(Update, 5/10/13: While at the U2 Conference last month, I learned that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has an entire new collection of U2 memorabilia on display. Larry’s shirt is no longer there and has been “returned to the original lender.” Perhaps it will show up in an exhibit in Dublin.)

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has some pretty remarkable U2 artifacts on display—ZooTV trabants, Bono’s Fly suit, his handwritten lyrics for “Bad” … But housed inside a glass case, next to a collection of rejection letters in response to the band’s early attempts to find a record deal, is a tattered t-shirt. It’s stained and stretched. It’s primitive—both in the sense that it’s the earliest of its kind, and in its rough, rudimentary craftsmanship. The logo is weirdly placed below the chest and off center, and the graphic’s two colors are poorly registered on a shirt that doesn’t quite match. The design is a larger ring encompassing a smaller ring, the former cut across by two diagonal lines. In the inner circle (a favorite phrase among U2 fans some 30 years later) are two abstracted figures built of rectangles: a “U” and a “2.” Read More