I am not one for nostalgia and “The Wayback Machine”, but there are few seminal moments in my life that hit me and U2’s “The Joshua Tree” was one of them.
What’s interesting about this album is that it wasn’t one of my favorite albums. To this day, it still doesn’t rank as a top 10 album for me. However, it is still a go-to album when I am needing to remind myself of a good time in my life.
When I first heard the lead single from the album, “With Or Without You”, I looked at my radio and said, “What the fuck is this? Where is the angry protest of ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’? Where was the shitty production of their earlier work?” It was soft…it was a song about unrequited LOVE?
WTF?!?!?! U2 doesn’t write love songs!
Then said to myself, “Well, I guess they do now”. I felt that was the end of the band. I became that fairweather fan of a band. You know the one that walked around saying, “they suck now that they went commercial”.
I refused to buy the album…nope, U2 was now not one of the bands I wanted to call cool.
Then came “I Still Haven’t Found What I Am Looking For”. OK, this wasn’t about love, it was more about confusion of spirituality. Something I was struggling with, while going to a parochial high school. But it was still lame, compared to their other stuff, though it had that “Unforgettable Fire” and “Bad” vibe. So it was OK. (though I find it funny that The Edge didn’t like it at first, at first and called it something akin to “Eye Of The Tiger”). Lyrically, this song resonated with me, but, again, it was moving up the Top 40 chart and I was having none of it.
“Where The Streets Have No Names” was another one that hit me with lyrics, personally and it had that social topic that I loved on “War” and “Boy” but it was still to slick and I hated that part of it.
But then I heard “Bullet The Blue Sky” on a Rock station I used to listen to ALOT in Dallas, TX. And I said, “THIS is the U2 I know and enjoy”. The song was hard (for U2 standards).
The drums hit hard, (Led Zeppelin fans, forgive me) like “When The Levee Breaks”.
The bass had this “I’m wearing Doc Martins and I am going to kick your ass” feel.
The guitar evoked emotion with a Jimi Hendrix vibe.
Bono was singing in the same tone he did on earlier albums. He had anger, he had angst, he had emotion. It all felt so real. I could feel it.
All because of this song, I bought the album.
I then became the guy who appreciated the non-Top 40 songs more than the “hits”. “Running To Stand Still”, “Red Mining Town” and “Mothers of the Disappeared”, harkened back to the band’s earlier albums.
So basically, I listen to the album from tracks 4 through 11.
No disrespect to the first 3 songs on the album, I get it, you have to have hits to grow your fanbase. No one ever got into the music business to be poor and anonymous. God knows, they became one of the biggest bands in the world after The Joshua Tree and I can’t hate that.
In the end, The Joshua Tree does mark their explosion into the mainstream, but as most music does, it projects you to a time in your life that you remember…for good for bad.
This one reminds me of better times…mostly.