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Everardo Laboy
The Joshua Tree is the fifth studio album by Irish rock band U2. It was produced by Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and was released on 9 March 1987 on Island Records. In contrast to the ambient experimentation of their 1984 release, The Unforgettable Fire, the band aimed for a harder-hitting sound within the limitation of conventional song structures on The Joshua Tree. The album is influenced by American and Irish roots music, and through sociopolitically conscious lyrics embellished with spiritual imagery, it contrasts the group's antipathy for the "real America" with their fascination with the "mythical America".
Inspired by American experiences, literature, and politics, U2 chose America as a theme for the album. Recording began in January 1986 in Ireland, and to foster a relaxed, creative atmosphere, the group primarily recorded in two houses. Several events during the sessions helped shape the conscious tone of the album, including the band's participation in the Conspiracy of Hope benefit concerts for Amnesty International, the death of roadie Greg Carroll, and lead vocalist Bono's travels to Central America. Recording was completed in November 1986; additional production continued into January 1987. Throughout the sessions, U2 sought a "cinematic" quality for the record, one that would evoke a sense of location, in particular, the open spaces of the United States. They represented this in the sleeve photography depicting them in American desert landscapes.
The Joshua Tree received critical acclaim, topped the charts in over 20 countries, and became the fastest-selling album in British history. According to Rolling Stone, the album increased the band's stature "from heroes to superstars". It produced the hit singles "With or Without You", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", and "Where the Streets Have No Name", the first two of which became the group's only number-one singles in the US. The album won Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal in 1988. The group supported the record with the Joshua Tree Tour throughout 1987, during which they began to perform in stadiums for the first time in their career.
Frequently listed among the greatest albums of all time, The Joshua Tree is one of the world's best-selling albums, with over 25 million copies sold. U2 commemorated the record's 20th anniversary with a remastered re-release, and its 30th anniversary with concert tours and a reissue. In 2014, The Joshua Tree was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame, and was selected for preservation in the US National Recording Registry for being deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress.
Prior to The Joshua Tree, U2 had released four studio albums and were an internationally successful band, particularly as a live act having toured every year in the 1980s.[1] The group's stature and the public's anticipation for a new album grew following their 1984 record The Unforgettable Fire, their subsequent tour, and their participation in Live Aid in 1985. U2 began writing new material in mid-1985 following the Unforgettable Fire Tour.[1][2]
After recording vocals for Steven Van Zandt's anti-apartheid project Sun City in August 1985, Bono made an additional contribution to the album in October that was inspired by his burgeoning interest in roots music.[4] While in New York, he spent time with musicians Keith Richards and Mick Jagger, who played him blues and country music. Bono was embarrassed by his lack of familiarity with the genres, as most of U2's musical knowledge began with punk rock in their youth in the mid-1970s. He realised that U2 "had no tradition" and felt as if they "were from outer space".[6] This inspired him to write the blues-influenced song "Silver and Gold", which he recorded with Richards and Ronnie Wood and convinced Van Zandt to add to Sun City.[4] Until that time, U2 had been apathetic towards roots music, but after spending time with the Waterboys and fellow Irish band Hothouse Flowers, they felt a sense of indigenous Irish music blending with American folk music.[2] Nascent friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Richards encouraged Bono to look back to rock's roots and to focus on building his skills as a songwriter and lyricist.[7][8] He explained: "I used to think that writing words was old-fashioned, so I sketched. I wrote words on the microphone. For The Joshua Tree, I felt the time had come to write words that meant something, out of my experience."[9] Dylan told Bono about his own debt to Irish music,[10] while Bono further demonstrated his interest in music traditions in his duet with Irish Celtic and folk group Clannad on the track "In a Lifetime".[10]
"We had experimented a lot in the making of [The Unforgettable Fire]. We had done quite revolutionary things... So we felt, going into The Joshua Tree, that maybe options were not a good thing, that limitations might be positive. And so we decided to work within the limitations of the song as a starting point. We thought: let's actually write songs. We wanted the record to be less vague, open-ended, atmospheric and impressionistic. To make it more straightforward, focused and concise."
