Exit (song) - Live Performances

Live Performances

"Sometimes Bono would come offstage in the break and would not have left character. The darkness would still be there with him. Sometimes it was hard for him to shake it off and get into playing the next songs. That darkness has a certain kind of adrenaline."

U2 debuted "Exit" on 8 March 1987 for a broadcast of The Old Grey Whistle Test. Bono introduced it as "a song about a religious man, a fanatic, who gets into his head the idea he calls 'the hands of love'." It was next performed on 2 April 1987 in Tempe, Arizona, during the first concert of The Joshua Tree Tour. Clayton noted that the manner in which they created the song inadvertently caused a problem for U2, saying "when you're in a touring situation you have to learn numbers that were never actually written so much as spontaneously created." "Exit" was played at all 109 concerts on the tour, and was frequently followed by a snippet of the Them song "Gloria", which was written by Van Morrison Following the conclusion of the Joshua Tree Tour, U2 performed "Exit" on only one more occasion; 14 October 1989 in Melbourne, Australia, on the Lovetown Tour, almost two years after the previous performance of the song. In 2007, U2's manager Paul McGuinness said that the song had been "slightly tainted" after the trial of Robert John Bardo, speculating that it had fallen out of favour with the band following the incident.

In 2006, Bono stated "When things aren't going right and I'm feeling like we're not communicating, I go through terrible things on stage." He likened his emotions on those occasions to "a big blackness", and found that performing the song helped him to purge them from his mind on some occasions. Several scenes in the 1988 film Rattle and Hum depict Bono with his arm in a sling, a result of his falling and dislocating his shoulder during a performance of "Exit" on 20 September 1987 in Washington. The concert was being filmed for the movie, and The Edge stated that "the show was not going well". Bono fell while running across the stage "in an attempt to try and get something going". Recalling the incident, Bono said " had taken me to some ugly place... but it was rage that caused it. That was when I realized rage is an expensive thing for your general well-being." On another occasion he said "I just want to take a bath after we do that. I just want to wash it off my skin." Graham wrote that "performances of 'Exit' would grow ever more fraught and purgative."

David Zimmerman of USA Today believed the live performance of "Exit" helped to showcase Mullen's drumming skills, which he described as "more assertive than ever". McLeese described the live rendition as "harder, more aggressive and more explosive than much of the band's earlier music." Jon Bream of the Star Tribune said "it galvanized the crowd in much the same way that U2 had in its legendary performances at Live Aid in 1985", believing that it helped to focus the band's energy.

A live performance of "Exit", recorded on 8 November 1987 in Denver, Colorado, appears as the fourth song in the 1988 film Rattle and Hum. Another live performance of the song, played on 4 July 1987 at the Hippodrome de Vincennes in Paris, was broadcast live on television. It was later released on the video and live album Live from Paris in 2007.