U2's "The Joshua Tree" (1987): Track by Track! (Part 2)

<v Speaker 1>Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Shirley You Can't Be
<v Speaker 1>Serious podcast. We are here for part two of our
<v Speaker 1>episodes on you two. If you didn't tune in last week,
<v Speaker 1>you missed the stories of Bono saving a Wham fan
<v Speaker 1>and and threats of assassination and magic mushrooms.
<v Speaker 2>So yeah, there was a lot of cool stuff in
<v Speaker 2>last week's episode. If you haven't heard that, and you
<v Speaker 2>definitely want to go back and listen to it. But
<v Speaker 2>this is a comparison to Princess Sign of the Times album,
<v Speaker 2>so you definitely want to go back and hit that
<v Speaker 2>one up. So Princess Sign of the Times two weeks ago,
<v Speaker 2>Part one of Joshua Tree last week, Part two this week.
<v Speaker 2>All right, yeah, we ready to jump into the songs
<v Speaker 2>on the album.
<v Speaker 1>I am so ready to jump into the songs on
<v Speaker 1>this album. So ready, let's do it.
<v Speaker 2>Okay. First song right out of the gate is a
<v Speaker 2>song called Where the Streets Have No Name.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, before we fully fully jump into this album. As
<v Speaker 1>this first song begins, I've got to tell you a story.
<v Speaker 1>Every time I hear this song, it takes me back
<v Speaker 1>to having just graduated from college. I was a theater major,
<v Speaker 1>I was going into law school, but that summer in
<v Speaker 1>between those two facets of my life, we put together
<v Speaker 1>a theater company and I got to direct our first show,
<v Speaker 1>and our first show was The Breakfast Club, and we
<v Speaker 1>convinced the Norman High School over here to let us
<v Speaker 1>perform it in their library. So it's really like you're
<v Speaker 1>inside of the movie as it was going on. And
<v Speaker 1>so I was resoundtracking the whole movie to kind of
<v Speaker 1>update it a little bit, but I also wanted to
<v Speaker 1>have the feel of the eighties, and I didn't know
<v Speaker 1>how to start it off. And the beginning scene is
<v Speaker 1>like all of the students, one by one coming into
<v Speaker 1>their classroom. One day, I was walking back to my
<v Speaker 1>car and I was listening on headphones and I heard
<v Speaker 1>this beginning that I had ever really heard before, Like
<v Speaker 1>I had always kind of picked it up when the
<v Speaker 1>guitar comes in, but I had never heard this kind
<v Speaker 1>of synthesizer organ thing that's going on. And I was like, Wow,
<v Speaker 1>this is almost like a religious experience. And I was like,
<v Speaker 1>that's it. That's what the beginning of Breakfast Club needs
<v Speaker 1>to be. It needs to be this religious experience. And
<v Speaker 1>so when he crescendo's on that first guitar part, I
<v Speaker 1>had the bell ring and the class start and it
<v Speaker 1>was I still think about it. I'm sorry, but it
<v Speaker 1>just every time it brings me back to that moment
<v Speaker 1>in time that I had. All right, So this first
<v Speaker 1>part is being played by Brian Eno. One of the
<v Speaker 1>producers on the album, the organy church like synthesizer is
<v Speaker 1>Brian Eno. And so then what we have come in
<v Speaker 1>after that is this fantastic guitar by the Edge and
<v Speaker 1>what he's doing here spectacular and it took me until
<v Speaker 1>doing this podcast preparation to figure out how he did
<v Speaker 1>what he was doing.
<v Speaker 2>This is super interesting. You've got to explain it for
<v Speaker 2>our listeners. I was blown away.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So he has an echo effect on his guitar.
<v Speaker 1>The effects pedal causes the amplifier to replay what you
<v Speaker 1>have just played. It echoes it. It's kind of tricky
<v Speaker 1>to do this because when you have an echo effect,
<v Speaker 1>the timing of the echo is precise, but it's through
<v Speaker 1>the pedal and so not only does he have to
<v Speaker 1>match what he's playing to fit that echo, so does
<v Speaker 1>every other member of the band, you know, including the
<v Speaker 1>rhythm section. The bass player and the drummer, So it
<v Speaker 1>gets a little bit complicated. But what he does here,
<v Speaker 1>we can listen to it how it sounds without the
<v Speaker 1>echo effect, and now we can listen to how that
<v Speaker 1>sounds with the echo effect.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, that's incredible.
<v Speaker 1>It's amazing, right, I mean, it's an entirely different sound.
<v Speaker 1>And he says, it's like playing a duet with yourself.
<v Speaker 1>So not only does he have to create this amazing sound,
<v Speaker 1>but he has to do it in such a way
<v Speaker 1>that whatever the end of the preceding measure is, it
<v Speaker 1>fits in with the beginning of the next measure. So
<v Speaker 1>it's really really a complicated thing. He put this together.
<v Speaker 1>He just used a little four track and a drum
<v Speaker 1>machine and the echo pedal and all this, and he
<v Speaker 1>put this thing together and he played it for the band,
<v Speaker 1>and Adam, the bass player say said, I didn't really
<v Speaker 1>think about how many hours that it took at a time.
<v Speaker 1>All I could think at the moment was this just
<v Speaker 1>sounds like a way to put the rest of us up.
<v Speaker 2>This song is amazing. When the album begins, it's like
<v Speaker 2>the sun coming up with the horizon. I just love
<v Speaker 2>it so much. They want this album to be cinematic,
<v Speaker 2>and for me, this song really starts off with a
<v Speaker 2>cinematic feel.
<v Speaker 1>It's got that build that the U two songs have
<v Speaker 1>in its purest essence, and it does some amazing things too.
<v Speaker 1>So this first part with the guitar is in three
<v Speaker 1>four times. It's one two three, one two three one
<v Speaker 1>two three one two three one two three, and then
<v Speaker 1>when it shifts into the part that's behind the lyrics,
<v Speaker 1>it moves into four four time, and so it's one
<v Speaker 1>two three four one two three four one two three four.
<v Speaker 1>It's super fast, super fast tempo. But it's amazing that
<v Speaker 1>he's changing from one tempo three four into four four.
<v Speaker 1>And then of course at the end of the song
<v Speaker 1>he goes back into the three four time and he
<v Speaker 1>does it so seamlessly that it's just unnoticeable but fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>This song was originally titled White City.
<v Speaker 1>Okay tell me more.
<v Speaker 2>Well, that's all I know. I do know that on
<v Speaker 2>their way back from their humanitarian trips, and his wife
<v Speaker 2>Ali were on an airplane and Bono wrote the lyrics
<v Speaker 2>to this song on a barf bag.
<v Speaker 1>He actually wrote it in a tent. He still had
<v Speaker 1>the airsick bags from air India with him and some
<v Speaker 1>napkins and some other scraps of paper. But he was
<v Speaker 1>sitting in a tent in Ajibar in northern Ethiopia when
<v Speaker 1>he wrote this one.
<v Speaker 2>Nice apparently in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Yeah, you can tell
<v Speaker 2>what the person makes, what the religion is, what beliefs
<v Speaker 2>they have all based the name of the street in
<v Speaker 2>which they live.
