So, two shows into the new tour, what changes are we looking at? One missed a show – the first since that song’s debut. Of course, several new songs made their debuts at full U2 concerts, and a couple of golden oldies also found their way back into the set-list. Most notable of those, in my humble opinion, is “Bullet the Blue Sky”, which was, from its debut in 1987 until the end of the Vertigo tour in 2006, played at almost every single U2 concert that took place. “Bullet” missed the entire 360 tour, but now is back in the set-list as a regular part of the Innocence+Experience tour.

The origins of “Bullet” are pretty well known – how Bono told Edge to “put El Salvador through an amplifier”, which resulted in the song’s famous dive-bomb guitar part. The song relies heavily on the rhythm track laid down by Adam and Larry and an impassioned pseudo-rap from Bono that leads into what is probably my favorite guitar solo that Edge has ever recorded. It starts out with a sound that’s reminiscent of air raid sirens and crashing bombs. It sounds like the end of the world and I can clearly envision rubble and rising smoke. More bombs fall and a mother holds her dead child, wailing inconsolably, head thrown back, tears streaming down. It’s a powerful statement from the guitarist that describes the horror of war as eloquently as any set of lyrics ever could.

If you had asked me a month ago if “Bullet” would reappear in U2’s live shows, I’d have probably said “no way”, although now that I think about it, the song fits in with the more aggressive sound of Songs of Innocence in the same way that it would have been out of place in the spacier, more ethereal mood of No Line on the Horizon and its accompanying 360 tour. That said, it was a sincere pleasure to hear the song again in a fiery new arrangement. It was a highlight of the set-list in both shows of the tour so far, and I’m excited to see how the song changes as the tour goes along.