U2 released Under a Blood Red Sky on November 21, 1983, through Island Records, with the album arriving in the UK and Europe that day. Produced by Jimmy Iovine, their first live album condensed the tour supporting War into eight tracks from three concerts. It opens with “Gloria,” recorded at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Morrison, Colorado.
The Red Rocks show took place on June 5, in weather that became part of the concert film’s identity. Recalling the conditions on U2.com, Bono described visible breath in the cold and The Edge struggling to play with stiff hands. Larry Mullen Jr. remembered an unexpected benefit: “In the end the rain actually helped us. It made it look really extraordinary.” The album took two performances from that evening, “Gloria” and “Party Girl,” while the accompanying film stayed with the Colorado concert.
Most of the album came from a later stop in West Germany. U2’s August 20 appearance at Loreley Amphitheater in St. Goarshausen supplied five tracks, including “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” “New Year’s Day” and the closing “40.” Those recordings came from WDR television’s Rockpalast coverage. The remaining performance, “11 O’Clock Tick Tock,” was recorded at Boston’s Orpheum Theatre on May 6. That means the album’s “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and the performance in the Red Rocks film document different nights on the same tour.
The song selection also reaches beyond the record U2 were promoting. War contributed three songs, while “I Will Follow” and “The Electric Co.” reached back to Boy, and “Gloria” represented October. Two of the eight slots went to material from outside those studio albums. “11 O’Clock Tick Tock” had been released as a standalone single in 1980, before Boy. “Party Girl” had appeared on the flip side of “A Celebration” in 1982, under the longer title “Trash, Trampoline and the Party Girl.” The live album put both alongside the band’s album tracks.
“Party Girl” had started with a studio deadline. In his recollection published by U2.com, Bono said the band needed to come up with something as their studio time was running out. They created the song on the spot, with the singer inventing words as he went. By including it on Under a Blood Red Sky, U2 gave that hastily assembled B-side a place on an eight-song live release, even though its original A-side was absent.
The original “The Electric Co.” also preserved fragments of other songs within U2’s performance, including “Send in the Clowns” and “America” from West Side Story. Those passages were removed from later pressings for legal reasons. Different editions can consequently present different edits of the performance.
In September 2008, a remastered Under a Blood Red Sky was released alongside the Red Rocks film’s DVD debut. A deluxe edition paired the album and film, and the DVD added five previously unreleased songs, a director’s commentary and a 5.1 mix. The package made the distinction between the two releases tangible: one disc assembled three tour stops, while the other expanded the view of a single Colorado evening.
