show, for these 38 shows. Then, to arrive at an estimate for the entire tour, I multiplied 148 shows by this average of 864. If this was correct, total attendance for the 148 date BOY tour would be 127,872. The true figure is indeed lower but it is unknown by how much. Most of the estimated attendence figures were reported for shows that had good attendance for the capacity given. Only one show with truely poor attendence was reported. U2 played a show in LA to 12 people at a 400 capacity club in the Spring of 1981. It is likely that there were several shows like this on the tour as well as many shows that only had 150 to 200 people.
So, the estimate of 127,872 is definitely an overestimate, and I'd say the true total could be as little as 60,000 or even lower.
Lots of these clubs can hold 200 to 700 people, but many bands including U2 played only to a few dozen people at such clubs back in the early days.
I'll have to look at the October tour to see if a better estimate can be made for it. WAR tour estimate should be very accurate. A total estimate for these tours is not listed in the book, primarily do to the lack of data.
