U2 rock their old school with surprise concert to mark 50 years

London: Irish rock group U2 have gone back to school to perform to students and teachers on the grounds where they formed their band 50 years ago.

The group followed the school performance with a surprise concert on a Dublin pedestrian mall famous for hosting buskers, where they played from a building as hundreds of fans gathered below.

Lead singer Bono joked to Irish national broadcaster RTE that the band’s lead guitarist, The Edge, was worried the students at their old school, Mount Temple Comprehensive, might not have liked the band.

“But they can’t ask for their money back,” the singer said. “Because it’s free.”

U2 formed at the school when the band’s drummer, Larry Mullen Jnr, posted a note on a school notice board asking if fellow students wanted to join a band.

Their Friday concert on the school grounds was held 50 years to the day after the band members first gathered at Mullen’s family home in Dublin on September 25, 1976.

They performed at the same school building where they were photographed in 1977 in their first iteration as a band, three years before they released their first album, Boy. At their Friday concert they performed their first hit from that album, I Will Follow.

The Edge joked about the contrast between the Friday concert and their debut on the school grounds.

“I think we were good. I think the sound was better this time, is my sense, and I was more in tune,” he told RTE.

The band performed hits including Vertigo, Beautiful Day and With Or Without You, as well as their latest single, Silencio.

The band finished the school performance with a rendition of their hit, One, with backing from music students playing violins, cellos and harps.

The band are considered one of the world’s biggest rock groups with an estimated 170 million record sales, placing them 22nd on a Wikipedia list of major artists by sales volume. (The Beatles rank first with 600 million sales; Australia’s biggest musical export, AC/DC, have an estimated 200 million sales.)

A few hours after the school concert, crowds gathered in Grafton Street – one of Dublin’s main pedestrian thoroughfares – as rumours circulated about a free concert.

The band appeared on the first-floor balcony if a Dublin landmark, Bewley’s Café, and began a concert for hundreds of people gathered in the street below.

They performed I Will Follow as well as another song from their earliest days, Out of Control. They also performed One, Where the Streets Have No Name, Silencio and With or Without You.

The Grafton Street concert also included a moment to honour the Irish songwriter Glen Hansard, who died in July. He was a regular busker in the Dublin street before the global success of the film Once, which featured songs he wrote and performed with Markéta Irglová.

U2 performed Falling Slowly, one of the songs from the film.

Hansard, who died in July, had a long association with Grafton Street and was closely associated with the annual Christmas Eve charity busk in Dublin city centre.

The band’s next album, Carnaval de Luz, is due to be released in November and includes a track co-written and performed with Dolly Parton, the American music star who died last month.

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