As reported U2 are to play their 1987 huge selling album The Joshua Tree this year. The band have announced a six-week tour of North American football stadiums, including a stop at the Bonnarroo Music + Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn., with a three weeks worth of dates in Europe to follow.
The European portion will begin May 8th in London and conclude August. 1st in Brussels, including a stop at Croke Park in their hometown of Dublin on July 22nd.
U2: The Joshua Tree Tour 2017 will mark the group’s first time playing a classic album in concert. They picked one packed with hits, including “Where The Streets Have No Name,” “With or Without You” and “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” For hardcore fans, the tour is an opportunity to hear rarely played deep cuts like “Exit,” “Trip Through Your Wires” and “In God’s Country.” It will also feature the first live performance of “Red Hill Mining Town.”
U2 guitarist The Edge says they’re still figuring out how to structure the show. “The show might not necessarily start with Track 1, Side 1 ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ because we feel like maybe we need to build up to that moment,” he says. “So we’re still in the middle of figuring out exactly how the running order will go.”
“Recently I listened back to The Joshua Tree for the first time in nearly 30 years,” Bono quoted “It’s quite an opera. A lot of emotions which feel strangely current, love, loss, broken dreams, seeking oblivion, polarisation… all the greats… I’ve sung some of these songs a lot… but never all of them. I’m up for it, if our audience is as excited as we are… it’s gonna be a great night. Especially when we play at home. Croke Park… it’s where the album was born, 30 years ago.”
The Edge said that the election of Donald Trump influenced the decision to play The Joshua Tree. “That record was written in the mid-’80s, during the Reagan-Thatcher era of British and U.S. politics,” he said. “It was a period when there was a lot of unrest. Thatcher was in the throes of trying to put down the miners’ strike; there was all kinds of shenanigans going on in Central America. It feels like we’re right back there in a way.”
Perhaps recalling the lyric in “God Part II” where Bono sang, “You glorify the past when the future dries up,” the Edge was quick to note that this new tour isn’t about nostalgia. “There’s an element of nostalgia that we can’t avoid, but it’s not motivated by a desire to look backwards. It’s almost like this album has come full circle and we’re back there again. It’s kind of got a relevance again that we’re certainly aware of.”
U2’s record company didn’t like the title, According to Bono, ‘The Joshua Tree’’s title – coined on a trip to the Mojave Desert – didn’t have the ring of a masterpiece to it. “You get record-industry people saying, ‘As big as the Beatles — what’s the name of the album?’ ‘The Joshua Tree.’ ‘Oh, yeah, oh, right.’ It’s not exactly ‘Born in the Joshua Tree’, or ‘Dark Side of the Joshua Tree’,” It sounds like it would sell about three copies.”
Kirsty MacColl helped decide the track list, The late singer volunteered to pick ‘The Joshua Tree’’s running order while the album was being mixed. The only specifics were for ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ to open, with ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ closing. The rest was up to her. It’s fair to say she did a pretty great job.
At the time, U2 felt ‘Sweetest Thing’ didn’t fit with the rootsy, grand-scoped feel of ‘The Joshua Tree’. As such, they used it as the B-side to ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. But due to its legacy as a fan favourite, the song was re-recorded and re-released as part of the band’s ‘The Best of 1980-1990’ compilation.
The death of the band’s roadie inspired one of the album’s best songs, ‘One Tree Hill’ was written in memory of Greg Carroll, a roadie who went on to become one of Bono’s close friends. A tragic motorcycle accident in Dublin killed Carroll, and the song was written shortly after, building from a jam session between Bono and Brian Eno. The frontman recorded his vocals in one go, too overwhelmed by emotion to attempt another take.
Tickets will go on sale to the general public next Monday, Jan. 16th, for the European dates
The Edge also gave an update on the recording of Songs of Experience, saying that they were “pretty much complete” with it when the election happened and they decided to change their plans. “We definitely want to take this opportunity to think about it, make sure it’s really what we want to put out given the changes that have occurred in the world,” he continued. “And maybe a little will change, but we absolutely wanted to take that chance just to reconsider everything. And who knows? We may even write a couple of new songs because that’s the very position we’re in. We’ve given ourselves a little bit of breathing space for creativity.”
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