LONDON — Irish band U2 returned to the school on Friday to give a surprise lesson in the rock and roll they founded half a century ago.
The band performed a seven-song set, including “With or Without You,” on the school grounds of Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin for hundreds of students and other crowds lucky enough to be within earshot and get a bird’s eye view, such as those catching wind of the concert or a construction crew several floors up in a nearby building.
“We escaped from the laboratory; how is the experiment going?” Bono said, pointing to the science classrooms.
The band started 50 years ago when 14-year-old Larry Mullen posted a note on a message board at school: “Drummer looking for musicians to form a band.”
Originally known as Feedback, the band consisted of singer Paul Hewson, now Bono, guitarist David Evans, known as The Edge, and Adam Clayton on bass.
The rest, as they say, is history, though it would be a few years before they settled on the name U2, and their first album, “Boy,” didn’t come out until 1980, featuring “I Will Follow,” the first tune they played for enthusiastic kids.
The 30-minute concert was not as secret as it seemed. A camera crew was working, international news media had gathered, and a group of 32 students were accompanying the band as they played string instruments for the hit “One.”
It was part of the promotional effort for their new album, “Carnaval De Luz,” which featured a duet between Bono and Dolly Parton, who died of cancer last month.
Some students screamed and cheered, sticking their heads out of classroom windows. They recorded those moments on their phones and sang along to familiar songs. Some say “I love you Bono!” he shouted.
Bono thanked his captive audience but stated that they “had nowhere else to go.”
As he counted out the signature beginning of “Vertigo” with “uno, dos, tres, catorce” (one, two, three, 14), he joked: “If you’re taking Spanish lessons, don’t take them from me.”
Paying tribute to teachers, he waxed philosophical about his time at the school, saying it was there that the group began their “most humble and hardest lesson” in learning how much they needed to be taught.
“Part of this started here and was that maybe all we needed was all around us, right under our feet; if we could see that in our friends, in our broader community, it would help us get through the next 50 years,” he said. “So we want to thank them and the larger community around this rock ‘n’ roll high school.”