Músicos: Bono Vox (vocal e gaita), The Edge (guitarra e vocal), Adam Clayton (baixo) e Larry Mullen Jr (bateria) + Daniel Lannois (guitarra)
Faixas:
Where the streets have no name
I still haven't found what I'm looking for
With or without you
Bullet the blue sky
Running to stand still
Red hill mining town
In God's country
Trip through your wires
One tree hill
Exit
Mothers of the disappeared
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. It won the
Album of the Year award from the
Grammy Awards of 1988. It is considered by many their commercial and critical breakthrough.
History
The album continues the sonic experimentation of
The Unforgettable Fire. For instance, the album opener, "
Where the Streets Have No Name", begins with a soft organ fade-in (appropriately similar to the end of "
MLK" from Unforgettable Fire) over which guitarist
The Edge plays a simple echo-laden
arpeggio, ringing each note out twice, an elegant effect that gives the band a deceptively detailed sound. "
With or Without You", the album's first single and one of the band's most well known songs, uses a technique called "infinite guitar", developed by
Michael Brook, to distort the notes into an eerie wail.
It also picks up where the political themes of
War left off. "
Bullet the Blue Sky" is a fierce attack on the
United States' policy of arming rebels in
El Salvador. The song has a martial drum beat, thundering bassline, and wailing guitar reminiscent of falling bombs. Lead singer
Bono reportedly told Edge to "put El Salvador through your amplifier." "
Mothers of the Disappeared" is an understated lament for the
Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the mothers of the thousands of los desaparecidos (from Spanish, literally "
the disappeared")—people who opposed the military government of
Videla and
Galtieri in
Argentina and who were kidnapped and never seen again.
In addition to the political matter, there are many personal songs, including "
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", a song about Bono's inner struggles with faith and temptation, and "
One Tree Hill", an elegy written for a friend of the band, Greg Carroll (to whom the album is dedicated), who died in 1986.
Musically, the band began to incorporate
American folk and blues influences into their songwriting, most evident on "
Running to Stand Still", a rustic ballad about
heroin addiction, and "
Trip Through Your Wires", a harmonica-filled
blues romp.
Rattle and Hum (1988) would examine these influences in greater depth.
The Joshua Tree is not only widely considered one of the band's best albums, it is often considered one of the greatest albums ever recorded. It was named by
Rolling Stone magazine as one of the band's "three masterpieces" (alongside
Achtung Baby and
All That You Can't Leave Behind), 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).
The album has sold over 10 million copies in the
United States alone and 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.
Themes
Water and Desert
Numerous aspects of the album emphasize water and the desert. To begin with, the cover photograph is a black-and-white photo of the band at
Death Valley National Park in the desert of
California [1], taken by the band's longtime photographer
Anton Corbijn; then there is the title of the album, which harkens to the California desert's
Joshua Tree. Throughout the album, there are numerous explicit lyrical references to water and desert. Specifically, there are 46 references to the words rain, raining, rainin', rainfall, flood, water, well, sea, ocean, and river. Also, there are 17 references to desert, dry, plain, heat, dust, sunlight, and the sun. Water and desert, poetic equivalents of life and death, loss and redemption, and other diametrically opposed but uniquely linked forces, are thus used for a variety of purposes (which are further explained later):
Reconciling Greg Carroll's death;
Analogizing the duality of American spirit and its oft-ruthless foreign policy;
Setting a tone of the American Southwest, providing a cinematic backdrop for the music - as Bono has said, a canvas on which to paint; and
Creating tone of rusticism, purity, earthiness, piety, rootsiness, and complementing the bluesy/country vibe.
America
In the initial Joshua Tree writing sessions, the band began mentioning books they were reading at the time—short stories by
Raymond Carver,
Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, and others—as well as talking about the idea of America and what it means. They also talked in detail with producer
Brian Eno about the idea of music as cinematic - that music can evoke a location in the listener's mind - and began to place the setting for many of their musical explorations on this album in America's desert southwest. What is more, the band was beginning to investigate America's musical traditions, such as blues, gospel, soul, rhythm and blues, and country music, genres they felt they had ignored up to that point in their lives. From these initial forays into all things American (its music, literature, and geography), the band realized it had decidedly contradictory feelings about the country. They at once found it liberating and oppressive. Liberating as an idea and perhaps a place to live, but oppressive in its power, influence, and controversial foreign policy. A draft title to the album was The Two Americas, influenced by this fascination and deep skepticism with America, and also by Bono's trip to El Salvador where he witnessed American-backed bombings.
