Fifty
In the week that marks 50 years since Larry Mullen Jr. pinned a handwritten note to the noticeboard of Mount Temple Comprehensive School on the Northside of Dublin - 'Drummer Seeks Musicians To Form Band', - the band were live in Dublin on Friday with two surprise sets.
The first was back at Mount Temple school and the second at Bewley's Café on Grafton Street. Broadcaster and arts journalist Pat Carty took notes for U2.com
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Given that it was five decades to the day that U2 formed in Larry Mullen's Artane kitchen after the young man placed that drummer seeks musicians note on the school notice board, it was inevitable something was going to happen in Dublin on September 25th. You're only fifty once.
Social media posts started appearing the day before, U2 were going back to their old school, U2 were going to take over Grafton Street, U2 were going to get their own coin, U2 saved my cat.
Fans gathered on Friday outside Mount Temple Comprehensive on the city's north side, watching as busloads of media representatives and invitees passed through the watertight security. In the main schoolyard, the students were let out class by class and rushed towards the makeshift stage in the corner, already having the best school day of this or any other year, with handmade signs reading, "It's a beautiful day, no school" and "Bono, my mom says hi". Construction workers gathered on the roof of the half- finished building next door, and seagulls claimed perches in anticipation.
We could see that the set-up on the concrete platform at the back of the science rooms was uncannily like the photos from 1976 – drums set up between a couple of amps and to the left as you were looking, students sat on the wall. The crane camera swooped, techs talked into headsets and then out they came.
Edge's incendiary I Will Follow opening shot out over us and the place exploded. Only one problem, we couldn't hear Bono, but by the time we got to "Walk Away" he's plugged back in and throwing in references to the school's yellow corridors.
"If you're taking Spanish lessons, don't take them from me!" he laughed before giving that 1, 2, 3, 14 count into Vertigo. Adam's bass was like a machine gun, Edge's riffs were like thrown knives, and Larry was breaking up the concrete at the back. Bono ended the song with a snippet of their recently released cover of The Pogues Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, specifically "I loved you since I was at school."
"Your next dance please… Thanks for turning up, You'd nowhere else to go!" Edge's Beautiful Day chords floated across the yard and Larry held back slightly before unleashing that lethal right foot on his bass drum. Bono dreamily recalled seeing "Ali Stewart in green and blue" and then appropriately borrowed Elbow's line about "One day like this a year would see me right."
If there was any rust since Las Vegas, and it was before that again when the four of them last played live together, it wasn't showing. This was, by some considerable distance, the smallest crowd most of us there had seen them play to, on a stage smaller than Edge's usual pedal board, and they killed it.
"It's well known that students of this campus cannot be controlled…" Placing Out Of Control and their "new rock n' roll 45" Silencio – Edge pointing at Adam whose opening bass riff has a prize fighter's punching power – illustrated how consistent they've been from then to this, the same punk inspirations still driving them on.
During Out Of Control, Bono acknowledged "the man who pinned the notice on the noticeboard," "the streaker of the green corridor," and "David Evans, no, that doesn't sound right."
After nodding to Jack Heaslip, guidance counsellor at the school and later travelling pastor for band and crew, and the great work being done by Ireland's national music education programme Music Generation, U2 were joined by "musicians superior to the current orchestra" from the programme – harps, cellos, violins – for a moving version of One to close. Or it would have been to close if the crowd were willing to let them go, which they weren't.
They came back for an arrangement of With Or Without You that they haven't played before, close to the stripped down Songs Of Surrender version, Bono whispering a prayer more than howling a declaration. Adam's bass took it someplace else entirely. How that man's sound gets deeper and fuller the older he gets is a mystery. We were supposed to rush back to the bus but you had to pause for a second and take it all in. It was a bit special.
Back in the city centre there was already a serious buzz thanks to the other rumoured appearance on Grafton Street. A crowd has gathered and if any still had doubts something was going on, the barriers and security personnel dispelled them. As it got close to 7 o'clock, on the first floor balcony of the narrow pedestrian street's famous Bewley's Café, the band emerged again. They had even less room to work with than earlier – Bono and Larry pretty much side by side in the middle - but the music soared.
They opened a second time with I Will Follow because if it ain't broke, don't fix it, and this version had a bit of The Stones' Waiting On A Friend thrown in. The sound was even heavier than earlier causing what felt like the entire block to bounce up and down and even if there had been any problems, the roar from the gathered Dubliners would have buried it.
Out Of Control was even more, well, out of control and One, "a song that's harder and harder to sing in these times," proved itself again to be impervious to any kind of tarnishing. Add strings to it, add Purple Rain to it as Bono did here, chain it to a boulder and sink it into the Mariana Trench, it doesn't matter, it's a glorious thing.
Not a band to repeat themselves, this second show included I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For with Bono in remarkable 1987 voice and with added "Alive, alive, oh" as Molly Malone's statue was only around the corner. Larry masterfully drove With Or Without You, and Bono invited us all to "put on our red shoes and dance the blues" during Silencio.
"One man who will never be silenced was Glen Hansard, the king busker, the king of Grafton Street." Bono recalled his old friend who started his career where we were standing before a gorgeous All I Want Is You ("If The Edge says he is not out of tune, he is definitely not out of tune") and then the guitarist himself stepped forward to essay Hansard's signature tune Falling Slowly. Singing that song on this street was akin to shooting fish in a barrel with a rocket launcher but that doesn't mean there was a dry eye to be seen.
Beautiful Day and Vertigo are the kind of one-two combination that would floor anyone but perhaps the most moving moment was going back to ‘40' to finish. Edge and Adam swopped instruments and the street swayed to the bass throb as we all promised to sing a new song. They left the stage one by one until only Larry remained and then he waved his goodbyes.
We rushed around the corner, fought our way to the bar, received our Guinness blessing, and then leaned back against the street walls, exhausted but glowing from a properly beautiful day. They're back.
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