Where The Streets Have No Name - Live Performances

Live Performances

Red lighting across all the video screens has become a recurring feature of live performances of the song, shown here from a 1992 Zoo TV Tour show and a 2009 360° Tour show

"Where the Streets Have No Name" made its concert debut on 2 April 1987 in Tempe, Arizona on the opening night of The Joshua Tree Tour. It has since been played at nearly every full-length concert that U2 has headlined, totaling over 700 performances as of 2011. The song is widely regarded as one of the group's most popular live songs. Bono said of it, "We can be in the middle of the worst gig in our lives, but when we go into that song, everything changes. The audience is on its feet, singing along with every word. It's like God suddenly walks through the room."

On The Joshua Tree Tour, "Where the Streets Have No Name" was most often used to open concerts. Fans and critics responded favourably to the song in a live setting. The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote that, "From the lofty sonic opening strains of, this audience was up, ecstatic and inflamed." NME wrote that the song is one such occasion where "the power afforded their songs is scary", noting that during the song's opening, "the arena ERUPTS". Other critics called the song "uplifting", "exhilarating", and "powerful". Out of the 109 shows during The Joshua Tree Tour, "Streets" was played at all except 12 of the concerts. During the Lovetown Tour which took place in 1989 and the beginning of 1990, "Streets" was only left out of the set list at one of the 47 concerts.

The song was performed at every show on the 1992–1993 Zoo TV Tour. Concerts from this tour were elaborate multimedia spectacles that Bono performed as a variety of characters, but for the end of the main set, the group reverted to playing classics, including "Where the Streets Have No Name", straight. Some of these performances of the song were accompanied by footage of the group in the desert from The Joshua Tree's photo shoot. The video was speeded up for humorous effect—NME described the effect as giving it a "silly, Charlie Chaplin quality"—and Bono often acknowledged his younger self on the video screens. This video would make a return during performances on the 2010 and 2011 legs of the U2 360° Tour. Some of the Zoo TV performances of the song had a more electronic dance music arrangement that bore a resemblance to the Pet Shop Boys' synthpop cover of the song (titled "Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes off You)"). Bono parodied this by occasionally adopting the deadpan vocal style used in the Pet Shop Boys' cover. Critics welcomed the song in the group's setlist: The Independent said the song "induces instant euphoria, as U2 do what they're best at, slipping into epic rock mode, playing music made for the arena". Other critics praised the song's inclusion in a sequence of greatest hits.

For the PopMart Tour of 1997–1998, U2 returned to the electronic dance arrangement they occasionally played on the Zoo TV Tour. The set's massive video screen displayed a video that Hot Press described as an "astonishing, 2001-style trip into the heart of a swirling, psychedelic tunnel that sucks the audience in towards a horizontal monolith". Near the end of the song, peace doves were shown on the screen and bright beams of light flanking the set's golden arch were projected upwards. Hot Press said the effect transformed the stadium into a "UFO landing site".

Shortly before the third leg of the Elevation Tour, the September 11 attacks occurred in New York City and Washington D.C. During the band's first show in New York City following the attacks, the band performed "Where the Streets Have No Name", and when the stage lights illuminated the audience, the band saw tears streaming down the faces of many fans. The experience was one inspiration for the song "City of Blinding Lights". The band paid tribute to the 9/11 victims during their performance of the song at the Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show on 3 February 2002. The performance featured the names of the September 11 victims projected onto a large white banner behind the band. U2's appearance was later ranked number 1 on Sports Illustrated's list of "Top 10 Super Bowl Halftime Shows".

For the Vertigo Tour, the group originally considered dropping the song from their setlists, but Mullen and Clayton successfully argued against this. All 131 of the Vertigo Tour concerts featured a performance of the song, which were accompanied by the stage's LED video curtains displaying African flags. On the tour's opening night, this reminded Bono that he had originally written the lyrics in an Ethiopian village. He thought this visual accompaniment made the song come full circle, saying, "And here it was, nearly twenty years later, coming back to Africa, all the stuff about parched lands and deserts making sense for the first time." The song was also played at the preview screening of the band's concert film U2 3D at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. At the Glastonbury Festival 2010, The Edge accompanied rock band Muse for a live cover version of the track, later playing it with U2 while headlining Glastonbury in 2011.

Live performances of "Where the Streets Have No Name" appear in the concert video releases Rattle and Hum, Zoo TV: Live from Sydney, and PopMart: Live from Mexico City, as well as the respective audio releases of the latter two concerts, Zoo TV Live and Hasta la Vista Baby! U2 Live from Mexico City. A second version from the PopMart Tour was featured on Please: PopHeart Live EP, and later on the U.S. "Please" single. A live recording from Boston during the Elevation Tour was featured in the concert film Elevation 2001: Live from Boston, and on the "Walk On" and "Electrical Storm" singles. The concert video and album U2 Go Home: Live from Slane Castle, Ireland featured another performance from the Elevation Tour, and later performances were featured in the concert films Vertigo 2005: Live from Chicago and U2 3D (Vertigo Tour), and U2 360° at the Rose Bowl (U2 360° Tour). The 2004 digital album, Live from the Point Depot, contains a performance from the Lovetown Tour, only available as part of The Complete U2 digital box set.