U2eiTour Rehearsal Update: April 9, 2018

Original Story by Aaron J. Sams (2018-04-09)

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 and some of the timelines.

Up until the end of last week, the crew working on the #U2eiTOUR were located at the IZOD Center in New Jersey testing out the stage, the screen and other aspects of the tour. The band was not present in New Jersey, although a number of creative personnel were present. Last last week the tour gear was packed up and left for Canada.

The band’s final rehearsals before Oklahoma will take place in Canada, in the city of Laval, near Montreal in Quebec. The band started moving equipment into Place Bell, an arena in Laval on Friday evening. 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.

On April 7, friends were kind enough to check out the arena and identified there was little activity that could be seen around the arena, but also identified a red truck from Upstaging. The red Upstaging trucks are a common site to U2 fans, and U2 have used the transportation and lighting company extensively on past tours.

The band are still not in Laval. They are expected to begin arriving early this week.

Today a number of new things were identified. First the familiar faces of some U2 crew members were seen last night at the venue and around town. And yesterday and today we have seen black Mercedes vans with a U2 logo in the windows parked outside the venue, which are being used for pick up and deliveries. The red Upstaging trucks are coming and going to the venue, and we believe that it was a different truck seen today than was there earlier in the week.

Inside the arena, one of the two ice surfaces at Bell Place is still covered in ice, and this is likely for the hockey game being held at the venue on Friday evening. The Laval Rocket call the venue home, and have one last home game on Friday, before the venue is empty until May 1. The next scheduled event is a Kygo concert on May 1 at this time.

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 Talie, Karin 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.

Update: April 9, 2018 6pm EST:

U2 are all now in Laval. Bono arrived late this afternoon and has been by the arena already. Adam has also been seen at the venue. Although not spotted, both Larry and the Edge are reported to be in Canada now as well. Rehearsals should start over the next couple of days. We’ll bring you updates as we can.