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The Joshua Tree
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The Joshua Tree is the fifth studio album by Irish rock band U2, released 9 March 1987 on Island Records. Recording sessions took place from July to November 1986 at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin. The album features the band's exploration of roots rock, with their music exhibiting influences from blues-rock, folk rock, country music, and gospel music. Lyrically, The Joshua Tree depicts the band's fascination with America, but also its discontent with the foreign policy of the United States.
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The Joshua Tree is the fifth studio album by Irish rock band U2, released 9 March 1987 on Island Records. Recording sessions took place from July to November 1986 at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin. The album features the band's exploration of roots rock, with their music exhibiting influences from blues-rock, folk rock, country music, and gospel music. Lyrically, The Joshua Tree depicts the band's fascination with America, but also its discontent with the foreign policy of the United States. The album was produced and engineered by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.
Upon its release, The Joshua Tree became a critical and commercial success, increasing the band's stature "from heroes to superstars," according to Rolling Stone. The album produced several hit singles, including "Where the Streets Have No Name", "With or Without You", and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", all of which remain classic rock radio staples. The Joshua Tree won Grammy Awards for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal and Album of the Year in Grammy Awards of 1988. In 2003, the album was ranked number 26 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album is one of the world's best-selling albums of all-time, having sold over 25 million copies. In 2007, a remastered version of the album was released to mark the 20th anniversary of its original release.
History
Background
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. Since that album, they had 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. 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. The band wanted to build on The Unforgettable Fire's atmospherics, but also sought a more hard-hitting sound within the strict discipline of more conventional song structures, in contrast to The Unforgettable Fires often out-of-focus experimentation.
Conception
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 band found the tour added extra intensity and power to their new music, providing extra focus on what they wanted to say. 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 the United States, including anger at United States foreign policy in Central America, against the band's deep fascination with the country, its open spaces, freedom and what it stood for. 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. The band had toured in the United States extensively, which affected the band; according to Bono, the album was inspired and influenced more by the country's geography, rather than its people. Bono said he "...had to 'deal with' the United States and the way it was affecting me, because the United States' having such an effect on the world at the moment. On this record I had to deal with it on a political level for the first time, if in a subtle way." Since Bono was trying to portray the both "mythic idea of America" and the "reality of America" on the album, the working title of the album was "The Two Americas".
The record was also influenced by the blues. While in recording sessions for the b-side "Silver and Gold", working with Keith Richards, Bono and Richards listened to blues music, country music, American pop music from the 1950s, and other such influences. These influences, combined with Bono's early influences, such as Patti Smith and Bob Dylan, had an effect on the song and the whole album. "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.
The album cover photo was taken by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn in December 1986. Corbijn later recounted the photo shoot in Death Valley, California; "This is the most serious set of shots I have taken of U2 and they became my most well-known photographs at the time. It was taken with a panoramic camera to take more of the landscapes in which was the main idea of the shoot: man and environment, the Irish in America."
Release
Single releases
"With or Without You" and the rhythmic gospel "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" were released as singles internationally and quickly went to number one in the U.S. "Where the Streets Have No Name" was also successfully released. "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 Australia and New Zealand. Initially slated as a single release, "Red Hill Mining Town" was the only track from the album not played on the tour. Bono has suggested that the song's high notes put too much strain on his voice.
A number of songs that were released as B-sides are 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.
Reception
Named The Joshua Tree as a "tribute" to (rather than a "metaphor" for) America, 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. 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". The Joshua Tree is often cited as one of the greatest albums in rock history. The album brought U2 to a new level of mega-stardom, as the worldwide Joshua Tree Tour sold out arenas and stadiums around the world, the first time the band had consistently played venues of that size.
Awards and accolades
The Joshua Tree won U2 their first two Grammy Awards, with the band receiving honors for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance By a Duo or Group With Vocal.