In November 1985,[15] U2 moved into drummer Larry Mullen Jr.'s newly purchased home to work on material written during the Unforgettable Fire Tour. This included demos that would evolve into "With or Without You", "Red Hill Mining Town", and "Trip Through Your Wires", as well as a song called "Womanfish". The Edge recalled it as a difficult period with a sense of "going nowhere", although Bono was set on America as a theme for the album. Supplementary recording sessions at STS Studios in Dublin with producer Paul Barrett saw the development of "With or Without You" and the genesis of "Bullet the Blue Sky".[2]
Based on their success with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois on The Unforgettable Fire, U2 wanted the duo to produce their new album.[16] Mullen was excited about working with them again, as he felt the pair, Lanois in particular, were the band's first producers who "really [took] an interest in the rhythm section".[1] Mark "Flood" Ellis was selected to be the recording engineer for the sessions, marking the first time he worked with U2.[14] The band were impressed by his work with Nick Cave, and Bono's friend Gavin Friday recommended Flood based on their work experiences together when Friday was a member of the Virgin Prunes.[16] U2 asked Flood for a sound that was "very open... ambient... with a real sense of space of the environment you were in", which he thought was a very unusual request at that time.[1]
Intending to release an album in late 1986, U2 set up a studio in January of that year in Danesmoate House, a Georgian house in Rathfarnham, Ireland, in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains.[14][17] The Edge had viewed the residence months prior while househunting with his wife and convinced the owner to rent it to the band.[17] Their plan was to find inspiration from the converted recording space and use it to musically create atmosphere, much like they did with Slane Castle for The Unforgettable Fire sessions in 1984.[14]
A makeshift control room with tape machines, a mixing console, and other outboard equipment was set up in Danesmoate's dining room, with the adjacent drawing room used for recording and performing.[14] The large doors separating the rooms were replaced with a glass screen, and to maintain a relaxed "non-studio" atmosphere for the sessions, the control room was dubbed the "lyric room" and the recording space was called the "band room".[16] Lanois' strategy was to encourage the band members to have their parts worked out in advance and to capture as much of the essence of a live band take as possible, without having the possibility of subsequent overdubbing on which to fall back.[18][19] This was a change for U2, who previously recorded each instrument separately and then layered them into the mix.[13] To support his approach of having all the band members recording in a room together, Lanois eschewed having them wear headphones in favour of using monitor speakers due to their power; Mullen and bassist Adam Clayton used two each. To aid in sound isolation, gobos were built in the drawing room, although the production staff still faced issues with audio spill from the monitor speakers. Lanois said that due to the setup, "you have to make a commitment to what you put down and either use it or throw it all away." This recording setup was duplicated at subsequent locations during the album sessions.[18]
Over the course of recording The Joshua Tree, the band twice paused to participate in benefit concerts. On 17 May 1986, U2 performed at Self Aid in Dublin.[24] Intended to help alleviate Ireland's unemployment crisis by raising funds and job pledges, the event was harshly criticised in the media for taking pressure off the Irish government to resist Margaret Thatcher's economic policies. The band in particular were labelled hypocrites for their participation.[25] Their appearance included a cover of Bob Dylan's "Maggie's Farm", reinterpreted as a criticism of Thatcher.[24] Hot Press' Niall Stokes called their performance "the blackest and most ferocious set of their entire career".[25] In June 1986, U2 embarked on the six-show Conspiracy of Hope tour for Amnesty International,[24] halting the album's recording sessions for about two months.[26] Rather than distract the band, the tour invigourated their new music and provided extra focus on what they wanted to say.[27] For Clayton, the tour validated the "rawness of content" and their attempts to capture the "bleakness and greed of America under Ronald Reagan".[27] The band used soundchecks on the tour to test out various guitar compositions they had.[28] Meegan believed that U2's time with the other artists on the tour affected their own sound: "Their musical heroes were bleeding into the music and they weren't embarrassed by it, which gave them a lot of space to work in."[25]
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