<v Speaker 1>Right the idea. You know, he's got these dueling concepts
<v Speaker 1>going on, the Northern Ireland concept Belfast and here he
<v Speaker 1>is in Africa where everyone is poverty stricken and none
<v Speaker 1>of the streets have any names, and he wants to
<v Speaker 1>break down these walls and he wants to discover something new.
<v Speaker 1>And he talks about this being in the desert, we
<v Speaker 1>meet God in parched times, in fire and flood, we
<v Speaker 1>discover who we are. It's this moment that he going
<v Speaker 1>through this humanitarian effort in Ethiopia that he realizes, hey,
<v Speaker 1>here are some of the things that even in our
<v Speaker 1>prosperous world, we're being caged by. And I think it's fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>I saw an interview with the Edge and when he
<v Speaker 2>was writing this song, and he felt like they didn't
<v Speaker 2>quite have a great live song, something that would be
<v Speaker 2>amazing from the stage, and so he set out to
<v Speaker 2>make the ultimate YouTube live song.
<v Speaker 1>They spent nearly half of their time just on this song.
<v Speaker 1>They would keep coming back and coming back to the song.
<v Speaker 1>They couldn't just get it the way that they wanted it.
<v Speaker 1>Brian Eno almost erased it. He was getting frustrated at
<v Speaker 1>the fact that they couldn't get it right, and he
<v Speaker 1>felt like the reason they couldn't get it right was
<v Speaker 1>because basically they were working with a flawed version, and
<v Speaker 1>so he thought it would be better to just scrap
<v Speaker 1>it and start again from the beginning. But that's a
<v Speaker 1>scary thing to do, you know, So you can't just
<v Speaker 1>say to the guys, hey, let's just throw away all
<v Speaker 1>this work that we've done and just start with nothing
<v Speaker 1>all over again. So he was going to stage an accident.
<v Speaker 2>I accidentally hit the dele button fellas.
<v Speaker 1>Ultimately, they did not erase it. He did not erase it.
<v Speaker 1>They just kept working and kept working and fixed it,
<v Speaker 1>and through all of that work they fell in love
<v Speaker 1>with it, which is why they decided to make it
<v Speaker 1>the first song on the album.
<v Speaker 2>This is a fantastic song. It's one of the most
<v Speaker 2>iconic songs of the eighties. This song only reached number
<v Speaker 2>thirteen on the Hot one hundred in SI Crack the
<v Speaker 2>top ten Insane. This was the third single released August
<v Speaker 2>seventh of nineteen eighty seven, reached number thirteen the week
<v Speaker 2>did it peaked number one on the chart. I Think
<v Speaker 2>We're Alone now by Tiffany.
<v Speaker 1>Somebody needs to have their face slapped. I don't know
<v Speaker 1>who it is, but somebody needs to have their face
<v Speaker 1>slapped over that.
<v Speaker 2>This song deserved better than the top thirteen on the
<v Speaker 2>year apparently one. Okay, I want to talk about the
<v Speaker 2>music video for a second. This might be my favorite
<v Speaker 2>music video of all times. They shot a concert from
<v Speaker 2>the top of a liquor store in downtown Los Angeles. Yes,
<v Speaker 2>and they broadcasted out and invited people down. Hey, YouTube
<v Speaker 2>is playing a concert, and next thing they know, there's
<v Speaker 2>hordes of people coming down to listen to this concert.
<v Speaker 1>The Beatles had done the same thing where they play
<v Speaker 1>a live set from the top of a building, and
<v Speaker 1>you know, the crowds are blocking the streets trying to
<v Speaker 1>watch these icons make their music.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's really cool.
<v Speaker 1>It's really cool.
<v Speaker 2>I saw a little bit about this and so in
<v Speaker 2>the music video there's actually a lot of drama involving
<v Speaker 2>the police. Right, So there's this one moment where the
<v Speaker 2>police chief comes in and it's like, that's it. We're
<v Speaker 2>shutting it down. This whole thing is shutting it down. Now.
<v Speaker 2>The funny thing is that their manager actually tells a
<v Speaker 2>story that, in actuality, the police kept giving them extensions.
<v Speaker 2>They kept saying, all right, that's it, Okay, one more song,
<v Speaker 2>that's fine, one more song, and they were like, no, really,
<v Speaker 2>you just go ahead and shut us down. It's more
<v Speaker 2>drama for the video. Q Magazine's readers voted the track
<v Speaker 2>the forty third greatest song in history, and this song
<v Speaker 2>is YouTube's most played track from the Joshua Tree in concert.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, second track on the album, I still haven't found
<v Speaker 1>what I'm looking for. So I gotta say it's amazing
<v Speaker 1>to me that again, we have this rhythm that comes
<v Speaker 1>in with the guitar. The guitar is such a major
<v Speaker 1>facet of the rhythm. You know, you can talk about
<v Speaker 1>chord progression and melody and all of that, but what
<v Speaker 1>the Edge does rhythmically with his guitar is amazing and
<v Speaker 1>unlike anybody else that I can think of out there
<v Speaker 1>in the world.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. When he plays, I hear it and I go,
<v Speaker 2>that's you too.
<v Speaker 1>It's unquestionable. Yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. This was the second single released May twenty fifth,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty seven. This one reached number one on the
<v Speaker 2>Hot one hundred August eighth of ninet eighty seven, and
<v Speaker 2>Bono has described it as the anthem of doubt right.
<v Speaker 1>He talks about how his favorite songs are about either
<v Speaker 1>running toward God or running away from God.
<v Speaker 2>Is interesting one for me because for me to hear
<v Speaker 2>a song like this that's a little bit deeper was
<v Speaker 2>a transition thing for me, and it helped me think
<v Speaker 2>about things larger than just the party scene. It's not
<v Speaker 2>the common theme of searching for love or sex or money,
<v Speaker 2>but the sadness of not finding what you're looking for.
<v Speaker 1>So the other producer on this album is Daniel Lenoaugh
<v Speaker 1>and Brian Eno. Daniel Lenoaugh contributed massively to this album.
<v Speaker 1>They had also done The Unforgettable Fire before this, but
<v Speaker 1>Larry Mullen talks about how Daniel Lenoaugh really had an
<v Speaker 1>emphasis on percussion unlike Lily White had, and it really
<v Speaker 1>comes through in this song. Now this beat that Larry
<v Speaker 1>Mullin has. He had actually done with the song that
<v Speaker 1>was supposed to be called The Weather Girls, but Daniel
<v Speaker 1>Lenoi said, I don't really like the song, but that
<v Speaker 1>beat is awesome. You should keep that beat, And so
<v Speaker 1>basically he took the beat and then the Edge came
<v Speaker 1>in and added a guitar and the melody and the title.
<v Speaker 1>Edge came up with the title, and then Bono took
<v Speaker 1>that and added all of these gospel themes that I mean,
<v Speaker 1>who else is doing this? Nobody else is doing this
<v Speaker 1>at the time. And then once Bono had his lyrics,
<v Speaker 1>the Edge, Brian Eno and Daniel Noaugh all added backing
<v Speaker 1>vocals over his lyrics. This is great because this is
<v Speaker 1>the top of Bono's range and you can really feel
<v Speaker 1>the intensity that he has when he's singing in the song.