In 1989, it was rated #3 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of The 100 Greatest Albums of the 80's, 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 CCM Presents: The 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music). 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.
According to U.S. Recording Industry sales figures, as of January 2005, The Joshua Tree ranks as the 89th best-selling album of all-time in the U.S. and, as of 2006, the 26th best-selling album in the U.K.. The album has sold 10 million copies in the United States alone and more than 25 million copies worldwide. It remains the band's best-selling album.
Track listing
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.
The original CD pressings of the album by BMG Music Club 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 and when BMG Music Club produced their own glass master, they incorrectly shifted the start of "Exit" back. (BMG Music Club, like other CD clubs, produces their own glass master of the album after they've licensed it from the record company and thus the reason for them producing their own master with an incorrect track listing ). As a result, owners of a BMG Music Club release of The Joshua Tree thought the stanza was the beginning of "Exit", even though it completely contrasts in tone with "Exit" and features lyrics similar to the chorus of "One Tree Hill". This error has been corrected on BMG's later editions of the album.
In 1996, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab remastered the album and released it as a special gold CD. This edition has slightly different running times from the Island CD editions, and features an alternate edit of "Mothers of the Disappeared" in which the repeating synthesizer rhythm pattern briefly rises in volume just before the song fades out completely; this recurrence is not audible on the Island CDs. (The 2007 re-issue CD remastered under the supervision of The Edge also features this edit, suggesting that it may represent the band's original intent.)
20th anniversary edition
On , Billboard confirmed a 20th anniversary edition of The Joshua Tree would have a US release date as . The release date everywhere else in the world was .
The album was released in four different formats:
- CD format: remastered album on CD
- Deluxe format: remastered album on CD, bonus CD with b-sides and rarities from
The Joshua Tree sessions, and a 36-page bookletBox set edition: remastered album on CD, bonus CD with b-sides and rarities from The Joshua Tree sessions, bonus DVD with a concert from the Joshua Tree Tour and other videos, and a 56-page hardback book. DVD also has easter egg section, which contains a Dalton Brothers performance from Los Angeles, 18 November 1987.Double vinyl edition: remastered album on two 180 Gram virgin vinyl gramophone records and pressed at Nashville's historic . It includes a 16-page booklet.
Bonus DVD
Live from Paris – live at the Hippodrome de Vincennes in Paris, France on 4 July 1987.Outside It's America – a 50-minute documentary on the Joshua Tree Tour"With or Without You" music video, alternative version"Red Hill Mining Town" music video, directed by Neil Jordan
Chart positions and sales
Album
| Country | Peak position | Certification | Sales |
|---|
| Australia | 3 | 5x Platinum | 350,000+ | | Austria | | 3x Gold | 45,000+ | | Canada | | Diamond | 1,000,000+ | | Finland | | Gold | 27,965 | | France | 1 | 2x Diamond | 2,072,100 | | Germany | | 2x Platinum/3x Gold | 700,000+ | | Mexico | | Gold | 100,000+ | | Netherlands | 1 | Platinum | 80,000+ | | United Kingdom | 1 | 6x Platinum | ~2,750,000 (2,665,553 by October 22nd 2006 - 26th on The Official Chart Company's list of the Top 110 all-time best selling UK albums) | | United States | 1 | Diamond | 10,000,000+ |
Singles
| 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 | | 1988 | "One Tree Hill" | RIA New Zealand Singles Chart | 1 |
Personnel
Musicians
Additional personnel
External links
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- Listen to the Joshua Tree on iTunes
- at U2 Wanderer, with comprehensive details on various editions, cover scans, lyrics, and more
- - Article about the tree on the album's cover
- - An alternative track listing for the album that includes all of the B-sides, making it a double album
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- A special compilation of artists named by the band as influences on the album's sound - A dissection of the techniques behind the Edge's signature delay effect, used extensively on this album - Information about One Tree Hill, the location in New Zealand after which the band wrote the song at Discogs
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