Concert History | U2 at Hippodrome de Vincennes — Tear Gas Paused a Concert Preserved on Record

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On July 4, 1987, U2 performed at the Hippodrome de Vincennes in Paris during The Joshua Tree Tour. Universal-Island’s issued recording names the place and date in its title; Pimm Jal de la Parra’s U2 Live: A Concert Documentary independently dates the same performance and discusses it on page 107. Sources: https://music.apple.com/us/album/with-or-without-you-live-from-paris-07-04-87/1440744915?i=1440745079 and https://books.google.com.np/books?id=CKhT12rdXAMC

The official audio preserves something most concert records edit away. During “With or Without You,” the music stops and Bono addresses tear gas in the crowd before the band resumes. De la Parra independently identifies a tear-gas canister and the interruption. The surviving sources do not identify who discharged it or why, and they do not supply a verified injury count, so neither is asserted here.

That interruption makes this an argument about the venue, not a generic tour review. A racecourse temporarily operating as a mass outdoor concert had to become a crowd-safety system in real time: the performance paused, the stage communicated directly with the field, and only then did the show continue. Because Island’s recording retained the break, the safety response became part of the historical record rather than an offstage incident.

Coordinate method: the pin at 48.823889, 2.451389 is Wikidata’s point for the Hippodrome de Vincennes (https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3135951). OpenStreetMap independently maps the named horse-racing complex as way 1310652266 around that point (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/1310652266), while RATP identifies the same venue at 2 Route de la Ferme (https://www.bonjour-ratp.fr/en/lieux/hippodrome-vincennes/). Precision radius: 450 metres. The pin represents the racecourse complex, not a claimed 1987 stage position; the stage location within the large site has not been verified.

Cover caption and credit: Gate A of the Hippodrome de Vincennes photographed in 2016. It shows the venue entrance, not U2 or the 1987 concert. Photo by Chabe01 (Charly Bernard), CC BY-SA 4.0: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hippodrome_Vincennes_Porte_A_1.jpg