<v Speaker 1>It's fantastic for sure.
<v Speaker 2>For sure, I heard Bono talking about the difficulty of
<v Speaker 2>taking a gospel tune and bringing it into the modern world.
<v Speaker 1>Right, So do you remember the video for this one? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>I really like the video on this. They're down on
<v Speaker 2>Fremont Street in Las Vegas.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, there's this one part where, like you know, they're
<v Speaker 1>just They're walking around in the street and people are
<v Speaker 1>just kind of walking around and Bono is singing to
<v Speaker 1>different people, and then he turns to the Edge. And
<v Speaker 1>this is back when the Edge wore the kind of
<v Speaker 1>big cowboy hat looking hat and just was quiet and
<v Speaker 1>as stoic as you could be. But back then I
<v Speaker 1>was just like, what's up with this guy? He just
<v Speaker 1>doesn't talk. So anyway, he's there. He's just there with
<v Speaker 1>his acoustic guitar playing along, and all of a sudden
<v Speaker 1>bonds like kind of pressing up close to him and
<v Speaker 1>singing and right singing right in his face, and you
<v Speaker 1>get this classic like my teenage kid couldn't do a
<v Speaker 1>better I roll of Oh my gosh, would you just
<v Speaker 1>stop already?
<v Speaker 2>So I went to Las Vegas a couple of years ago. Okay, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>and so you've got you know, the modern area where
<v Speaker 2>all the kind of all the casinos are, the big
<v Speaker 2>casinos and stuff like that. Fremont Street is kind of
<v Speaker 2>down and kind of by itself. It's Old Vegas, and
<v Speaker 2>I didn't know that. I was there for the first time,
<v Speaker 2>and I'm walking around and all of a sudden it
<v Speaker 2>hits me like I walk into a movie right, and
<v Speaker 2>I walk in and I'm on Freemont Street and I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>holy crap, this is where they shot Dimes Are Forever.
<v Speaker 2>And I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I didn't tell this story during James Bond, but
<v Speaker 1>I'll tell it now. So, my grandmother was from Henderson, VA,
<v Speaker 1>which is just outside of Las Vegas, and she, you know,
<v Speaker 1>she passed away, and I went to her funeral, of course,
<v Speaker 1>and my brother was there. He, like us, had grown
<v Speaker 1>up watching James Bond, so he just drunk it in,
<v Speaker 1>you know, memorized every scene in the movie was Diamonds
<v Speaker 1>Are Forever. Well. Then, of course, you know, you fast
<v Speaker 1>forward multiple years later, and my grandma was awesome. You know.
<v Speaker 1>I went through Las Vegas like you did and met
<v Speaker 1>with her, and she gave me and my buddy one
<v Speaker 1>hundred bucks and said you can't spend this on anything necessary.
<v Speaker 1>And I was like, yeah, that's awesome, Grandma, that is fantastic, right,
<v Speaker 1>And so when she passes, we're at her funeral and
<v Speaker 1>my brother starts looking around at this funeral home that
<v Speaker 1>we're at and he's like, I know this place. How
<v Speaker 1>do I How do I know this place? And he's like,
<v Speaker 1>oh my gosh. And he goes over to the you know,
<v Speaker 1>the funeral director, and he's like, is this the place
<v Speaker 1>that they shot Diamonds or Forever? And the funeral Director's
<v Speaker 1>like yep, and he's like, oh my gosh. He was
<v Speaker 1>in a casket, like in that wall over there.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And I just felt like it was almost a nod
<v Speaker 1>from above of Hey, I want you guys, even though
<v Speaker 1>this is a sad moment, I still want you to
<v Speaker 1>have a little bit of fun on me.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, that's cool, man, that's really cool. Okay, we done
<v Speaker 2>with this one.
<v Speaker 1>I think we're done with I still haven't found what
<v Speaker 1>I'm looking for.
<v Speaker 2>Huge song, number one hit in eighty seven. Okay. That
<v Speaker 2>brings us to the third song on the album. This
<v Speaker 2>song was the first single released on March twenty first,
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty seven.
<v Speaker 1>This is With or Without You. Okay, So once again,
<v Speaker 1>this song is so so incredible.
<v Speaker 2>This is one of those songs I've heard ten thousand
<v Speaker 2>times in thirty three years and I still want to
<v Speaker 2>weep every time I hear it.
<v Speaker 1>See the Stones sets, see the song twist Em, sid
<v Speaker 1>Oh Wi for You. It's a song that Bono had
<v Speaker 1>been working on since eighty five, right, so he's two
<v Speaker 1>years coming on this one. And it's a four chord song.
<v Speaker 1>Like you know, I've talked before about how a lot
<v Speaker 1>of the greatest hits that we have of the eighties,
<v Speaker 1>especially like Don't Stop Believing in Africa and down Under,
<v Speaker 1>there are four chord songs are the same four chords
<v Speaker 1>in the same order, and that's the way this song
<v Speaker 1>is as well. And it's fantastic, of course, it's a
<v Speaker 1>big hit, but it was something that the band couldn't
<v Speaker 1>find the right feel for and after a while, everybody
<v Speaker 1>except Bono had given up on it. They're like this,
<v Speaker 1>we're just never going to get it right. And this
<v Speaker 1>song had meant quite a lot to Bono because it
<v Speaker 1>was kind of his take on being married and being
<v Speaker 1>on the road, which of course is had taken a
<v Speaker 1>lot of things through the journey back in there again.
<v Speaker 1>But they were ready to trash it, and Bono kept
<v Speaker 1>holding on, and there's a guy named Gavin Friday who's
<v Speaker 1>involved with them quite a bit, and he was sure
<v Speaker 1>that it could be a hit, and so they work
<v Speaker 1>together and they kind of rearranged it a little bit,
<v Speaker 1>and it still wasn't quite right. But then this magical
<v Speaker 1>thing happens. Enter Michael Brooke. And Michael Brooke is a
<v Speaker 1>producer and musician. He's done some cinematic stuff, but he
<v Speaker 1>is also an inventor. And he invented a guitar that
<v Speaker 1>was called the Infinite Guitar. And when he first created them,
<v Speaker 1>two of them went out. One was to Daniel Lenoa
<v Speaker 1>and the other was to the Edge. And so the
<v Speaker 1>Edge gets this guitar, opens up the case. It's his
<v Speaker 1>first day to have this guitar. He opens it up
<v Speaker 1>and he starts playing it. Now, the way this Infante
<v Speaker 1>the guitar works is kind of mind blowing. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>it's just it's brilliant. You got to understand that microphones
<v Speaker 1>and speakers are very similar in the way they work.
