THE JOSHUA TREE

'''The Joshua Tree''' is the fifth studio album by Irish rock band U2, released on March 9, 1987 on Island Records. It was produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. The album was massively successful. It has often been praised by music critics as the band's best album and one of the best rock albums of all time. ''The Joshua Tree'' won the Album of the Year award at the Grammy Awards of 1988.

Contents

History

Release and success

Track listing

Chart positions and sales

Personnel

Additional personnel

See also

References

Notes

External links

History

Following ''The Unforgettable Fire'' album, the band realised that "U2 had no tradition, we were from outer space", and they explored American blues, country and gospel music.^[1] Furthermore, they spent time with fellow Irish bands The Waterboys and Hothouse Flowers and felt a sense of indigenous Irish music being blended with American folk music.^[2] Friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Keith Richards encouraged the band to look back to the roots of rock music and focused Bono on his skills as a song and lyric writer.^[3] The band wanted to build on ''The Unforgettable Fire's'' atmospherics, but also sought a more hard-hitting sound within the strict discipline of conventional song structures, rather than ''The Unforgettable Fire''’s often out-of-focus experimentation.^[4]

The wild beauty, cultural richness, spiritual vacancy and ferocious violence of America are explored to compelling effect in virtually every aspect of ''The Joshua Tree''—in the title and the cover art, the blues and country borrowings evident in the music...Indeed, Bono says that "dismantling the mythology of America" is an important part of ''The Joshua Tree's'' artistic objective.

—''Rolling Stone''^[5]

U2 interrupted their 1986 album sessions to serve as a headline act on Amnesty International's A Conspiracy of Hope Tour. Rather than being a distraction, the tour added extra intensity and power to their new music, providing extra focus on what they wanted to say.^[6] In his 1986 travels to San Salvador and Nicaragua, Bono saw first hand the distress of peasants bullied in internal conflicts, and this was a central influence on the album, most noticeably on "Bullet the Blue Sky" and "Mothers of the Disappeared". The album juxtaposes antipathy towards America, including anger at American foreign policy in Central America, against the band's deep fascination with the country, its open spaces, freedom and what it stood for.^[7] The band wanted music with a sense of location, a 'cinematic' quality; its music and lyrics drew on imagery created by American writers the band had been reading.^[8]

Release and success

Named ''The Joshua Tree'' as a "tribute" to (rather than a "metaphor" for) America,^[7] the album was released in March 1987. It debuted at number one in the UK and also quickly reached the top of the charts in the U.S. It won U2 their first two Grammy Awards.^[10] The rock & roll bolero^[11] "With or Without You" and the rhythmic gospel "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" quickly went to number one in the U.S. U2 became the fourth rock band to be featured on the cover of ''Time'' magazine (following The Beatles, The Band, and The Who), who declared that U2 was "Rock's Hottest Ticket".^[12] The album brought U2 to a new level of mega-stardom and is often cited as one of rock's great albums.^[13] The Joshua Tree Tour sold out arenas and stadiums around the world, the first time the band had consistently played venues of that size.
"With or Without You", the album's first single and one of the band's most well-known songs, uses an effect called "infinite guitar", developed by Michael Brook, to infinitely sustain notes.
In 1989, it was rated #3 on ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's list of the 100 greatest albums of the 1980s, as well as appearing at #26 on the magazine's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. ''The Joshua Tree'' was selected as #6 on ''CCM Magazine's'' 2001 list of the greatest Contemporary Christian music albums of all time (see ''). It came second place in Channel 4's 100 Greatest albums. It came in at #10 in ABC-TV's My Favourite Album, which aired in Australia in December 2006.
The album has sold over 10 million copies in the United States alone^[14] and more than 25 million copies worldwide, it remains the band's best-selling album. It was followed by the successful worldwide Joshua Tree Tour.
The videos "With or Without You" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" (directed by Meiert Avis) and "I Still Haven't Found what I'm Looking For" (directed by Barry Devlin) saturated MTV, making the band much more visible to both casual music listeners and fans.
The original tree on the cover photos died around the year 2000.^[15]

