Eight months after The Unforgettable Fire and 21 before The Joshua Tree, U2 made themselves available on extended play. The quartet released the four-track Wide Awake In America EP in North America and Japan on June 10, 1985. They saw it become a vital staging post in their record schedule.
The EP gave fans an early chance to own two performances from the Unforgettable Fire tour that accompanied that new album in the autumn of 1984. From U2’s performance at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham on November 12 came “Bad.” Then from the Wembley Arena show in London three nights later, they captured and released “A Sort Of Homecoming.” Indeed, it was the song ‘Bad’ that inspired the EP’s title. The song included the lyric “I’m wide awake, wide awake, I’m not sleeping.”
1 Bad
2 A Sort of Homecoming
3 The Three Sunrises
4 Love Comes Tumbling
