U2 joined Green Day on stage in New Orleans last night (September 25) for a version of Scottish punks The Skids‘ song ’The Saints Are Coming’.
The bands were performing together at the re-opening of the New Orleans‘ American football stadium, Louisiana Superdome.
Green Day opened the show with a performance of ’Wake Me Up When September Comes’ from their ’American Idiot’ album.
The two bands then came together to perform ’The Saints Are Coming’ accompanied by a New Orleans brass band, whose arrangements were overseen by Pink Floyd collaborator Bob Ezrin.
This was followed by U2’s performance of their 2000 smash hit ’Beautiful Day’.
The pairing was part of the charity Music Rising‘s campaign bring music back to the hurricane and flood-ravaged Gulf Coast.
“When the idea of playing at the Superdome re-opening first came up to the invitation was for Music Rising to put together a ten-minute musical piece and I immediately thought of ’The Saints Are Coming’,” U2 guitarist The Edge told NME.COM. “It could have been written for this occasion. The lyric fits so well it’s almost eerie.”
U2 performed previously at the Dome in 1997 as part of the ’PopMart’ tour and returned in 2002 to play the Super Bowl XXXV1 halftime show to commemorate the victims of the September 11 attacks.
The stadium itself became a main shelter when New Orleans was hit by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Meanwhile, the two bands have recorded a version of ‘The Saints Are Coming’, originally released in 1978, with producer Rick Rubin to aid ’Music Rising’.
You can download the song for $0.99 here.
For more on Green Day and U2‘s collaboration see this weeks issue of NME, on newsstands nationwide from September 27.