<v Speaker 1>In fact, they're almost identical. It's just one I don't
<v Speaker 1>want to go into that, all right, So biber Bund
<v Speaker 1>and speakers are very they're virtually the same thing, right,
<v Speaker 1>And so what he's what he does, you know, imagine
<v Speaker 1>a guitar electric guitar in your head. What he does,
<v Speaker 1>what Michael Brooke does is he takes that bottom pickup
<v Speaker 1>and instead of making it a microphone. He makes it
<v Speaker 1>a speaker, and so when you play the note on
<v Speaker 1>the guitar, it translates through the pickup into the speaker
<v Speaker 1>that's in the place of the pickup, thereby sending it
<v Speaker 1>back into the strings of the guitar and creating this
<v Speaker 1>infinite loop of sound. Hence the name the infinite guitar, right,
<v Speaker 1>And so that creates this ethereal magic that is again
<v Speaker 1>unlike any other songs out there.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's like a symphony almost. It's like a one
<v Speaker 2>note symphony.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's like a violin. The violin can just staying
<v Speaker 1>the note because the person just keeps moving the bow
<v Speaker 1>back and forth on the note. It's a very similar
<v Speaker 1>type of sound. Yeah, it's amazing.
<v Speaker 2>I love how in this song you have that slow
<v Speaker 2>build and then the drums start to gather momentum and
<v Speaker 2>then and then you close off with that. I mean,
<v Speaker 2>that's that whoa from Bono. That's so powerful. This song.
<v Speaker 2>Every time I hear it is just magical. It speaks
<v Speaker 2>to my soul. They really did not want to release
<v Speaker 2>this as the first single. There was kind of this
<v Speaker 2>battle going on. Their manager, Paul McGinnis was like, it's
<v Speaker 2>too it's too strange sentence. They kept coming back to it.
<v Speaker 2>It just kind of became everybody's favorite.
<v Speaker 1>Song, and they had the iconic video on MTV the
<v Speaker 1>black and white where he's got his hair now on
<v Speaker 1>a ponytail. I mean, the mullet that he had going
<v Speaker 1>on during live aid was one of the most intense
<v Speaker 1>mullets that I had seen. I mean, it rivaled David
<v Speaker 1>on The Lost Boys on the intensity of that mullet.
<v Speaker 1>By the time we get to the video for With
<v Speaker 1>or Without You, he's got it all slicked back, looking
<v Speaker 1>very cool.
<v Speaker 2>I think all four members of the band, their talent
<v Speaker 2>is really on display. Okay, next song, song number four.
<v Speaker 3>This song is called Bullet the Blue Sky.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so this is a song that's kicking some button
<v Speaker 1>right out of the gate. Right. We were done with
<v Speaker 1>our kind of pretty ethereal operatic stuff and now we're
<v Speaker 1>out there to kick some booty YEP.
<v Speaker 2>This is a rocker.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, oh yeah, I love it. I can't tell
<v Speaker 1>you how much I love this song. This is I
<v Speaker 1>can't figure out why they didn't release this one as
<v Speaker 1>a single. It should have been. It's one of the
<v Speaker 1>best songs on the album. Blows my mind, and about
<v Speaker 1>some i mean some rough subject matter too. I mean
<v Speaker 1>they're talking about El Salvador and the war that's going
<v Speaker 1>on down there that they had when they that they
<v Speaker 1>observed when they visited down there, and it's it's rough stuff.
<v Speaker 1>But what's interesting is we've talked about how Larry and
<v Speaker 1>Adam drums in the bass are typically the foundation, but
<v Speaker 1>they're the standouts on this one. The drums and the
<v Speaker 1>bass are your focus on this one. And the Edge
<v Speaker 1>talked about how the song came about. You know, he
<v Speaker 1>had been playing with this rhythm that he had and
<v Speaker 1>so he comes in and he starts playing it. And
<v Speaker 1>as he's playing along, you know, Larry comes in, sits
<v Speaker 1>down at the drums and he starts drumming, and Adam
<v Speaker 1>comes in and he starts playing the bass, and the
<v Speaker 1>Edge is like, Larry's playing halftime. He's like, this is wrong,
<v Speaker 1>this is the completely wrong rhythm. What are you doing
<v Speaker 1>over here? Then Adam on the bass is doing the
<v Speaker 1>same kind of fast, heavy, like, well, what's going on?
<v Speaker 1>And they play for about five minutes or whatever, and
<v Speaker 1>they get done and they walk into the sound room
<v Speaker 1>and all the guys are like, yeah, yes, that was it.
<v Speaker 1>You finally got it. Still's not he's still not getting
<v Speaker 1>He's like, yeah, yeah, no, but I mean they you know,
<v Speaker 1>they messed it up. They didn't do the right rhythm
<v Speaker 1>and it finally he was like, oh wow, No, this
<v Speaker 1>makes the song this and that it is. It is
<v Speaker 1>the hook, that drum beat as it comes off that
<v Speaker 1>unusual time sequence that he's playing. Uh, too good, too good.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's amazing. This is one of the I mean,
<v Speaker 2>I would call it the El Salvador trilogy on this album. Right,
<v Speaker 2>so you've got this song, You've got One Tree Hill,
<v Speaker 2>and you've got Mothers of the Disappeared that sort of
<v Speaker 2>talk about this serious subject matter. While Bono was on
<v Speaker 2>these humanitarian missions, he witnesses US forces burning out villages
<v Speaker 2>to get to these paramilitary members. Bonno was just appalled
<v Speaker 2>that the US would do this and hurt these people
<v Speaker 2>that are impoverished and have nothing. Anyway, the thing that
<v Speaker 2>was most shocking to him was he knew that they
<v Speaker 2>were Christians back in the United States that sort of
<v Speaker 2>sanctioned this behavior, and he was calling upon the scriptures
<v Speaker 2>to help these Christians realize what was going on. Number one,
<v Speaker 2>and how we need to see better answers for this.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. I mean he's taken biblical imagery like Jesus being
<v Speaker 1>nailed to a cross and Jacob wrestling with an angel
<v Speaker 1>to drive home the point that hey, Christians, wake up
<v Speaker 1>and look what it is that you're supporting here.
<v Speaker 2>Also, I don't know this for sure, but I got
<v Speaker 2>to believe from the lyrics of this song it mentions
<v Speaker 2>rattle and hum. It's got to be where they came
<v Speaker 2>up with the title for their next.
<v Speaker 1>Album, Yeah, for sure. And he's got in the middle
<v Speaker 1>of the song, he's got this almost spoken part that
<v Speaker 1>is really unsettling, and you know, talking about throwing the
<v Speaker 1>bills down two right, And in his mind this was
<v Speaker 1>Ronald Reagan was the guy who was doing this. Say
<v Speaker 1>what you will about his intentions. It's still I mean,
<v Speaker 1>the effect is it kicks some major butt, that's for sure.
<v Speaker 2>Great song four for four so far in the album.
<v Speaker 2>Let's move on to song number five. This one's called
<v Speaker 2>Running to stand Still. The beginning of this song is
<v Speaker 2>very interesting to me. It doesn't seem like it fits
<v Speaker 2>with the rest of the song. Is this kind of
<v Speaker 2>bluesy guitar and then you slide into this ballad, it
<v Speaker 2>just doesn't seem to fit.
