U2 members sing at funeral for Bono's father

DUBLIN, Ireland (Reuters) - Members of the Irish supergroup U2 sang at the funeral of lead singer Bono's father on Friday, a day before the band was to play for its biggest audience ever in Ireland.

Bono, whose real name is Paul Hewson, his wife Ali, his brother Norman and other members of U2 attended a private service in the north Dublin port of Howth for Bono's father Paul Hewson, a spokeswoman for the band's publicists said. "They (members of the band) sang beautifully, not as a band, but as individuals," a parishioner who attended the service at The Church of the Assumption told Reuters.

Hewson, a retired postal worker in his 70s who died on Tuesday, had been ill with cancer for some time. Bono had been flying back to Dublin each night to see him from some of the group's European concerts.

The group, which began its "Elevation Tour 2001" in Miami in March, has been on the road most of the time since. It will play for 80,000 fans, its biggest audience in Ireland, on Saturday night in an open field at Slane Castle, 25 miles north of Dublin. The band last appeared at Slane in 1981 as a warmup act.

The concert is the first of two U2 is giving a week apart at Slane, with both of them being instant sellouts in what has become one of the highest grossing rock tours in history. Industry publications reported that even before adding 25 additional U.S. dates, the tour had generated an estimated $142 million worldwide. The group's Dublin dates have been eagerly awaited by fans, many of whom were disappointed when tickets for the first concert sold out in about 45 minutes and the second in a matter of hours.

Police have said they are mounting one of the biggest one-day police operations in the history of the republic, deploying some 800 police.