U2 struck a topical, tragic note in the band’s show at the Sphere in Las Vegas on Sunday, adding “Pride (In the Name of Love)” to the set and dedicating it to the hundreds of music fans killed at a music festival in Israel, referring to them in rewritten lyrics as “Stars of David”.
“Singing for our brothers and sisters – who were singing themselves at the Supernova Sukkot festival in Israel,” Bono said. “We sing for them. Our people, our kind of people, music people. Playful, experimental people. Our kind of people. We sing for them.”
After leading the crowd in a wordless chorus, Bono continued: “In the light of what’s happening in Israel and Gaza, a song about non-violence seems a bit ridiculous, even laughable, but our prayers have always been for peace and non-violence… But our hearts and our anger, you know where that’s going. So sing with us… and those beautiful children at the music festival.
As the first verse of ‘Pride’ began, Bono changed the first verse to refer to the massacre in Israel rather than the death of Martin Luther King Jr.
“Early morning, October 7, the sun is rising in the desert sky,” he sang. “Stars of David, they took your life, but they could not take your pride.” He repeated the “could not take your pride” line three times before leading the band into the anthemic chorus.
The Hamas attack on music fans took place at the Supernova festival, held in the desert in southern Israel to coincide with the Jewish festival of Sukkot. According to witnesses, rocket attacks were followed by close-range gunfire and sniper fire from dozens of terrorists who infiltrated the festival site.
As of Monday morning, more than 260 bodies had been recovered from the scene of the festival, with more still missing, according to the Zaka rescue agency. Around 3,500 people were attending the concert, about three miles from the Gaza border.
The appearance of “Pride” in U2’s Sphere setlist came during a mid-show sequence of songs that took a break from the full run-through of “Achtung Baby” to include numbers from earlier in the band’s career. At the start of the Sphere run, these songs were all from the ‘Rattle and Hum’ album, but these were swapped out. For Sunday’s more poignant performance, “Pride” was preceded by “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” (including a snippet of Jimmy Cliff’s “Many Rivers to Cross”) and followed by another Martin Luther King Jr. inspired song, “MLK”.