<v Speaker 1>It's interesting, Yeah, I mean you talked about, you know,
<v Speaker 1>how they were trying to be cinematic about how the
<v Speaker 1>album went, and you you know, you go through these
<v Speaker 1>ethereal operatic songs. Then it's almost violent in nature bullet
<v Speaker 1>the Blue Sky song, and then all of a sudden,
<v Speaker 1>it's almost as though you're waking up the next morning
<v Speaker 1>from having the crap beaten out of you, and that's
<v Speaker 1>you get that blues feel, and then they start singing
<v Speaker 1>this ballad about drug addiction. So Heroin was a big deal.
<v Speaker 1>If you've seen the movie train spotting issue.
<v Speaker 2>Right, it's a big deal.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well in Ireland specifically, and so this is kind
<v Speaker 1>of a you know, a couple talking about the one
<v Speaker 1>way out being, you know, go somewhere and score some
<v Speaker 1>drugs in order to bring it back and make ourselves rich,
<v Speaker 1>not just to take them, but just to sell them.
<v Speaker 1>And so that's the that's the white Gold Pearls that
<v Speaker 1>she brings back. But it's again, it's not just a
<v Speaker 1>song about drugs. It's another political commentary by Bono about
<v Speaker 1>what had happened in some of the poorer neighborhoods. These
<v Speaker 1>were housing setups that were meant to bring people out
<v Speaker 1>of poverty and to clean up the neighborhoods, and it
<v Speaker 1>just ended up making it worse. Ballyman Flats in Ireland,
<v Speaker 1>that's what the place that he's singing about in his song.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this is a beautiful song. Once again, it's a
<v Speaker 2>slow burn. It builds. You've got bono on harmonica. The
<v Speaker 2>producer Daniel LANMWOII is playing the rhythm guitar on this song.
<v Speaker 2>But it's just a beautiful build.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. The Edge is the one playing the pian on
<v Speaker 1>this one.
<v Speaker 2>Nice so far Five in a row, No skippers.
<v Speaker 1>No, no, not at all.
<v Speaker 2>After running to stand still. The next song on the
<v Speaker 2>album is called Red Hill Mining Town.
<v Speaker 1>So this again we have another unique sound. This song
<v Speaker 1>doesn't sound like any of the other songs on the
<v Speaker 1>album so far, and to me, this could be a
<v Speaker 1>song in like a John Hughes movie, right, especially when
<v Speaker 1>he comes in on the chorus. Just that amazing passion
<v Speaker 1>that he has in his voice. I mean, I can see,
<v Speaker 1>you know, one of the rat pack raising the fist
<v Speaker 1>above their head in the song. But of course he's
<v Speaker 1>singing about something that's not at all what you would
<v Speaker 1>have in a John Hughes movie. This is about like
<v Speaker 1>a minor strike in the mid eighties. Margaret Thatcher had
<v Speaker 1>closed down some unprofitable coal mines in the UK and
<v Speaker 1>that left a whole lot of people without jobs, and
<v Speaker 1>so this song is about the struggle that they have
<v Speaker 1>of trying to provide for their families after not having
<v Speaker 1>a job anymore.
<v Speaker 2>Right, The subject matter on this type of stuff way
<v Speaker 2>over my head at age fourteen. This sounds like it's
<v Speaker 2>more of like a Bruce Springsteen type of song, you know,
<v Speaker 2>the working man and trying to make a living and
<v Speaker 2>that type of thing. I've heard it said that it
<v Speaker 2>was either planned to be the second single or the
<v Speaker 2>third single, but the band couldn't really agree, and urban
<v Speaker 2>legend is that they didn't want to have to play
<v Speaker 2>this song in constant too much because of the high
<v Speaker 2>notes for Bono to hit. This is the only song
<v Speaker 2>from the Joshua Tree prior to their reunion concert to
<v Speaker 2>have never been played live. Wow, which is crazy because
<v Speaker 2>this seems like such a single long wave your hands
<v Speaker 2>in the air type of song.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, break out the lighters.
<v Speaker 2>So that brings us to the end of side one of.
<v Speaker 1>The Joshua Tree push stop on you tay player, kick.
<v Speaker 2>It out, flip it over, put it back in press,
<v Speaker 2>play next song in God's Country.
<v Speaker 1>Once again, something completely different. We're not getting anything repetitive
<v Speaker 1>on this album.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this was the fourth single. This was released in
<v Speaker 2>North America only, which seems kindstry. I never really understand
<v Speaker 2>that if you're going to release a song, why don't
<v Speaker 2>you just release it?
<v Speaker 1>Well, the I mean the thing about this is this
<v Speaker 1>is a very American song. I mean this one really
<v Speaker 1>he's talking about the when he's talking about the deserts
<v Speaker 1>in this song, he's talking about the American deserts. And
<v Speaker 1>you know, God's Country is about America. And he ultimately
<v Speaker 1>dedicated this song to the Statue of Liberty. He said
<v Speaker 1>he wanted to write about America and you know, the dream,
<v Speaker 1>the American dream, and he said, I wonder where are
<v Speaker 1>the people that will rise to the challenge, you know,
<v Speaker 1>where are the new dreamers? And so it was this
<v Speaker 1>kind of idea of the desert, not as a barren wasteland,
<v Speaker 1>but as an empty can this on which to build
<v Speaker 1>something new.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, I've got a friend and I've mentioned her before,
<v Speaker 2>but she's a pop culture encyclopedia and she is a
<v Speaker 2>huge You Two fan. She got on our Facebook page
<v Speaker 2>the other day and mentioned that some husbands buy roses
<v Speaker 2>for their wives. Her husband buys her YouTube tickets, right,
<v Speaker 2>yeah was Her name is Jeanie Alexander, and so I
<v Speaker 2>hit her up right before we record this, and I'm like,
<v Speaker 2>you know, hey, tell me about what your takes are
<v Speaker 2>in justure Tree. And of course she's got a long
<v Speaker 2>litany of things that she loves about this album. But
<v Speaker 2>she was talking to me about Bono's vision of America
<v Speaker 2>as two Americas. Right, you have the American dream, you
<v Speaker 2>have the prosperity, you've got the freedom, and then you've
<v Speaker 2>got the addictions and the crime and the poverty and
<v Speaker 2>the problems of America's the two Americas. That's what I
<v Speaker 2>think about when I when I listen to this song,
<v Speaker 2>The two Americas.
<v Speaker 1>It's fantastic.
<v Speaker 2>Thanks Jeannie for all your help on this episode.
<v Speaker 1>Appreciate you. Yeah, thank you for your support. Thank you
<v Speaker 1>for educating us.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, we done within God's Country. Yes, shout out to
<v Speaker 2>the Statue of Liberty, and we're on to the next song.
<v Speaker 1>Trip through Your wires. Oh, listen to that beat and
<v Speaker 1>that harmonica. Baby, I'm playing some.
<v Speaker 2>Blues rhythm and blues baby. Nobody gets out of here
<v Speaker 2>without playing the blues.
<v Speaker 1>Did you just quote did you just quote Adventures and
<v Speaker 1>babysitting on her? Yes?
