40 (song) - Live Performances

Live Performances

"40" debuted live on February 26, 1983, in Dundee as the final song of the show, and closed every single concert on 1983's War Tour. It became very popular as a concert closer, and between its debut and January 10, 1990, there were roughly only twenty tour concerts that did not feature "40" as the closing song. During live performances, Adam Clayton and The Edge would swap instruments so that Adam played guitar and Edge played bass, and the band members would progressively leave stage, with Bono the first to depart, then Clayton, then Edge, and finally, Larry Mullen, Jr. The crowd would often continue to chant the refrain of "How long...to sing this song?" even after the band had left the stage. Live performances of the song are included on the live album Under a Blood Red Sky and the concert film Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky.

Between January 1990 and March 2005, full performances of "40" were extremely rare, though on 2001's Elevation Tour, it was regularly snippeted at the end of "Bad" before the song segued into "Where the Streets Have No Name". "40" made a return to the regular setlist in March 2005 on the Vertigo Tour and has closed many of the tour's shows: it closed most on the first leg, three on the second, rotated with other songs (mainly "Bad") for closing duties on the third leg, made only a few appearances on the fourth leg, and was snippeted a few times rather than being played in full on the fifth leg. After not being played for the U2 360° Tour, it was revived on the last night of that tour in Moncton, New Brunswick as the tour's final song, marking the first time that U2 had ever performed a song for the first time on a tour during that tour's last night. It is U2's fifteenth most performed live song, or twelfth most performed if snippets are included in its total.