As promised, it was a night of 'words, music and some mischief' when Bono took the stage in New York for the opening date on the Stories of Surrender tour.

Here's some very early reaction from those who were at the Beacon Theatre. ( Been at one of the shows? Add your own reviews below.)

'It was such a beautiful evening of stories, songs, fans.' wrote Beth Talisman. 'It flew by because nobody knew what time it was! Phones in pouches meant everyone was either chatting or reading the book before the show (genius but again no photos!) Just enough of the U2 crew to make you feel like you were at a show...
'The musicians and Jacknife Lee give us some of the best known songs in new beautiful ways. The visuals featured Bono's art and touch back on some of what was seen on screens during Cedarwood Road on tour. Very sparse set that gets used perfectly to tell the stories from the book….'

'As with every U2 tour,' said dmway on Zootopia.'There was a LOT of thought and pre-planning behind this endeavor, and it showed! The show was part-concert, part-role play (with props!), part-stand-up comedy, part-tear-inducing narrative. It was all great! Bono may have invented the genre "Performance Autobiography" with these shows. I was expecting a lot, and, as always with anything U2-related, this show delivered and then some….'

Kay, from German U2 fan site U2Tour.de, put it like this: 'After all the articles about Bono's memoirs… the time had come… to the sounds of City of Blinding Lights Bono entered the stage and the entire auditorium rose and sang along. Bono thanked his band members for allowing him to perform solo. Only after Vertigo was played, the audience began to sit down and slowly Bono started to recite from his book, which was amazingly fluent… the whole set was very entertaining and many of us had tears in our eyes from laughing, because Bono was, is and remains simply a good storyteller.'

The 14 date tour travels through North America and Europe this month, in support of Bono's memoir Surrender published this week.

'Surrender is characteristically expansive, but it whizzes by… generous, energetic book.' Read some of the first reviews of the book here.

The audio book edition is also proving a hit and you can take a listen to extracts of Bono's reading - and order your copy - here.