U2's Turin rehearsals, Sunday 01/08

Would you believe it? After all these rumours, so much speculation, and and not a lot of certainty, U2 actually rehearsed in Turin today. That's right, the full band, including the previously elusive Bono. And they had some exciting surprises for us.

Most notable are rehearsals of a new song, and of Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me, last performed live over 12 years ago on 21 March 1998. YouTube footage of both can be heard in this article below the setlist. There was also possibly a rehearsal of Gone's intro; this is unconfirmed, as it may have been confused with HMTMKMKM. It was last performed almost nine years ago on 27 August 2001. The only other song rehearsed today that has not been performed in full on the 360° Tour is Miss Sarajevo, last performed at the end of Vertigo on 9 December 2006. It was, however, snippeted in Zagreb last year on 9 August 2009.

Piecing together reports (in Italian) from U2Place and U2Italia, the following songs were rehearsed today. This setlist is, we believe, roughly chronological but probably not in perfect order:

An initial afternoon soundcheck of multiple songs, albeit some were incomplete:
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
New Year's Day riff
Gone intro (U2Place warns this may have been confused with HMTMKMKM)
Miss Sarajevo
Beautiful Day
Where The Streets Have No Name

Then rehearsals got under way properly in the evening:
One Day Like This (Elbow snippet) / Beautiful Day again
Magnificent
Soon / Moment Of Surrender
New Year's Day
Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
Get On Your Boots
--- Possibly a short break here ---
Beautiful Day again
Possibly Magnificent again
Get On Your Boots again
Mysterious Ways
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For / Many Rivers To Cross (snippet)
New song, rehearsed twice
Miss Sarajevo

(Unlinked songs are those which do not appear yet in our database.)

The new song on YouTube:



Note from 0:25, the lyric about "the flowering rose of Glastonbury". Could this be the new song Bono said the band had written for the Glastonbury festival? (See point #2 of this article.)

And here is HMTMKMKM on YouTube:



In case you're still skeptical (we understand; after the last few days of rumours and counter-rumours, so were we), here is a photo of the whole band rehearsing today with Bono inside the Stadio Olimpico, taken by Cristian and posted in this U2Market article (in Italian) along with two others:



Where did that elusive frontman get to anyway? Well, turns out he was at a wedding yesterday, but not Chelsea Clinton's in New York state. He was still in Europe, Corsica to be precise, attending the wedding of Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz. Bono has close connections to both, so it is unsurprising he was one of the invitees; he has performed Don't Give Up (Africa) with Alicia Keys three times, while Swizz Beatz this year produced Stranded (Haiti Mon Amour).

To conclude, we have perhaps the least exciting news of the day. That's right - U2.com have posted their day 5 video. It's a brief glimpse of the steering wheel microphone used last year for Ultra Violet. That's all. Somehow, I think the fansites have one over U2.com there.

Posted on Monday, August 02, 2010 @ 02:21:40 CEST by Axver