U2’s U2:UV Achtung Baby residency show at the new Las Vegas venue Sphere on Sunday, October 8 featured Bono paying poignant tribute to the many innocent people who were killed by Hamas terrorists Saturday at an music festival in Israel.
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The band posted a video clip from the concert on their socials capturing Bono and company performing a reworked version of their 1984 hit “Pride (In the Name of Love).”
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In introducing the song, Bono told the crowd, “In the light of what’s happened in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems somewhat ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and for non-violence…But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s pointed. So sing with us…and those beautiful kids at that music festival.”
He then sang a well-known verse from the tune with the following altered lyrics: Early morning, October 7th / As the sun is rising in the desert sky / Stars of David, they took your life / But they could not take your pride.
“Pride,” which was written about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., appeared on U2’s 1984 album The Unforgettable Fire, and became the band’s first Top 40 single in the U.S. The original words to the aforementioned verse read: Early morning, April 4 / Shot rings out in the Memphis sky / Free at last, they took your life / They could not take your pride.
On Saturday, October 7, the militant Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise attack against Israel, firing thousands of rockets and sending fighters into Israeli towns and other areas. The BBC reports that 260 bodies have been recovered from the site of the Supernova music festival, which was held in southern Israel. Additional reports claim that many other concertgoers were taken hostage by the militants.
U2 kicked off U2:UV Achtung Baby residency at the state-of-the-art Sphere on September 29, and the engagement currently is scheduled through a December 16 performance. The shows have been featuring the band playing its entire 1991 album Achtung Baby, select other songs from its back catalog, and a brand-new tune titled “Atomic Baby” that was released in conjunction with the launch of the residency.