<v Speaker 2>I did, Thank you, good job.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my gosh. All right, so this one, this is
<v Speaker 1>a great This is a very very blues song. And
<v Speaker 1>Bonno really thought that this needed to be paired with
<v Speaker 1>Sweetest Thing, but he got outvoted and so it didn't
<v Speaker 1>make it on. It was just on the B side,
<v Speaker 1>I think, is where that ended up. But there, Bono
<v Speaker 1>feels like Wires and Sweetest Thing are hairs. They need
<v Speaker 1>to be get together, both about love, but one's about
<v Speaker 1>being enticed and the other one's about being apologetic. And
<v Speaker 1>Wires is obviously bluesy it. Where's Sweetest Thing is more
<v Speaker 1>r and.
<v Speaker 2>B Yes, yes, I heard that story as well. I
<v Speaker 2>need to tell a quick story about the Sweetest Thing.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, yeah.
<v Speaker 2>Apparently the story is that Bono forgot his wife's birthday
<v Speaker 2>and as a way of apologizing. As a way of
<v Speaker 2>apologizing to her, he wrote this song called the Sweetest
<v Speaker 2>Thing and gave it to her. As a gift, right right,
<v Speaker 2>and she said to him, Okay, you're giving me this
<v Speaker 2>song as a gift. That's very sweet. I want the publishing.
<v Speaker 1>That's awesome. That is awesome.
<v Speaker 2>This song is awesome, man. I love this is in
<v Speaker 2>the top three or four for me in the album.
<v Speaker 1>It just is a.
<v Speaker 2>Feel good The core is just awesome.
<v Speaker 3>I love it.
<v Speaker 2>This is one of my favorite songs on the album.
<v Speaker 1>Love it too, I'll dig it.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, love this song. Moving on to a song called
<v Speaker 2>One Tree Hill.
<v Speaker 1>All right, So this song starts off and it has
<v Speaker 1>a very definite feel to it. It's almost native in
<v Speaker 1>the way that the instrumentation comes in, and I think
<v Speaker 1>that has to be a throwback to New Zealand and
<v Speaker 1>the Maori folks in New Zealand, because this is about
<v Speaker 1>a guy who is very special to you two who
<v Speaker 1>was from New Zealand, a Maori from New Zealand.
<v Speaker 2>So One Tree Hill was written for a guy named
<v Speaker 2>Greg Carroll, whom the band met when they landed in Auckland,
<v Speaker 2>New Zealand, while on tour for The Unforgettable Fire in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty five. Bonald gets there, he's got major jet
<v Speaker 2>LaGG he can't sleep, and so he decides, Hey, I'm
<v Speaker 2>gonna go hit the town and he meets some native guys,
<v Speaker 2>some local guys. One of them is this guy named
<v Speaker 2>Greg Carroll and takes him around. They became friends, and
<v Speaker 2>he ends up taking him to this place called One
<v Speaker 2>Tree Hill, which is significant spiritual volcanic sight. Right, I
<v Speaker 2>don't really know because I've never really been there, but
<v Speaker 2>so it's called One Tree Hill. He becomes a roadie.
<v Speaker 2>Bono appreciates his sense of humor in his work ethics,
<v Speaker 2>so he's hired to be his personal assistant. During the
<v Speaker 2>Live Aid concert, you can actually see him handing him
<v Speaker 2>a guitar on stage. It's pretty cool. But he was
<v Speaker 2>driving Bono's motorcycle returning it to Dublin when he was
<v Speaker 2>killed in a motorcycle accident on July third, nineteen eighty six. Yeah,
<v Speaker 2>he was twenty six.
<v Speaker 1>When that happened. Yeah, this was a really devastating moment
<v Speaker 1>for the band, for the whole band, They really loved
<v Speaker 1>this guy. Larry Mullen said, his death really rocked us.
<v Speaker 1>It was the first time anyone in our working circle
<v Speaker 1>had been killed. Bono had actually flown to Texas to
<v Speaker 1>sing with Willie Nelson By An hour after he arrived,
<v Speaker 1>he heard the news of Carol's death and immediately flew
<v Speaker 1>back to Ireland. This was obviously a big important guy
<v Speaker 1>to them, and it packs this song with a whole
<v Speaker 1>lot of meaning that I didn't understand before. And I'm
<v Speaker 1>glad I know the story now.
<v Speaker 2>Apparently at the funeral, Bono's saying, let it be knocking
<v Speaker 2>on Heaven's door. But he wanted to do more to
<v Speaker 2>honor Greg and so he wrote the song One Tree
<v Speaker 2>Hill And when he recorded it, he recorded the vocals
<v Speaker 2>in one take. He felt too emotionally wiped out to
<v Speaker 2>any more than once.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it was. It was months before he was ever
<v Speaker 1>able to perform it live.
<v Speaker 2>It don't play this song live very often, but every
<v Speaker 2>time they go to New Zealand, they always play One
<v Speaker 2>Tree Hill.
<v Speaker 1>Right.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, here's another interesting tidbit on this song, Okay, and
<v Speaker 2>I'm gonna try and describe this for our younger listeners.
<v Speaker 2>Way back in the eighties, he had this thing called
<v Speaker 2>long distance long distance elephone calls. Yeah, and transatlantic long
<v Speaker 2>distance calls were super expensive. So while they were recording
<v Speaker 2>this song, there were these three Toronto bassed musicians who
<v Speaker 2>were recording the string section portion of this song. The
<v Speaker 2>Edge and Daniel Lanois are across the Atlantic Ocean directing
<v Speaker 2>them and they're on the phone for six hours.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>I love this song. It's it's mournful, but it's upbeat.
<v Speaker 2>It makes me smile. It's like sad smiling.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it's kind of the notion of the wake. You know.
<v Speaker 1>It's a celebration of someone who's passed. It's a celebration
<v Speaker 1>of their life.
<v Speaker 2>Right, great song. I love it. One Tree Hill is
<v Speaker 2>the fifth single released from this album, but it was
<v Speaker 2>only released in Australia and New Zealand. Interesting next song
<v Speaker 2>on the album is a song called Exit.
<v Speaker 1>He used to stay away to drive the dreams. All right,
<v Speaker 1>So here we go with another feel good song. Just kidding,
<v Speaker 1>just kidding. This song it has it has kind of
<v Speaker 1>a dark beginning and middle and end.
<v Speaker 2>This is a dark star song all the way through
<v Speaker 2>it is. This song was originally supposed to be titled
<v Speaker 2>Executioner's Song.
<v Speaker 1>So this song came about after Bono had been reading
<v Speaker 1>some American novels about murders. Basically, so he had read
<v Speaker 1>Norman Mahler's The Executioner's song and Truman Capote's in Cold Blood,
<v Speaker 1>And this was his attempt is what these are his words.
<v Speaker 1>This was my attempt at writing a story in the
<v Speaker 1>mind of a killer. It's all very well to address
<v Speaker 1>America and the violence that is in an aggressive foreign policy,
<v Speaker 1>but to really understand that, you have to get under
<v Speaker 1>the skin of your own darkness, the violence that we
<v Speaker 1>all contain within us.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, this is where it gets interesting. Okay, so Bono
<v Speaker 2>wrote this song said after reading some stuff about murder.
<v Speaker 2>One of the guys was Gary Gilmore, who was this
<v Speaker 2>guy who executed some people, and then he wanted the
<v Speaker 2>court to hurry up with his own death sentence, like
<v Speaker 2>he wanted them to execute him as soon as possible.
