In what must have been the smallest show since they played the school disco at Mount Temple school, U2 performed in front of just 20 people in their Hanover Quay studio in Dublin last night. Brian Boyd reports.
Playing songs from their new album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, the 30-minute set was broadcast live on BBC Radio 1 and will be repeated tonight on the Dave Fanning show on 2FM from 6.00-7.30 p.m.
Looking very much at ease in the studio where they recorded the new album, the show was for winners of a BBC Radio 1 competition, who also got to meet and talk with the band afterwards.
The official U2 tour kicks off in Miami next March, while a show in Croke Park some time during next summer is expected to be confirmed shortly.
Opening with the current single Vertigo, the band also played All Because of You; Miracle Drug - which was dedicated to their old Mount Temple school-mate, the poet Christopher Nolan; Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own - which Bono dedicated to his late father, Bob Hewson, before finishing with Beautiful Day.
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is released this Friday.
Meanwhile, the re-recording of Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas?, on which Bono features, was broadcast for the first time by Chris Moyles on BBC Radio 1 yesterday. BBC Radio Five Live's Nicky Campbell, who also played the record yesterday morning, said it had "a more melancholic feel than the original and was more soulful".
Dido, Robbie Williams and Coldplay's Chris Martin also feature on the track, which is being sold to help victims of the famine in the Darfur region of Sudan.
The single is due to go on sale in record shops in a fortnight.