SPOILERS: U2eiTOUR Rehearsal Day Two Report: April 10, 2018

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2018-04-10)

WARNING: As the tour rehearsals progress we will be posting spoilers about songs on the site itself. We will try to give advance warning about these in this fashion. THIS STORY CONTAINS SPOILERS. If you continue reading below you will find spoilers about songs that were heard at the venue, as well as rehearsal timing and other information some fans may not want to hear. We would ask that you remember some fans do not want spoilers before the start of the tour, and use caution when posting about this story on your social media feeds.

U2 are rehearsing for the upcoming eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE Tour in Laval, Quebec, just outside of Montreal. Rehearsals began last night with all four members of the band arriving in Laval and going to the venue, Place Bell, a small arena. The arena is a newer one, opened in 2017.

There was little activity today through the day, with crew seen coming and going. Additional security barriers are now in place around the venue blocking off access to certain areas close to the facility. The media has started reporting on U2’s arrival and a number of press are at the arena, perhaps more press than fans. Local fans who are at the arena have been asked for many interviews.

Today the band arrived in the late afternoon. Unlike yesterday the volume has been turned down, and the music being rehearsed is more difficult to hear. Rehearsals started shortly after the last member of the band arrived (Larry).

If you continue beyond this point there will be spoilers about songs. You have been warned.

SPOILERS BELOW!

last warning…

Rehearsals today started in full with “Acrobat” which had also been performed yesterday on the first day of rehearsals. The Edge practiced the beginning a few times before the full song was played through twice. The band then moved into rehearsing “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses,” which was played in rehearsals in Europe, but was not played on the first day of Canadian rehearsals. The band then ran through a number of songs, and then took a short break. From there our clarity of what was played is a little bit sketchy but we think there was some work done on “The Fly”, “Desire” and “The Showman” and possibly a bit of work on “The Lights of Home”. Our information here is not 100% confirmed at this time.

The band then took a much longer break returning just before 9pm to do some additional songs.

To the best of our knowledge this is the tracks played tonight, in a rough order that they were played. We know there was some music early on that was difficult to hear and could not be identified. As well in the middle section of the first ‘set’ we may have missed some items:

  • “Acrobat” opening multiple times
  • “Acrobat” (2x)
  • “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”
  • “Acrobat”
  • “Until the End of the World”
  • “Acrobat”
  • (Break)
  • Possibly “The Fly” (Riffs only)
  • Possibly “Desire”
  • Possibly “The Showman (Little More Better)”
  • Possibly “Vertigo” (Riff only)
  • “Lights of Home”

At this point there was a break for a long time. No clear music was heard, and we’ve received no information about what may have been worked on next. It is possible that work continued and was not heard. After a while the band returned to play the following:

  • “Cedarwood Road”
  • “Song for Someone” (confirmed it wasn’t “13”)
  • “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses”
  • “Acrobat”
  • “Until the End of the World”

It appears that rehearsal may have ended there just before 10pm EST, although there may have been additional songs at the end that were not heard. If they continue again after this point, we will report on that tomorrow if information is available.

“Acrobat” is a song that the U2 community has long hoped to hear live in concert. The song, first released on Achtung Baby in 1991 has never been performed live in concert at any U2 concert, although it was rehearsed just prior to the third leg of the Zoo TV tour. On April 14, 2015, U2 fans from all over the world participated in #U2Request – during that time over 39,000 tweets and retweets naming songs they wanted to hear, “Acrobat” was the clear favorite in that list of requests for songs to hear live. This is the second night in a row this song has been heard, and tonight it is clear that the band that is performing the song.

Along with “Acrobat” a number of other songs from Achtung Baby were played throughout the evening. This included “The Fly” (Last played on U2’s U2360° Tour at the final night of that tour in Moncton, NB or in Glasgow on the U2ieTour in 2015 if you want to count Bono singing it), “Until the End of the World” (last played at the final show of U2’s 2015 tour, iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE), “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” (not played last night, new for tonight.) There were also a couple of songs from 2015’s Songs of Innocence including “Cedarwood Road” and “Song for Someone” (it has been confirmed that this was not the new song “13” and it was the lyrics from “Song for Someone” being sung – the two songs share some lyrics). A couple of newer songs were also possibly played with “The Lights of Home” and “The Showman” and an old standard, “Desire” also popped up.

Bono once spoke about innocence being the time before The Joshua Tree, and then they experienced the craziness of catapulting to the top of the charts with that album, and experience was everything that followed. The playing of songs post-Joshua Tree album certainly plays into that idea. No song on The Joshua Tree or earlier has yet to be practiced to our knowledge.

The upcoming tour is using the stage from 2015’s iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE tour, but has been advertised as including a new screen at 9x the resolution of the 2015 screen. The tour has been tipped as using Augmented Reality in a recent article in Rolling Stone, and that we took a closer look at in March.

Many thanks to Talie, Karin, Annouche, Jean-Paul, Antoine, Jason and a few contributors who wished to remain unnamed for sending information to us over the last few days. Earlier reports on the progress of rehearsals are linked below:

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