U2 celebrate 50th anniversary at the school where they formedThe rock band go back to their roots, playing a gig in the Dublin playground where they first met.6 hrs agoEurope

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 the quartet took to a stage in the playground. “How’s the experiment working for you?”

The pupils of Mount Temple Comprehensive may not have been born when U2 were the world’s biggest band, but they gave them a hero’s welcome, waving signs that said, “I love U2”, “It’s a beautiful day – no school”, and, “Bono, my mum says hi!”

The group treated them to a career-spanning set that included hits like I Will Follow, Vertigo and With Or Without You, as well as their latest single, Silencio.

As he looked out from the same stage where U2 made their debut in 1976, Bono became emotional.

“Thanks for, er… Yeah… 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.

“Drummer seeks musicians to form band.”

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”. And Bono, who wanted to be the guitarist, didn’t bring a guitar.

“I was never any good with gear,” he reflects. “Carrying it, unpacking it, that kind of thing.”

Even so, there were signs the band would attract an adoring legion of fans. Half-way through the rehearsal, a group of screaming girls tried to climb the garden wall.

For Clayton, that was the moment that sealed the deal.

“Larry already had a fan club, and we thought, ‘Well, if he’s got a fan club, that looks pretty good to us. Maybe if we hang out with this guy, it might stretch a little further’.”

Mullen, forever the band’s stoic moral compass, was not impressed by the invasion.

“As I recall, Larry Mullen took a hose to the fans,” laughs Bono.

“I don’t know what possessed me,” the drummer grimaces, while trying to insist the hosing “was an act of kindness and love because it was a hot day”.

“They enjoyed it,” he protests. “It was playful.”

Bono jumps in to save his friend’s embarrassment…. Well, kind of.

“It’s been the story of our lives ever since. He doesn’t even want to have fans, but we quite like them.”

From that kitchen in Rosemount Avenue, U2 became the world’s biggest rock band.

Anthems like With Or Without You, One and Beautiful Day have always sounded majestic yet personal; powered by The Edge’s cascading guitar tone and Bono’s lyrics which, for all their proselytising, remain grounded in a belief in humanity.

They made a stylistic swerve in the 1990s, embracing electronics, dance music and irony on the albums Achtung Baby, Zooropa and Pop.

Along the way, they reinvented stadium concerts with the Zoo TV tour, whose stage was crammed full of multimedia screens and satellite feeds, while Bono made nightly prank calls to the White House.

The Edge, real name Dave Evans, puts their longevity down to a lack of formal training.

“It’s been a guiding light, in some ways, the limitations of the band,” he explains.

“We’re in this place where, musically, we never know what’s about to happen. It can fall apart or it can become something extraordinary.

“And that’s the beauty of U2.”

Back on stage at Mount Temple, Bono paid tribute to his alma matter for allowing the band to flourish.

The support of teachers allowed them to realise that “maybe all we needed was around us, just under our feet,” he said.

And he dedicated the performance to school councillor Jack Heaslip, who later became a “travelling pastor” on the band’s tours, before his death from motor neurone disease in 2015.

U2 then closed their set with an orchestral arrangement of One, assisted by students from Ireland’s Music Generation education programme, which they helped fund and establish 15 years ago.

A few hours earlier, the band announced their 16th studio album, Carnaval de Luz, which will be released in November.

It’s a companion piece to February’s angry, impassioned EP, Days of Ash, which tackled headlines about ICE killings in America, the war in Ukraine and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

That was followed by the more sedate Easter Lily EP in April; with Carnaval de Luz rounding off the story.

The Edge described it as “a messy, provocative, sacred collection of songs”, while Bono promised “loud guitars, deep bass [and] ecstatic rhythms.”

Closing out the album’s 12 tracks is Torn, a song co-written by Dolly Parton, which was the country icon’s final recorded performance before her death last month.

In a press release, the track was described as “a tender country song detailing broken family ties, that holds wider resonances”.

BBC News will run an interview about that song, and the rest of the album, in the coming weeks.