Album: Joshua Tree
Artist: U2
Artist: U2
Born: Clontarf, Dublin
Released: March 1987
Genre: Rock
Influenced: Oasis, Coldplay, The Verve, Bloc Party, Arcade Fire
Two hugely successful rock bands that music snobs love to hate are Coldplay and U2. Bono, with his supreme vanity, arrogance and tendency for self-aggrandisement, is justifiably the main source of ire, but being egocentric or slightly derivative is not my main bone of contention with U2. What I like least about the band is that, behind all the bombast, the songs are often poorly written and full of a weird religious fervour. The one exception I make is Joshua Tree, an attempt by U2 to ground their music in American roots and which -- thanks to the production of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno -- has an expansive, ambient sound that evokes the country's wide open spaces, such as Joshua Tree National Park. There's a restraint and a focus to Joshua Tree not found in many other U2 albums, and the run of great songs on the first side of the record is nothing short of sensational. As with most music that you connect with, it has the ability to transport you back to the place where you first heard it, and for me that's Florence in Italy, where a group of us on a language exchange course found an underground bar in the city (with purple, smoky lighting) that one night hosted a band that specialised in U2 covers, including several of the major hits from Joshua Tree. My appreciation isn't just rooted in nostalgia though; re-listening to the album several times recently, I like how the band explore folk music (notably Red Hill Mining Town) and the album's political overtones (notably America's influence on the world).
Thanks in part to his friendship with Bob Dylan*, Bono had also been exploring his Irish musical roots in more depth, the most notable results being the heartfelt lyrics of Running To Stand Still (which reference his native Dublin). Trip Through Your Wires also sounds to me like it was directly inspired by the Celtic soul of Van Morrison. Album opener Where The Streets Have No Name had a very different source of inspiration though -- Africa -- with Bono writing about his experiences in Ethiopia as part of Live Aid. The panoramic two-minute opening builds in intensity before breaking with The Edge's arpeggio guitar riff and the multiple time signature shifts make it a highly original song. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For was inspired by gospel music and that spiritual element is reflected in the lyrics and Bono's passionate singing, while With or Without You was the first of several successful singles released from the album, powered by Adam Clayton's pulsating bass line with lyrics that give a sense of the difficulties of balancing life on the road with domestic life. Bullet The Blue Sky is the most political song on the album, apparently alluding to US involvement in the El Salvador Civil War, while Mothers Of The Disappeared references the scores of "desaparecidos" (people kidnapped by the state) under various dictatorships in Latin America, notably Argentina. All these dark themes were initially lost on me when listening to the album, but now help to underline to me that, before U2 became a stadium rock behemoth on the back of Joshua Tree's success, they had some interesting things to say and a very compelling way of doing it.
*Dylan's relationship with Bono during the 80s is of interest to me. In his autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan mentions once sharing a crate of Guinness with Bono and also says that the U2 singer recommended Daniel Lanois to him as a producer; the resulting Oh Mercy (1989) was easily Dylan's best album of that decade. Dylan's Idiot Wind was also the inspiration for the Joshua Tree song title, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
Two hugely successful rock bands that music snobs love to hate are Coldplay and U2. Bono, with his supreme vanity, arrogance and tendency for self-aggrandisement, is justifiably the main source of ire, but being egocentric or slightly derivative is not my main bone of contention with U2. What I like least about the band is that, behind all the bombast, the songs are often poorly written and full of a weird religious fervour. The one exception I make is Joshua Tree, an attempt by U2 to ground their music in American roots and which -- thanks to the production of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno -- has an expansive, ambient sound that evokes the country's wide open spaces, such as Joshua Tree National Park. There's a restraint and a focus to Joshua Tree not found in many other U2 albums, and the run of great songs on the first side of the record is nothing short of sensational. As with most music that you connect with, it has the ability to transport you back to the place where you first heard it, and for me that's Florence in Italy, where a group of us on a language exchange course found an underground bar in the city (with purple, smoky lighting) that one night hosted a band that specialised in U2 covers, including several of the major hits from Joshua Tree. My appreciation isn't just rooted in nostalgia though; re-listening to the album several times recently, I like how the band explore folk music (notably Red Hill Mining Town) and the album's political overtones (notably America's influence on the world).
Thanks in part to his friendship with Bob Dylan*, Bono had also been exploring his Irish musical roots in more depth, the most notable results being the heartfelt lyrics of Running To Stand Still (which reference his native Dublin). Trip Through Your Wires also sounds to me like it was directly inspired by the Celtic soul of Van Morrison. Album opener Where The Streets Have No Name had a very different source of inspiration though -- Africa -- with Bono writing about his experiences in Ethiopia as part of Live Aid. The panoramic two-minute opening builds in intensity before breaking with The Edge's arpeggio guitar riff and the multiple time signature shifts make it a highly original song. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For was inspired by gospel music and that spiritual element is reflected in the lyrics and Bono's passionate singing, while With or Without You was the first of several successful singles released from the album, powered by Adam Clayton's pulsating bass line with lyrics that give a sense of the difficulties of balancing life on the road with domestic life. Bullet The Blue Sky is the most political song on the album, apparently alluding to US involvement in the El Salvador Civil War, while Mothers Of The Disappeared references the scores of "desaparecidos" (people kidnapped by the state) under various dictatorships in Latin America, notably Argentina. All these dark themes were initially lost on me when listening to the album, but now help to underline to me that, before U2 became a stadium rock behemoth on the back of Joshua Tree's success, they had some interesting things to say and a very compelling way of doing it.
*Dylan's relationship with Bono during the 80s is of interest to me. In his autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan mentions once sharing a crate of Guinness with Bono and also says that the U2 singer recommended Daniel Lanois to him as a producer; the resulting Oh Mercy (1989) was easily Dylan's best album of that decade. Dylan's Idiot Wind was also the inspiration for the Joshua Tree song title, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.
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