U2’s 50th Anniversary in Dublin: Must-Watch Concerts, Former High School Tribute & Glen Hansard Homage

U2’s 50th Anniversary Reunion Turns School Playground Into a Rock Cathedral

Fifty years after a handwritten notice promised a revolution, U2 returned to Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin to deliver the kind of encore history simply cannot buy. On September 25, Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. surprised 1,000 pupils and staff with a seven-song set above the school playground.

The occasion carried a rather poetic inconvenience: Mullen Jr. was performing live for the first time since undergoing neck and back surgery in 2023. Clearly, the drummer saw recovery as negotiable.

Fifty years to the day, the band had first played in Mullen Jr.’s parents’ kitchen before taking its first proper gig on the very same school stage. It all began with that famous notice: “Drummer seeks musicians to form band.” Former RE teacher Sophie Shirley, now 80, still remembers Larry’s decisive moment in class.

“I remember it well,” she said. “One day I happened to mention ‘God has a particular purpose for each individual’ and Larry’s hand went up.” The note on the board, she recalled, seemed promising-but surely not destined to become one of pop music’s great success stories.

And how dramatically the school story has grown since.

The anniversary performance opened with “I Will Follow”, although Bono’s microphone briefly disappeared into the acoustic equivalent of a school-day rebellion. From there, U2 moved through “Vertigo”, a radiant “Beautiful Day”—during which Bono slipped in lyrics from Elbow’s “One Day Like This”—“Out of Control” and the quietly devastating “One”.

For “One”, 32 students from Music Generation, the U2-funded Irish music education programme, joined the band on strings. It was more than a guest appearance; it was the original schoolboy promise returning full-scale, with tuition attached.

Bono, surveying the crowd, declared: “This island is full of song and music and mischief and we’re so proud to be Irish.” The pupils demanded another song. U2 obliged with “With Or Without You”. Meanwhile, “Silencio”, released the previous day, received its first live performance.

But the real spectacle arrived later, when U2 took over Grafton Street and played from the balcony of Bewley’s Cafe. No polished arena, no theatrical camouflage-just four rock veterans, a Dublin evening and a crowd that had somehow squeezed itself into the former rock-songwriters’ corridor.

Their set included “All I Want Is You” and “Falling Slowly”, with The Edge singing, as Bono paid tribute to Glen Hansard, the Oscar-winning Frames frontman who died in a motorcycle accident in July. Pointing to the spot where Hansard once busked, Bono called him “the king busker, king of Grafton Street.” The Edge and Clayton even swapped instruments for “40”, U2’s enduring crowd pleaser.

The evening also offered a preview of Carnaval De Luz, including “The Greatest Show on Earth” and “Torn”, featuring what is being billed as Dolly Parton’s final recorded vocal performance.

Produced by Jacknife Lee, the 12-song album arrives November 13, following the surprise EPs Days of Ash and Easter Lily. Bono calls it a “messy, provocative, sacred collection”—which is rather more interesting than another polished pop offering.

After all these years, the noticeboard prophecy has finally delivered its encore. Not bad for a school exercise.