A handwritten note on a school notice board in 1976 read "Drummer Seeks Musicians To Form Band". Half a century later, the four teenagers who answered it returned to Mount Temple Comprehensive School in north Dublin for a secret concert marking 50 years of U2.
Larry Mullen Jr, Bono, The Edge and Adam Clayton played a 35-minute set in the school yard on Friday, a nod to their earliest gigs, including a 1978 show on the roof of the school's boiler room. Students finished class early and packed the yard with hand-drawn signs — "It's A Beautiful Day No School" — while word of the show spread and fans gathered outside the gates. The band walked on stage to Alice Cooper's School's Out and ran through seven songs: With Or Without You, One, Beautiful Day, plus I Will Follow and Out Of Control from their 1980 debut Boy and later hit Vertigo. Around 30 local music students added violins, viola and harps to One, and Bono joked about the science lab where teachers filmed from the windows.
The homecoming came with news, too. U2 announced their 16th album, Carnaval De Luz, their first in nine years, due on 13 November. It will include a duet between Bono and the late Dolly Parton — described by the band as her final vocal recording — and the setlist featured a live airing of the new single Silencio.
"This island is full of song and music and mischief and we're so proud to be Irish," Bono told the crowd, thanking teachers from what he called the "rock 'n' roll high school".
For travellers, the story is a reminder of how much of Dublin's pull is musical rather than scenic. Fans can build a whole trip around it: the U2 3D exhibition-adjacent landmarks like the River Liffey docklands (The Edge helped fund a studio there), Windmill Lane where early albums were recorded, Grafton Street buskers, and the city's constant run of small-venue gigs. Mount Temple itself is a working school, so there's nothing to visit — but the northside neighbourhoods around it, and the city's music trail generally, reward anyone who arrives curious rather than star-struck.
Anyone in Dublin on a Friday evening should simply walk towards wherever the live music is. Sometimes it turns out to be one of the biggest bands on the planet, back at their old school.