<v Speaker 2>Very dark, very interesting story. But where it really gets
<v Speaker 2>weird is when this guy, Robert John Bardo comes along.
<v Speaker 2>If you were around in the eighties, you'll remember this
<v Speaker 2>is the guy who stalked and murdered the actress Rebecca
<v Speaker 2>Schaeffer on July nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine. Oh gosh, do
<v Speaker 2>you remember that. Yeah, she was in that TV show
<v Speaker 2>called My Sister Sam. Yeah, him Dabber, the girl from
<v Speaker 2>More Committy. He so he stalked her, shot her, killed her,
<v Speaker 2>and then during his trial, his attorneys said that this
<v Speaker 2>song influenced him to commit these deeds, and so they
<v Speaker 2>played it during the court sessions and when they played it,
<v Speaker 2>he's bobbing his head and along in court.
<v Speaker 1>Oh my, really weird.
<v Speaker 2>This was recorded the last day of the Joshua Tree sessions.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, this came. This came out of the band doing
<v Speaker 1>some jam sessions. They only played at one time, and
<v Speaker 1>then Brian Eno came in and cut it down into
<v Speaker 1>the final product. But it was a one take kind
<v Speaker 1>of deal for them. Yep.
<v Speaker 2>Pretty amazing. This song was played on all one hundred
<v Speaker 2>and nine in the Joshua Tree Tour shows, but has
<v Speaker 2>been played only once until they did the Reunion tour
<v Speaker 2>for the thirtieth Joshua Tree Reunion Tour.
<v Speaker 1>Huh. It has an intensity that is unmistakable and the
<v Speaker 1>you don't want to say you love this song, but
<v Speaker 1>you feel the impact that they were trying to convey
<v Speaker 1>without question.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, this is a dark song. I'm kind of out
<v Speaker 2>on this one. It's got an interesting history, but this
<v Speaker 2>is the first one where I'm like Skipper.
<v Speaker 1>Now, I still I wouldn't skip this song. It's just
<v Speaker 1>it's got to be the right moment. I mean, I'm
<v Speaker 1>not going to listen to this with the kids in
<v Speaker 1>the park. But you know, if I'm driving in the
<v Speaker 1>morning to go work out, maybe this is the song
<v Speaker 1>I get to kind of intensify my testosterone levels or something.
<v Speaker 1>I don't know.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's gonna take a playing of playing in the
<v Speaker 2>sunshine and starfish and coffee and wake me up before
<v Speaker 2>you go go to pull me out of the funk.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Yeah, Well, and Bono talks about how I'll take
<v Speaker 1>a walk occasionally and have a drink with the devil,
<v Speaker 1>but I'm not moving in with him.
<v Speaker 2>That's good.
<v Speaker 1>I like that.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, have you ever danced with the devil in the pillow?
<v Speaker 1>What did you say?
<v Speaker 2>I always asked, out of all my brain. I just
<v Speaker 2>like the sound of it.
<v Speaker 1>So Oddly, exit is not the last song. It seems
<v Speaker 1>like it would be, but it's not.
<v Speaker 2>It should be. Yeah, maybe it is.
<v Speaker 1>And this is the encore. The encore is Mothers of
<v Speaker 1>the Disappeared.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, once more, this is not a feel good so.
<v Speaker 1>So you have this really fascinating beginning here. This is
<v Speaker 1>obviously a pick on the edge of the wound strings
<v Speaker 1>on a guitar, and it has an almost industrial sound
<v Speaker 1>to it, you know, like machinery or somebody scratching at
<v Speaker 1>something metal, and it creates a scene that to me
<v Speaker 1>is very dark and mysterious. And then when the bass
<v Speaker 1>comes rolling in here and it's got a twang to
<v Speaker 1>the bass. It's got that kind of vibration going on
<v Speaker 1>in the bass, and it's almost what we would later
<v Speaker 1>describe as industrial and its sound. But then the lyrics
<v Speaker 1>come in and it's a God's tragedy. You know that
<v Speaker 1>we've got these oppressive governments in these South American countries
<v Speaker 1>who when the government is oppressive, you will have college
<v Speaker 1>students who protest what the government is doing. And what
<v Speaker 1>the government would then do with those students is disappear them,
<v Speaker 1>would cause them to no longer be there. They would
<v Speaker 1>be kidnapped in the night and never seen again, very
<v Speaker 1>in an unmarked grave somewhere. And it's the mothers of
<v Speaker 1>the disappeared is actually another type of protest group that
<v Speaker 1>began in the seventies and eighties of these mothers, I
<v Speaker 1>mean exactly what it is, mothers of these students who
<v Speaker 1>have disappeared. It's an emotional subject and an emotional song
<v Speaker 1>and so intense. And again, I love it for what
<v Speaker 1>it does. It captures something, and I love the sound
<v Speaker 1>of it. It is cinematic in its ability to paint
<v Speaker 1>a picture with the music and the sounds that come
<v Speaker 1>from these instruments.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, it's haunting and beautiful and sad. You know, did
<v Speaker 2>you know? I don't know if you know this or not,
<v Speaker 2>but the song's guitar melody comes from an original piece
<v Speaker 2>that Bono composed to help teach children about basic heiji
<v Speaker 2>while he was in Ethiopia nineteen eighty five. Huh. Now,
<v Speaker 2>he had a little ditty, you know, teaching them to
<v Speaker 2>brush their teeth or whatever, and he transformed it into
<v Speaker 2>this song.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, that's awesome.
<v Speaker 2>This again is part of that trilogy involving One Tree
<v Speaker 2>Hill and Bullet Blue Sky. Okay, I don't know if
<v Speaker 2>you know this or not, but on February fifth, nineteen
<v Speaker 2>ninety eight and February eleventh, nineteen ninety eight, you two
<v Speaker 2>performed this song live in Argentina, and then again a
<v Speaker 2>week later in Chile. He brought the mothers on stage
<v Speaker 2>and called upon the government to tell these women where
<v Speaker 2>the bones of their children.
<v Speaker 1>Are Can you imagine. I mean, that's some brass tax
<v Speaker 1>right there. Bro. Seriously, I mean you were throwing out
<v Speaker 1>these accusations and making these demands of a government who
<v Speaker 1>obviously has no hesitation about taking the lives of its
<v Speaker 1>own citizens, let alone the lives of some Irish band
<v Speaker 1>who's coming out here mocking.
<v Speaker 2>Us my got punk rock star.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, brassball, baby, brassball.
<v Speaker 2>That's what I love most about Bonall. Mean, he is
<v Speaker 2>not afraid to use his platform to do the good
<v Speaker 2>things that he feels like he's been called pot to do.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Good finish to the album. I know you had
<v Speaker 1>one skipper in there, but there were no skippers for me.
<v Speaker 1>Fantastic from beginning to the end.
<v Speaker 2>It is a fantastic album. So the Joshua Tree did
<v Speaker 2>win the Grammy four the Album of the Year in
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty seven, beating out Princess Sya the Times album.
<v Speaker 2>This album topped the chart in over twenty countries and
<v Speaker 2>it became the fastest selling album in British history. It
<v Speaker 2>went platinum in forty eight hours.