Loss
Many of the songs have a pronounced ache to them. Bono has commented that the album abounds with the ache of the Irish, but not in obvious ways. A cursory review of the general, explicit content of all of the songs reveals that each song generally deals with the notion of loss or absence, be it a person, place, or thing. Bono's lyrics, notoriously ambiguous, contribute to this feeling of absence of something. Album co-producer
Daniel Lanois has also said that Bono sings at the top of his range on much of the album--a characteristic the Quebecois says is emotionally compelling and very "
Aretha Franklin-like"--and it is quite noticeable that Bono's vocals are huskier and have slowed down compared to earlier albums. In essence, Bono's talents coalesce on this album. What is more, one of The Edge's stylistic troupes is to avoid playing the
third of each chord. The third is what gives each chord its gender (major or minor sound), and without it there is a feeling of uncertainty, ambiguity, and absence. As well, the rhythm section's subtlety creates a blank slate of a musical statement. Each of these aspects of the band's sound--Bono's ambiguous lyrics and belting vocals, Edge's tenuous and ethereal playing, and Adam and Larry's austere rhythm section create an emotionally irresolute landscape rife with mystery, ambiguity, and uncertainty. And as most listeners have noted, there is a highness to these songs, a soaring, anthemic, grand quality--the same quality that became the root of most criticism the band endured after they released and toured for this album.
Greg Carroll
Greg Carroll was Bono's personal assistant and close friend, and can be seen in videos during the European portion of the
Unforgettable Fire Tour, in the video to "Bad", and figures prominently on the band's Live Aid set. Carroll was a
Māori from
New Zealand the band met while kicking off that tour, and was invited to join the band's touring entourage. After the tour, Carroll relocated to Ireland and assisted the band during the recording of the album. Tragically, Carroll was killed in a motorcycle accident when he was running errands for the band. Carroll's death is yet another event or emotion from which the music takes its sonic ancestry. The album is dedicated to the memory of Greg Carroll.
The Joshua Tree
Crystallizing this musical journey, as the band jokingly says in the film
Rattle and Hum, the album name The Joshua Tree is not without meaning. The
Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ
Joshua, first encountered as the name of
Moses' successor as leader of the Israelites becomes, when transliterated into
Greek, Ἰησοῦς
Jesus, which provides a specifically Christian context for the album content. These images resonate with the themes of the album by evoking an image of a man suffering a great loss or making a great sacrifice, and either calling on something greater for assistance, or simply drawing on
catharsis to reconcile what has been lost.
As for the tree itself, the
Joshua Tree was named by
Mormons traveling through the region, parts of which later became the
Joshua Tree National Park. They named the tree because of its outstretched arms - in the
Old Testament, Joshua, leading the Hebrews in their follow-up victory at
Ai, hanged their king on a tree until sunset.
Summary
Each of these major themes can be viewed independently of or interconnected with one another. At the smallest level, the album deals with reconciling the death of Bono's close friend, Greg Carroll. At a larger level, the album both implicitly and explicitly praises and criticizes America as an idea and tyrant. And at the largest level, the album can be seen as a meditation on loss and redemption. But as Brian Eno says, the result is simply a rich and densely interconnected stretched envelope, called an album.
(Wikipedia)
Released in March 1987, U2's The Joshua Tree quickly became the fastest-selling album in British chart history, selling almost 250,000 copies within the first week of release. In the U.S., it was equally successful, topping the Billboard album chart for nine weeks, spending 58 weeks in the Top 40 there and earning a Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
The Joshua Tree gave birth to several major hit singles, including "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," both of which reached Number 1 on the Billboard Top 100 in the U.S., and "Where The Streets Have No Name."
The story of the making of The Joshua Tree is told here via interview and archival film footage, with contributions from band members Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen. U2's long-time manager Paul McGuinness reveals how the album catapulted the band into the catergory of rock superstars, and there are contributions from Elvis Costello in the role of a major U2 fan, re-mix producer Steve Lillywhite, and, of course, co-producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.
Here we learn the true story from Brian Eno of how the master tape for "Where the Streets Have No Name" was almost destroyed and how a forgotten birthday resulted in one of U2's best-ever songs. Packed with reminiscences and powerful performances, this is the story of one of the most famous and best records of the eighties, a true Classic Album.
Picture/Sound/Extras (B/B/D-)
When U2's album The Joshua Tree hit record store shelves in March 1987, it seemed less an album release than a coronation. The buzz around this disc was incredible. U2 had built a tremendous following over the previous few years via hot live shows and some fairly successful albums, and by 1987, it seemed that their time had come; everyone sensed that TJT would be a landmark, breakout album.
And that it was. TJT pushed U2 from the ranks of successful arena act to the level of stadium superstars; they immediately inherited the mantle of Biggest Act in Rock from Springsteen, a title they would maintain for a fair number of years, through at least the enormous success of 1991's Achtung Baby and the 1992-93 "Zoo TV/Zooropa" tour. It's a measure of U2's achievements that their 1997 "Popmart" tour is generally seen as a flop, even though millions of tickets were sold; the band moved about 180,000 tickets in both Chicago and New York and the tour was a bomb?
Objectively, no, but in larger-than-life U2 terms, I guess so. Such is the burden supergroups have to bear. The new DVD release from the Classic Albums line shows an intermingling of the two eras as we see relatively modern-day U2 discuss their breakout release.
I hadn't seen any prior Classic Albums DVDs so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I figured we'd see various performance clips of songs from the album, and maybe some circa 1987 interview pieces, but that's not the case at all.
Yes, we do witness a fair amount of video from the era. The DVD includes portions of the videos for "With or Without You", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", and "Where the Streets Have No Name", and we also see shots from the concert film that followed the 1987 tour, 1988's Rattle and Hum. Other previously released footage surfaces in the form of clips from the 1994 concert video U2 Zoo TV - Live From Sydney (shot at a November 1993 Australian show).
