Exactly 50 years after they formed, U2 returned to Dublin to play a gig at the school where they met. ”We‘ve escaped from the lab,” declared Bono, as they quartet took to a stage in the playground. As they played, teachers pulled down pupils who’d climbed on their classmates' shoulders, before getting swept up in the moment and dancing along themselves. As he looked out from the same stage where U2 made their debut in 1976, Bono became emotional.
I didn’t… Wow,” said the frontman, temporarily lost for words. The U2 story began in those same halls and corridors five decades ago, when 14-year-old Larry Mullen Jr pinned a handwritten note to the school noticeboard. Auditions were held a couple of days later, on 25 September, 1976, in Larry's parents' kitchen.
Among the hopeful "misfits", as their school-friend Frank Kearns called them, were Bono, The Edge and Adam Clayton – who arrived wearing a full-length Afghan coat. Initially called Feedback, and then The Hype, they conquered the world as U2, transforming themselves from a scrappy punk outfit into stadium-conquering rock titans, whose big ideas and big anthems attracted millions of admirers, and almost as many detractors. Speaking to BBC News, Mullen confessed the infamous wanted advert had been his father's idea all along.
"I'd been playing on my own, in my house, and my dad was pretty frustrated," he says. "I wasn't very good at many things, and playing the drums was included in that. So I think he, out of frustration, said I should try and play with other people." "And unfortunately," adds Bono, "he got the three of us." Bono, then known as Paul Hewson, had actually been tempted to skip the audition.
He was two years older, and concerned about looking out of place. "I wouldn't be hanging out with second years, and particularly really good-looking ones," he says. Eventually, his friend Reggie Manuel persuaded him to attend, even giving him a lift on his rickety old motorbike.
"I can tell myself it was a Harley Davidson," the singer jokes, "but really it was a Yamaha DX100." The first band practice didn't exactly show promise. There was more talking than playing. Clayton, a bassist who couldn't play bass, was selected on account of having "the best hair".
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