Rehearsals Start in Las Vegas

Original Story by Aaron J Sams (2023-09-07)

SPOILERS: Some of the information included below may be considered spoilers for upcoming shows at the Sphere in Las Vegas.

U2 have arrived in Las Vegas, and rehearsals have taken place over the last two nights at the Sphere. Many of the crew have been in Las Vegas for a few weeks, but more recently, many of the rest arrived over the weekend. The band’s first rehearsals were on Tuesday the 5th.

Other familiar faces are around Las Vegas as well, with family of the band being spotted. Longtime producer Steve Lillywhite is also in Vegas with U2. Lillywhite has recently been working in studio with the band in the South of France in recent weeks.

Previously rehearsals for these coming shows were under taken in Dublin in March and April, and in Monaco / Èze in July and August. The band have reportedly been taking a lot of time to get these shows right. We are told that the set list is mostly worked out at this point and the upcoming weeks will be focused on making the whole production fit together with an emphasis on incorporating video components, stage choreography, and the music.

Staff in training to work at the Sphere were reportedly allowed to watch some of the first night of rehearsals. The songs performed were mostly expected, with a selection of songs from Achtung Baby and some of their bigger hits you would expect to hear at most U2 shows. A full show has not been rehearsed, and the band has been focused on smaller pieces of the show to date. The band did not appear to stop or greet fans on the way in or out of the venue on either night.

The venue is pretty sound proof we are told, and we aren’t expecting the level of access that previous rehearsal venues provided. In New Zealand in 2019, rehearsals were in an open air venue, the Laval rehearsals in 2018 were in a venue that had multiple areas, some of which were in use while U2 were practicing. And the sound in 2017 were pretty easily heard outside the venue even though it was covered, although U2 made it more difficult at times by turning down the volume when working on the new song, “The Little Things That Give You Away”. Although we do expect the sound to be turned up at some points, the sound system in the Sphere gives U2 options to work very quietly as well.

We will be covering rehearsals as information becomes available. We will mark any information about songs being performed as spoilers, and will keep them contained to our pages, away from our social media feeds, and we will mark things as we have above. But as we learned in 2018, although we may try to prevent them from being seen, others were quick to take them and repost them widely on social media. So before the song spoilers start, we just wanted to take a minute to remind people of our own policies, and suggest that now is the time to take a step back from social media if you are trying to stay completely unspoiled before the shows.

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