U2eiTour Rehearsals: Minor Spoilers Ahead

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2018-04-08)

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 should be SPOILER FREE for song titles, but does specify where the band is rehearsing.

Yesterday we woke up to a tip that the band would be rehearsing at Place Bell, in Laval, Quebec, instead of the previously rumoured Videotron Centre in Quebec City. The tip came from a previously reliable source and we have followed up and confirmed that this is indeed likely the rehearsal location.

Place Bell is a new arena in the Montreal area, in the city of Laval. The arena was completed in 2017, and is a 10,000 seat arena. This is comparable in size to a few of the smaller stops on the upcoming eXPERIENCE + iNNOCENCE tour. The arena is home to the hockey team, the Laval Rocket, who do have a scheduled hockey game in the arena on Friday April 13.

Yesterday, friends were kind enough to check out the arena and identified that there was very little activity that could be seen from outside the venue. However, there was an Upstaging Truck being unloaded. The red Upstaging trucks are a common site to U2 fans, and U2 have used the transportation and lighting company extensively on past tours, as do other acts touring with Live Nation. It’s a sign that there is a concert / musician taking up residence in the building, but the first act scheduled to play the arena after the hockey game on Friday night? It’s Kygo, on May 1, 2018.

We’ve had further confirmation that the band is indeed planning on rehearsing in this arena in Laval. The band is expected to arrive early this week to start rehearsals. U2’s crew started to work in the venue yesterday morning. The venue holds two different rinks so it is possible to hold rehearsals at the same time that the game is underway, and move to the full sized area when the hockey game is finished.

Today the red Upstaging truck is still present at the venue, and today it has been joined by a couple of larger vans with blacked out windows, and additional crew members were seen in the area.

The band have not yet arrived in Laval. They are expected to begin arriving early this week.

The band are expected to be in Canada for rehearsals until April 24, at which time they will relocate to Tulsa for final set up. Judas Priest is performing at the BOK Center in Tulsa, so the band will not load into the venue in Tulsa until April 27 giving U2 five additional days for rehearsals if required.

Merci beaucoup to friends Tallie and Annouche for providing some of the information above. We look forward to continue bringing news and information about the rehearsals. Please read the spoiler warnings at the start of future articles if you wish to know what type of spoilers are present before reading the full article. We will attempt to keep these off of our social media feeds.

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