<v Speaker 1>Forty eight hours. There's a lot of records.
<v Speaker 2>It's incredible. This was a huge album. Nineteen eighty seven.
<v Speaker 2>We ready for final judgment.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, let's move on to final judgment. Okay. So I
<v Speaker 1>called you up a few days ago and I said,
<v Speaker 1>do you know where you stand on that between these
<v Speaker 1>two Mammoth albums of March of nineteen eighty seven? And
<v Speaker 1>you said yes, And that is all that you told me.
<v Speaker 1>And so I'm waiting with baited breath to find out
<v Speaker 1>whether we are about to go to war or where
<v Speaker 1>their two Hearts beat is one. I could not find
<v Speaker 1>what I was looking for when I call it you.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So I didn't really have a relationship with either
<v Speaker 2>one of these albums. I knew the hits very well
<v Speaker 2>and loved the hits very well. So when we Dove Deep,
<v Speaker 2>it was the first time that I had heard some
<v Speaker 2>of these songs. So when I listened to Sign of
<v Speaker 2>the Times, I have fun. I enjoy what I'm listening to.
<v Speaker 2>I'm dancing, I'm singing. There are some highs and lows
<v Speaker 2>on Sign of the Times. I don't think it's as
<v Speaker 2>good as Joshua Tree all the way through. However, if
<v Speaker 2>I'm going on a road trip, the first CD I'm
<v Speaker 2>grabbing of these two is Sign of the Times.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>It just fits my personality more.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, you're up all right. Well, when we started comparing
<v Speaker 1>these albums, I started listening to Sign of the Times first,
<v Speaker 1>because number one, we were covering it first, and number two,
<v Speaker 1>I had heard Joshua Tree one thousand and one times.
<v Speaker 1>This was one of those albums that I just listened
<v Speaker 1>to beginning to end over and over again. And so
<v Speaker 1>Sign of Times was something that I had to become
<v Speaker 1>familiar with. You had talked about being kind of a
<v Speaker 1>YouTube greatest hits guy Prince for me was Purple Rain
<v Speaker 1>and then whatever hits came out after and before Purple Rain.
<v Speaker 1>And so when I started listening to Sign of the Times,
<v Speaker 1>we had discussed quite a bit about how we wanted
<v Speaker 1>to compare something to Purple Rain because it's so iconic, right,
<v Speaker 1>but what do you compare that to? And then I
<v Speaker 1>wanted to do Joshua Tree. What do we do to
<v Speaker 1>compare that to? We came up with Sign of the Times.
<v Speaker 1>I said, okay, sure. I started listening to it. After
<v Speaker 1>about the first five songs, it was just like the Police.
<v Speaker 1>After the first five songs, I called Yep, and I said,
<v Speaker 1>how much work have you done? Because I don't think
<v Speaker 1>that this can even compare to Joshua Tree. Right this,
<v Speaker 1>I remember that, really, these songs are not good. First
<v Speaker 1>songs good, the rest of everything that I've heard so far,
<v Speaker 1>and it's a long album. I wasn't all the way
<v Speaker 1>through it, but it was not good. And You're like, dude,
<v Speaker 1>this is considered his best album. And I said, nuh uh,
<v Speaker 1>and you said, yes, critics consider this his best album.
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, okay, then there must be something wrong with
<v Speaker 1>my day to day. And so I listened to the
<v Speaker 1>whole album and I didn't love it, and so I
<v Speaker 1>said I need to listen to it again. I listened
<v Speaker 1>to it again and I liked it a little bit better.
<v Speaker 1>And then I listened to it again and I still
<v Speaker 1>didn't love it. It was okay, And on the fourth listen,
<v Speaker 1>I just said, this album is not my album. I'm
<v Speaker 1>glad that everybody loves it, It's just not for me.
<v Speaker 1>And when we started going into Joshua Tree, I had
<v Speaker 1>the fantastic pleasure of just letting this play on repeat
<v Speaker 1>in my car. If I wasn't listening to some sort
<v Speaker 1>of podcast on Joshua Tree, I was listening to Joshua
<v Speaker 1>Tree the album and loving every second of it and
<v Speaker 1>loving it more and more the more I heard. It
<v Speaker 1>was great to come back to this thing. So sorry,
<v Speaker 1>Sign of the Times. Sorry Prince fans. I don't despise him.
<v Speaker 1>I think he's a brilliant musician. I think he probably
<v Speaker 1>could have played all of the songs on Joshua Tree,
<v Speaker 1>and they probably couldn't have played his songs, but he
<v Speaker 1>didn't play them. They played them. They came up with them.
<v Speaker 1>I can play Nirvana's first album probably too, but I didn't.
<v Speaker 1>It was them that did it, and so I have
<v Speaker 1>to go Joshua Tree one hundred and ten percent. Sign
<v Speaker 1>of the Times, despite my best effort, couldn't find its
<v Speaker 1>way into my heart.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, well that's great and it's not for everybody, but
<v Speaker 2>that's fine. Where are you, guys, We love to hear
<v Speaker 2>from you. Hit us up on Facebook, hiss up on Twitter,
<v Speaker 2>email us.
<v Speaker 1>Don't forget to go to patreon dot com, slash Shirley
<v Speaker 1>Podcast and become an executive producer of the show. We
<v Speaker 1>will say your name at the beginning of the show.
<v Speaker 1>This show brought to you by executive producer whatever your
<v Speaker 1>name is, Buckley. Go and yes, James Buckley, Thank you
<v Speaker 1>James Buckley for jumping out there on the very first day. Fantastic,
<v Speaker 1>But we have got We aren't asking for money for nothing.
<v Speaker 1>We're not asking for the chicks for free. We we
<v Speaker 1>will send you stuff you join us. You know, the
<v Speaker 1>first stage is your executive producer. Second stage is you
<v Speaker 1>get like a thirty dollars set of nice earbud headphones
<v Speaker 1>that are waterproof and bluetooth and they're amazing. Next stage
<v Speaker 1>you get a custom engraved stainless steel coffee mug. It's fantastic.
<v Speaker 1>And then if you want to go if you want
<v Speaker 1>to go full hog, if you want to go Prince
<v Speaker 1>akeem level, you get to pick an episode on what
<v Speaker 1>we talk about, whatever movie or song or album or
<v Speaker 1>comparison you want to hear. We will do it for you.
<v Speaker 1>So jump on patreon dot com, look us up Shirley
<v Speaker 1>Podcast and become a member of our happy little family.
<v Speaker 2>Love it, love it. If you like what you hear,
<v Speaker 2>we could sure use a five star review on Apple Podcasts.
<v Speaker 2>Take a few moments, go there, click five stars and
<v Speaker 2>tell everybody how great we are. We appreciate it, all right.
<v Speaker 1>It's been super fun to hit these albums can't wait
<v Speaker 1>for next week.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk about next week real quick. Next week we
<v Speaker 2>dive into two of the greatest Christmas movies ever made,
<v Speaker 2>Leath the Weapon and die Hard Mofos. We're getting into it.
<v Speaker 1>I'm getting too old for this.
<v Speaker 2>We'll see you next time
<v Speaker 1>All right, good night,