European Festivals 1982

Gloria I Threw a Brick Through a Window A Day Without Me An Cat Dubh Into the Heart Rejoice The Electric Co. / Let’s Twist Again I Fall Down I Will Follow Twilight Out of Control Celebration 11 O’Clock Tick Tock / Give Peace a Change The Ocean I Will Follow Southern Man

Back in the -70's and early -80's it was all about music for me. All available cash earned during summers were spent on festivals, concerts, LPs, sigles, EPs and C-casettes - CDs and DVDs were in the distant future back then, let alone MP3s. One major expense during those days were Festivals. There were a lot of good festivals already back then, during summer time almost each weekend would take me with a group of friends to different locations to see bands that were either just about to make it or had already hit the charts. As U2 was one of my favourites in the late 70s and early 80s, the Ruisrock-82 festival in Turku was a must. I can't recall many of the songs played, only the feeling of a perfect concert still remains vivid. It was energetic and it really was all about music. As you can see from the picture, the stage was not much and I expect it must have been a bit of a letdown for the band, as they had already done major shows around the world. Anyway as a dedicated rock group and professionals they took the audience and made the weekend memorable. The best highlight of the festival must be the fact that after several years of going around in circles, I finally started dating a girl who since became my wife. We're still happily married. Thank you U2! :) PS. sorry for the poor quality of the photo. It was scanned from a paper image, which hasn't survived the years very well.

Time usually gives us gilded memories. Anyway, while remembering the past, culturally and musically, as a guy who was born around the time Beatles released their first or second longplay, and growing up in the seventies by listening bands like Abba or Electric Light Orchestra, I still found surprising, that along years like 1974 (Waterloo by Abba), 1977 (Pretty Vacant by Sex Pistols) or 1979 (Blitzkrieg Bop by Ramones - I confess I grew up on their music very late, even experienced bands like The B52's or Devo before getting mad on this NY Queens power quartet) the 1982 is most important on me, musically. It's the year bands like The Cure, Siouxsie and The Banshees and Talking Heads were on their peak, and everyone of them finalizing the string of great albums released in a couple of years which merely was in any of these cases strange music from strange times, from the flourishing psychedelia of Banshees's A Kiss In The Dreamhouse to the minimalistic rhythms of Talking Heads's Speaking Tongues, and what they ended up to call 'Phil Spector in Hell' because all those painful endless but dying echoing, monotonic death gasps- namely Pornography by The Cure released the very same year. Although people usually see Finland musically and culturally as a distant province, we had some rather good concerts over the couple of years in the very early 1980's. Banshees did three shows in Finland back to 1982, The Smiths played summer 1984 in the very same Provinssirock festival New Order used to play three years before, 1981. We had The Cure finally at summer 1985, while they gave a concert at Ruisrock festival in Turku. Three years before there was an another still growing name playing there, namely U2, soon after release of October. Whereas I had not read my lectures well before that festival, I actually knew my Au Pairs (this Leeds -based aggro new wave group was one of the headliners that year) better than U2. I was through the years from 1980 to 1984 writing a fanzine on my own, like people used to do after the punk/new wave times, and happily, I had a friend who gave me on loan her backstage pass during the Ruisrock 1982 festival. The backstage itself was not actually more than maybe four to five caravans spread on there, a small wooden house in which the musicians took showers and ate. It was very far from any kind of rock dream, but personally the day, for me, was a great success, when I ended up to shake my hands with then rather unknown, curly-haired U2 bassist Adam Clayton. He was just the first of the band I had in sight, and we ended up to chat something, like 'where is Bono' and so on. I probably talked 5 minutes with him, nothing more, but I am happy I have this memory. Through the band's set itself i was staying backstage with the people of Au Pairs, talking to them and listening, with other ear, what I was able on the show of U2. They had an interesting sound, that I can remember, and Bono was already doing these stage acts those would make a silent comedy actor Harold Lloyd to blush. I later read on the local newspaper on the festival and U2, and was so happy, when The Edge praised my own then and now favourite guitarist John McGeoch (whom we sadly lost at May 2004), the axeman of Magazine, Banshees and later of those days, Public Image Ltd. This raised my interest into U2, but it was no earlier than 1991, when they stole my heart with Achtung Baby, and sold-out Zoo TV icehall concert at Goethenburg Skandinavium. Later I have enjoyed the 1982 Turku show on audio tape, someone was just clever to record the show, althought the recorders were merely poor. I maybe lost full of energy missing the show as a stupid 17-years old lad, and sharing that time at the festival backstage, but at least I have this great memory on Adam, and even seeing Bono hassling there somewhere on the location behind.