Start date 10 May 1977 Legs 1 | End date 4 June 1977 | |
No. of shows 15 in Europe
15 in total | ||
The Exodus Tour was a concert tour organised to support the album Exodus by Bob Marley & The Wailers.
Contents
The tour began at the Pavillon Baltard in Paris, France, on 10 May 1977, and involuntarily ended with four shows at the Rainbow Theatre in London in early June; actually there were six shows planned to be performed in London, but the last two shows had been cancelled due to Marley's serious toe injury he received in a football friendly game with French journalists just before the tour's start in Paris. Subsequently, the tour's second leg in the United States had first been postponed and then definitely cancelled. The last show of the tour has been released on VHS and DVD, labeled Live! at the Rainbow. It is reported that all four shows have been recorded and taped on video.
The cancellation of the U.S. leg is for many people the main reason for Marley's underrated reputation in the U.S., as the Exodus album is said to be Marley's international breakthrough whereby he achieved international superstardom; Exodus was honoured the Greatest Album of the Century by TIME Magazine in 2000.
While on the tour Marley performed for the first time in Belgium and Denmark.
Setlist
The standard setlist of the tour mostly looked like the following:
The militant songs from the first side Exodus album had all been performed at least once, whilst performances of the soft love songs from the second side remained widely rare; only "Jammin'" had been performed a few times and later became a classic Marley tune and a standard of the later tours. "Waiting In Vain" and "One Love / People Get Ready" had been performed at least once during the Kaya Tour in 1978, as was "Three Little Birds" at least once during the Uprising Tour in 1980). There were performances of two songs which are not featured on any of Marley's Island albums released at that time: "Trenchtown Rock" (an early pre-Island song) and "Running Away" (a song released on the 1978 album Kaya).
From show to show sometimes an additional song was edged in the middle of the setlist (especially during the Rainbow Theatre shows when Marley widely varied the setlists), like "Jammin'", "Positive Vibration", "Concrete Jungle", "Crazy Baldhead", "Running Away", "Trenchtown Rock", "Natural Mystic", "So Much Things To Say" and "Guiltiness". Live performances of each of these songs happened very rarely during the tour.