Sept 8 AOTD - U2 - The Joshua Tree

U2 - The Joshua Tree

1987

Lin to Listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FsrPEUt2Dg&list=PLIHqGfTiPiMWRadWXFtaSLGUI953vOTrt


In 1987, I was a lucky young man. On March 4, at exactly 11:30 a.m. (radio stations were all strictly forbidden from playing it before this time), the first single to be released from Joshua Tree was suddenly playing on the radio.  I was in my bedroom in my Dad's house, studying - my boom box speakers splayed out on my desk to either side of me.  I stopped - the opening drums and synthesizers capturing my attention... but really two other instruments, soon in the mix, the bass and something else... something I had never heard before ... like a constant wind whistling through some dessert canyon - and I found out later that was The Edge's "infinite guitar," created to hold "sustained" notes - but they appeared to be rising and falling, bending, and then fading ... before that voice. Yes, Bono. But in a much lower register than I had heard him before, and then dropping even more, a full octave at the ends of the verses ... and then that signature "Unforgettable Fire"-sound in his usual register, desperation in his voice as he sang "With or Without You," pushing to emotional heights on "...you give yourself away ... you give, you give, you give"!  I grabbed those speakers, pulled them closer to my ears, and then, as the song crescendoed, cried while listening to music for the first time ever.

Two more singles on the radio just as moving would in the upcoming weeks: "Where the Streets Have No Name" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."  The rest of the decade belonged to U2, it was theirs, rightfully claimed with spiritual anthems and experimentation that just didn't exist anywhere else.  The album plays out across a cinematic and sonic landscape - from America's Mojave desert to Ireland and Dublin's drug-ridden Seven Towers. But it was more the draw of a mythical, romanticized America that set the majority of the album's memorable tone. Bono's familiar, chiming guitar introduces "In God's Country," where Bono declares that hope can be found, we can "punch a hole right through the night" where "Liberty, she comes to rescue me."  The album FEELS like that mythical, place-of-dreams, greater than a Hamm's Beer commercial country, with clear blue water cascading down into our desert dreams.

I saw U2 that year on Joshua Tree Tour in Kansas City (and have seen them on every tour since) and witnessed, for me, the closest thing to what I had read about regarding tent revival shows, preachers whipping Southern crowds into religious frenzies. I had enjoyed music before this album and tour.  But now a new standard had been set.  Bono was even more engaging on stage than he was on record, at one point explaining that the meaning behind "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" was a desire to "walk into a music store and not see any separation between the black music and classic rock." It was an incredible moment of hope from a man who would later do so much to build bridges between his white wealth and the needs of those in Africa. That night I felt that no matter what any of us in Kemper Arena believed in terms of faith, we could all spiritually or otherwise get behind this music.

The album also tackles drug addiction on "Running to Stand Still," the revolutionary crisis in Central America in "Bullet the Blue Sky," the death of one of their close friends in "One Tree Hill," and the out-of-work miner strikes of the 80s in England in "Red Hill Mining Town" (one of the most moving songs to NOT be released as a single) ... all before reaching an ending that addresses mothers having lost their children to brutal dictators in Central and South American countries in "Mothers of the Disappeared." It's a rueful, dark comedown, both beautiful in Bono's lyrics, but ominous in the effect-laden, synthesize instrumentation.  It's a fitting ending to an album that is filled with tension.  Streets with No Names can be liberating, but also downright terrifying in their directionless-ness.  And the first single - With or Without You - is really Bono exploring the pull between being a private, faithful husband and being an exposed, wanderlust rock and roll singer.  The album may best be remembered for its embracing of American idealism, but it is also a sociopolitical roller coaster of danger and death.  Perhaps that's its greatest beauty, that it is defined by love AND loss, the two backbones of our essence, of our humanity.