While those scenes are nice, more exciting are the rarer clips. We see footage from the 1986 Amnesty International tour in which U2 participated, plus other 1987 shows, some 1997 "Popmart" material, and a few other sources. I would have liked to have seen more of these instead of the Rattle and Hum and Zoo TV clips since I - and many other U2 fans - already own those programs; these other pieces are more compelling.
It's also too bad that we don't see the music videos in their entirety. Happily, we do find one complete video at the end of the program. It's a 1998 clip for "The Sweetest Thing". This song originally appeared as a B-side on the "Where the Streets Have No Name" single but came out in remixed form on the 1998 The Best of 1980-1990 compilation. At that time, the band shot a new video for it, and that's what we find here. It's a very clever and entertaining clip, and I'm happy to have it.
As useful as all these performance pieces were, the most compelling aspect of this Classic Albums DVD comes from the new interviews with U2 and others such as coproducers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno. As I previously alluded, I was quite surprised to find these new (circa 1998, it appears) interviews with the band, and it's delightful to see the interest with which they discuss the album.
Actually, it's not their stories that stayed with me and made this such a "must-have" for U2 fans; it's the "behind the scenes" music we hear. Many segments show participants behind mixing boards, and we get to hear isolated pieces of the songs as we learn how the tunes were crafted. At one point, the Edge even straps on his guitar to demonstrate the simplicity of his work on "With Or Without You".
I recognize that if you're not a huge fan of the band, the pleasures to be found in this material may seem nonexistent. For me, though, I saw it as a really look into the creative heart of the band, and I love hearing how the different elements mesh. What I wouldn't give to have the opportunity to take music I love and create my own remixes that way!
In any case, this edition of Classic Albums convinced me that the format has some value. I expected little from this DVD but found it to be a very interesting and compelling look at how U2 work (or at least how they worked in 1986-87).
Classic Albums is one of those DVDs that's almost impossible to rate in regard to picture and sound because of the wide variety of sources that make up its contents. The image - which was presented entirely in a 1.33:1 ratio on this single-sided, single-layered DVD - takes new interviews, performances from 1986, 1987, 1993, and 1997, music videos from 1987 and 1998, and a few other sources, all of which vary in quality.
The new interviews uniformly look very good. Sharpness seems excellent, although I noted some jagged edges and gentle moiré effects at times. Since these were shot on video, no print flaws result, and no grain can be seen. Colors are accurate and vivid, and black levels look fine.
As far as the other material goes, it seems much iffier. The video for "The Sweetest Thing" looks great, but the clips from TJT tend to seem flat and fuzzy; some of that comes from the original photography - especially in the case of the "With Or Without You" piece - but not all of it.
The Rattle and Hum and Zoo TV Live segments also seemed surprisingly weak in appearance, with some faded colors and a rough look. Though they don't seem terrible, I know those pieces well, and they definitely should look better than this. The remainder of the performance shots are tougher to judge because I haven't seen them. They generally stick to a level about equivalent with the Rattle and Hum and Zoo TV Live scenes, with the exception of a clip of Lanois on stage with U2 during the 1992-93 tour; it looks like it was shot with a home camcorder. Overall, the picture quality seems acceptable, though it's fairly disappointing at times.
The DVD offers stereo PCM sound that also seems erratic but generally good. If anyone expects to buy this DVD and get the whole Joshua Tree album along with it, they'll be disappointed; "The Sweetest Thing" is the only song that appears in its entirety. The audio clips from the rest of the album sound clean but flat, but that's not the fault of the DVD. TJT always has appeared lackluster as a recording - it's one of the most dull-sounding recordings I know (with some songs being exceptions), and the DVD replicates the original tapes appropriately.
Audio quality seems good but unexceptional throughout the rest of the program. The other music segments vary but generally seem fine, and the interviews sound good; speech appears natural and realistic. Again, it's very hard to objectively rate the audio of this DVD since it comes from so many sources, but I found it acceptable and generally good.
Supplements are few on this DVD, which isn't a surprise since the program itself takes the form of something that could be called a supplement to The Joshua Tree itself. A brief and basic band history appears on the DVD, and we get a listing of their albums that also states in which years those records were released (incorrectly, in one instance: Boy came out in 1980, not 1981).
This Classic Albums DVD that documents U2's The Joshua Tree is not for everyone. Casual fans will probably find it dull, and if you don't already like U2, this DVD probably won't convert you. If you're a diehard like me, however, the program will offer a lot to interest and entertain you. Both picture and sound are inconsistent but generally good. This DVD belongs in the collection of any serious U2 fan.
(Colin Jacobson)
Músicos: Peter Gabriel (voz, flauta, acordeon, pandeiro e bumbo), Anthony Phillips (violão de 12 cordas, guitarra, dulcimer e voz), Tony Banks (órgão, piano, mellotron, violão e voz), Mike Rutherford (violão de 12 cordas, baixo, cello e voz) e John Mayhew (bateria, percussão e voz)
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