U2 celebrated their 50th anniversary in the Dublin school where they grew up

Exactly 50 years after their formation, U2 returned to Dublin to play a concert at the school where all its musicians first met, writes the BBC.

"We escaped from the laboratory," Bono declared as the quartet took to the stage set up in the schoolyard. "And how do you like the experiment?"

When U2 was the most popular band in the world, the girls and boys from Mount Temple Comprehensive school (and, probably, many of their parents) weren't even born yet.

But the current students gave the musicians an honorable reception, waving posters with slogans: "I love U2", "Today is a beautiful day – no school" and "Bono, my mom says hi!"

The band delighted them with a selection of songs from across their entire career. I Will Follow, Vertigo, and With or Without You were played, as well as their latest single Silencio.

While the concert was ongoing, teachers tried to maintain discipline, bringing down those who climbed onto classmates' shoulders to get a better view of the musicians.

Soon, the concert's energy enveloped the adults too – they also started dancing.

Looking from the very stage where U2 debuted with their first concert in 1978, Bono couldn't hold back his emotions. "Thanks for, uh... Yeah... I don't... Wow," the frontman said, momentarily losing his words.

The story of U2 began in those very classrooms and corridors five decades ago when 14-year-old Larry Mullen Jr. affixed a handwritten note to the school bulletin board: "Drummer looking for musicians to form a band."

The audition took place a few days later, on September 25, 1976, in Larry's parents' kitchen.

Among the hopeful "outsiders," as their school friend Frank Kearns called them, were Bono, The Edge, and Adam Clayton, who arrived wearing a long sheepskin coat.

Initially, the band was called Feedback, then The Hype.

But global fame came to them when, changing their name to U2, they transformed from a bunch of unshaven punks into stadium-rock titans. Their grand ideas and loud anthems attracted millions of fans and almost as many critics.

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In an interview with BBC News, Mullen admitted that the recruitment ad was his father's idea from the very beginning.

"I was playing alone, at home, and my father was disappointed with me," he says. "I wasn't very good at many things, and drumming was one of them. So, I think, through his disappointment, he said I should try playing with other people."

"And, unfortunately," Bono adds, "he found the three of us."

Bono, then known to everyone as Paul Hewson, actually considered skipping the audition. He was two years older than the others and feared looking out of place.

"I wouldn't hang out with a second-year class (of high school, equivalent to 9th grade), especially with such good-looking guys," he says.

Eventually, his friend Reggie Manuel convinced him to go and even gave him a ride on his old, beat-up motorcycle.

"I can convince myself it was a Harley," the singer jokes, "but in reality, it was a Yamaha DX100."

The band's first rehearsal wasn't very promising. There was more talking than music.

Clayton, a bassist who couldn't play the bass guitar, was chosen simply because he had "the coolest hair."

And Bono, who wanted to be a guitarist, didn't bring a guitar with him.

"I never got along with equipment," he recalls. "Carrying it, unpacking it – all that."

Nevertheless, even then there were signs that the band would attract an army of devoted fans. In the middle of the rehearsal, a group of screaming girls tried to climb over the garden wall.

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For Clayton, this moment was decisive.

"Larry already had a fan club, and we thought: 'Well, if he has a fan club, that looks pretty good. Maybe if we hang out with this guy, we can make it even better.'"

Mullen, who had always been the band's steadfast moral compass, was not impressed by this invasion.

"As far as I remember, Larry Mullen sprayed the fangirls with a hose," Bono laughs.

"I don't know what came over me," grimaces the drummer, trying to claim that the spraying "was an act of kindness and love because it was a hot day."

"They liked it," he protests. "It was a joke."

Bono interjects to save his friend from embarrassment... well, in a way.

"Since then, that's been the story of our lives. He doesn't even want fans, but we quite like them."

It was from that discordant gathering in the kitchen of the house on Rosemount Avenue that U2 transformed into the most popular rock band in the world.

Songs like With or Without You, One, and Beautiful Day always sounded majestic yet personal; their strength lay in The Edge's cascading guitar parts and Bono's lyrics which, despite their evangelical fervor, are imbued with faith in humanity.

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In the 1990s, they made a stylistic turn, embracing electronics, dance music, and irony in the albums Achtung Baby, Zooropa, and Pop.

In doing so, with their Zoo TV tour, whose stage was packed with multimedia screens and satellite broadcasts, they breathed new life into stadium rock.

And Bono called the White House every night with prank calls.

The Edge, whose real name is Dave Evans, attributes the band's longevity to the lack of formal musical education.

"In a way, the band's limitations became our guiding star," he explains. "We're in a position where, musically, we never know what's going to happen next. Everything could fall apart, or it could turn into something extraordinary. That's the beauty of U2."

Returning to the stage at Mount Temple, Bono expressed gratitude to his alma mater for allowing the band to develop.

He said that it was thanks to the teachers' support that they realized: "Everything we needed might have been nearby, right under our feet."

He dedicated this performance to school counselor Jack Heaslip, who later became a "traveling preacher" during the band's tours. In 2015, Heaslip died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

U2 concluded the performance with an orchestral arrangement of the song One. They were joined by students from the Irish educational program Music Generation, which the band members helped to establish and fund 15 years ago.

Hours earlier, the band announced their 16th studio album, Carnaval de Luz, due for release in November.

This is a continuation of the angry and passionate mini-album Days of Ash, released in February, which addressed headline-grabbing topics: killings committed in the US by immigration police (ICE), the war in Ukraine, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

In April, it was followed by the more restrained mini-album Easter Lily, and Carnaval de Luz concludes this story. The Edge described it as a "chaotic, provocative, sacred collection of songs," while Bono promised "loud guitars, deep bass, and ecstatic rhythms."

The 12-track album concludes with the song Torn, co-written by Dolly Parton; it was the country star's last recorded performance before her death in August.

In a press release, the track is described as "a tender country song about torn family ties that many will understand."

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