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  1. Originally posted by SJKamal:[..]
    The early rumors were that even though the main focus of the tour would be JT, it would not be branded as a JT tour. We obviously know what happened. However, I don't think the fact that they toured JT was the reason why they sold out the stadiums. They played markets they hadn't been to in 10 years - or never. People went because it was U2, not because of the album they toured.
    I think the goodwill of the JT album helped because especially here in Australia, I always hear people say "I like their older stuff". As it was, ticket sales were noticeably less than the 2006 and 2010 tours but that was partly due to terrible promotion and sky-high seated ticket pricing.
  2. Originally posted by SJKamal:[..]
    The early rumors were that even though the main focus of the tour would be JT, it would not be branded as a JT tour. We obviously know what happened. However, I don't think the fact that they toured JT was the reason why they sold out the stadiums. They played markets they hadn't been to in 10 years - or never. People went because it was U2, not because of the album they toured.
    Are you really trying to say they would have sold 3,3 million tickets if they had called the tour "The October Tour 2017" or the "Indian Summer Sky Tour 2019"?
  3. I'm pretty sure as long as they play Beautiful Day, Elevation, and Vertigo at every show, it's considered a tour...
  4. Originally posted by LikeASong:[..]
    Are you really trying to say they would have sold 3,3 million tickets if they had called the tour "The October Tour 2017" or the "Indian Summer Sky Tour 2019"?
    My point is that the markets they played were starved of U2 for so long that people would have gone and seen them no matter what they were touring. OK, the fact they were touring JT may have helped sales slightly, but numbers still would have been very strong if they did a IE/JT/EI mash up.
  5. I agree that the branding of the tour only helped slightly towards ticket sales rather than significantly. It’s different when a band tours an album that has just been released and is popular they will probably gain a good bit more interest but I don’t think green day would sell more tickets now playing an American idiot tour, I don’t think simple minds would suddenly start selling out big stadiums by touring there biggest album or Shania Twain could sell stadiums all over the world because she toured her come on over album (had to do a bit of Googling to find that last one lol). People have to want to see the band anyway and then the branding probably plays a small influence.
  6. The branding thing may gave come from me in some way. I was asked at one point not to call the tour The Joshua Tree, or a continuation of The Joshua Tree and I did discuss that with a few people. Not all the pre-announcement stuff you get is good so yeah, maybe that wasn’t. But yes, for the longest time I was working under the assumption this was being called LoveTown30. At that point I hadn’t said anything except it was expected to use the Joshua Tree Tour stage.
  7. Why were you asked not to call it a JT tour or a continuation? Were they genuinely planning to call it LoveTown 30 or were they purposely throwing you a curve ball?
  8. Originally posted by SJKamal:Why were you asked not to call it a JT tour or a continuation? Were they genuinely planning to call it LoveTown 30 or were they purposely throwing you a curve ball?
    Obviously u2wanderer1 is probably about to give you a proper answer but if the tour originally was planned for mainly Oz and NZ then it would make sense as R&H is very popular in that part of the world, perhaps when they opened it up to the rest of the world they though JT might appeal more. That theory goes against my idea that the branding doesn’t really matter but I guess if you are picking a tour name best to go for the most appealing. Lovetown would definitely be more appealing in OZ and NZ than anywhere else in the world.
  9. u2wanderer1 need not worry. We all HIGHLY appreciate his sharing of whispers he hears. And it's 1000% understood that those thing could change, or were out-right wrong. I personally would still rather hears these things (cuz its very interesting to me what is being considered, and their thought process) rather than wait to only hear what is 100% carved in stone. That's what U2.com is for.

    To me, the request specifically to use a diff branding seemed like it would designate it as another "seperate" tour and and thus count towards obligations they needed to meet. but that was just an assumption.
  10. on that note, I would have definitely preferred to see it as LoveTown30 instead. Even if it meant, same stage setup, same 11 JT songs, and even just 4ish songs from R+H as one act of the show (similar to Apollo). Desire, Angel of Harlem, When Love Comes to Town, All I Want is You all very realistic. Maybe even rotate in an acoustic version of Love of Rescue Me/Heartland (seeing as they played it in the desert).

    This seemed very doable, but I suppose the decision was to instead show off some stuff from the recent Songs Of shows (Love is Bigger, EBW, Real Thing ei version, Best Thing acoustic).

    I wonder what else contributed to their abandoning of the LoveTown30 idea...
  11. Originally posted by SJKamal:Why were you asked not to call it a JT tour or a continuation? Were they genuinely planning to call it LoveTown 30 or were they purposely throwing you a curve ball?
    I was asked. I was never given a reason. My personal guess at the time was that maybe they didn’t want to lock themselves into doing the album in full again. The joy of rumours and partial information. Sometimes you get something that just doesn’t make sense. It’s why the team try really hard to wait until we have two sources of information before posting something.
  12. "maybe they didn’t want to lock themselves into doing the album in full again"

    very good point. Even if they were to still play, say 8-9 songs from it, I wonder what the 1-2 songs were that they just didn't feel were connecting, and would have preferred dropping IF they weren't locked into playing the entire album