Track listing

Music by U2, lyrics by Bono.
#"Where the Streets Have No Name" – 5:37
#"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" – 4:37
#"With or Without You" – 4:56
#"Bullet the Blue Sky" – 4:32
#"Running to Stand Still" – 4:18
#"Red Hill Mining Town" – 4:52
#"In God's Country" – 2:57
#"Trip Through Your Wires" – 3:32
#"One Tree Hill" – 5:23
#"Exit" – 4:13
#"Mothers of the Disappeared" – 5:14
"With or Without You", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", and "Where the Streets Have No Name" were released as singles internationally and became smash hits. In addition, "In God's Country" was released as a fourth single in North America with modest success, and "One Tree Hill" was released as a fourth single in New Zealand. "Red Hill Mining Town" had originally been slated as a single before it was realized during rehearsals for the Joshua Tree Tour that Bono could not hit the high notes in the song; it ended up being the only number not played on the tour from this album.
According to Bono in a BBC TV documentary, the track order for the album was devised by singer Kirsty MacColl. She put her favorite song first, then her second favorite, and so on.^[16]
The original CD pressings of the album incorrectly indexed the ending of "One Tree Hill" at 4:43 and the beginning of "Exit" at 4:53. This is because a final, quieter stanza of "One Tree Hill" ("Oh, great ocean...") occurs once the song has died down and apparently ended. As a result, the stanza was for a long time thought to be the beginning of "Exit," even though it completely contrasts in tone with "Exit." This error has been corrected on later editions.
In 1996, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab remastered the album and released it as a special gold CD. This edition has slightly different running times, and features a slight change in the synthesised rhythm pattern just before the fade-out of "Mothers of the Disappeared" that is not audible on the Island CD editions.
A number of songs that were released as B-sides were thought to have been considered for a double-album version of The Joshua Tree. Though Bono was the most vocal proponent of this extended version of the album, The Edge successfully argued for the 11-track version that was ultimately released . "Spanish Eyes" and "Deep in the Heart" were released as B-sides to the "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" single. "Luminous Times (Hold on to Love)" and "Walk to the Water" were released as B-sides to the "With or Without You" single. "Sweetest Thing", "Silver and Gold", and "Race Against Time" were released as B-sides to the "Where the Streets Have No Name" single.

Chart positions and sales

Country	Peak position	Certification	Sales
Austria		3x Gold [17]	45,000+
Canada		Diamond [18]	1,000,000+
Finland		Gold [19]	27,965
France		2x Gold [20]	200,000+
Germany		2x Platinum/3x Gold [21]	700,000+
Mexico		Gold [22]	100,000+
Netherlands		Platinum [23]	80,000+
United Kingdom		6x Platinum [24]	1,800,000+
United States		Diamond	10,000,000+

Year	Single	Chart	Position
1987	"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"	Billboard Adult Contemporary	16
1987	"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"	The Billboard Hot 100	1
1987	"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"	Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks	2
1987	"Where the Streets Have No Name"	The Billboard Hot 100	13
1987	"Where the Streets Have No Name"	Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks	11
1987	"With or Without You"	The Billboard Hot 100	1
1987	"With or Without You"	Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks	1
1987	"Bullet the Blue Sky"	Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks	14
1987	"In God's Country"	Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks	8
1987	"In God's Country"	The Billboard Hot 100	53
1988	"In God's Country"	Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks	6
1988	"In God's Country"	The Billboard Hot 100	44

Personnel

★ Bono – vocals, harmonica

★ The Edge – guitar, vocals, keyboards

★ Adam Clayton – bass guitar

★ Larry Mullen Jr. – drums, percussion

Additional personnel

★ Brian Eno – keyboards, backing vocals, production, engineering

★ Daniel Lanois – rhythm guitar, tambourine, backing vocals, production, engineering

★ Flood – mixing

★ Steve Lillywhite – mixing on "Where the Streets Have No Name"

★ Bob Ludwig – mastering

See also

★ U2 discography

★ Joshua Tree Tour

References

★ McCormick, Neil (ed), (2006). ''U2 by U2''. HarperCollins ''Publishers. ISBN 0-00-719668-7

Notes

1. Bono in McCormick (2006), p.169
2. McCormick (2006), p.172
3. McCormick (2006), p.179
4. U2 Releases The Joshua Tree, , Anthony, DeCurtis, Rolling Stone, cited in
5. Truths and Consequences, , Anthony, DeCurtis, Rolling Stone,
6. McCormick (2006), p.174
7. McCormick (2006), p.186
8. U2: the Complete Guide to their Music, , Bill, Graham, Omnibus Press, , ISBN0-7119-9886-8
9. McCormick (2006), p.186
10. Grammy Award for Album of the Year and a Grammy for the Best Rock Performance By a Duo or Group With Vocal.GRAMMY Winners List grammy.com. Retrieved December 4, 2006.
11. The Joshua Tree Album Review, , Steve, Pond, Rolling Stone,
12. "Rock's Hottest Ticket" Time Magazine Archive, April 1987. Retrieved on 20 January, 2007.
13. The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time Rollingstone.com. Retrieved 15 October, 2006.
14. Top 100 Albums. ''RIAA.com''. Retrieved on 07-15-2007
15. http://www.joshuatreenationalpark.net/u2tree.htm
16. ''Kirsty: The Life and Music of Kirsty MacColl'', BBC2, 3 March 2001
17. IFPI Austria
18. CRIA
19. IFPI Finland
20. Disque En France
21. IFPI Germany
22. AMPROFON
23. NVPI
24. BPI

External links

★ ''The Joshua Tree'' at U2 Wanderer, with comprehensive details on various editions, cover scans, lyrics, and more

★ Lyrics

★ "My two visits to U2's Joshua Tree" - Article about the tree on the album's cover

★ "Restore the Joshua Tree!" - An alternative track listing for the album that includes all of the B-sides, making it a double album

★ ''In God's Country: The Music That Inspired the Joshua Tree'' - A special compilation of artists named by the band as influences on the album's sound

★ "A study of the Edge's guitar delay" - A dissection of the techniques behind the Edge's signature delay effect, used extensively on this album

★ "One Tree Hill" - Information about One Tree Hill, the location in New Zealand after which the band wrote the song

★ Quotes and background on each song

★ Fan interpretations and interview excerpts for each song