U2's "The Joshua Tree" (1987): Track by Track! (Part 1)

<v Speaker 1>What we're gonna do is gon We're gonna show up
<v Speaker 1>at about thirty thousand people. All right, everybody, Welcome to
<v Speaker 1>the Shirley you Can't Be Serious Podcast. Tonight, My co
<v Speaker 1>host D and I we are on top of a
<v Speaker 1>liquor store in downtown Los Angeles. We are broadcasting and
<v Speaker 1>podcasting tonight from that location.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Jason, you you get to wrap it up. Man,
<v Speaker 2>the cops you're coming up here. We're shutting the location down.
<v Speaker 2>They're trying to shut us down. Man, they're trying to
<v Speaker 2>shut us down.
<v Speaker 1>They're gonna shut us down. Okay, let's go.
<v Speaker 2>Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely you Can't Be
<v Speaker 2>Serious Podcast with your co hosts James D. Graves and
<v Speaker 2>Jason Colliban. Welcome back, everybody to the Shirley you Can't
<v Speaker 2>Be Serious Podcast. We are nearing years in with a
<v Speaker 2>fantastic comparison of YouTube's Joshua Tree versus Prince Sign of
<v Speaker 2>the Times, two amazing albums that we just lucked into
<v Speaker 2>deciding to compare. They both came out in nineteen eighty seven,
<v Speaker 2>they both are from March of that year. They both
<v Speaker 2>were up for Album of the Year. I mean these
<v Speaker 2>two are some of the biggest hitters of both of
<v Speaker 2>these bands careers and all of the eighties and all
<v Speaker 2>of music history really.
<v Speaker 1>And there was an actual rivalry between Prince and you two,
<v Speaker 1>so we know Prince is a competitive guy. When he
<v Speaker 1>met with Michael Jackson about singing on the Bad album
<v Speaker 1>flashback to our Michael Jackson episode, Prince sat cross armed
<v Speaker 1>and was intensely competitive with Michael Jackson.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, don't forget the ping pong games and the basketball
<v Speaker 2>games either. I mean he would beat him in any
<v Speaker 2>way possible.
<v Speaker 1>That's exactly right. King of pop my rear, right.
<v Speaker 2>Brent, your butt is mine? Whoa? Whoa? What what did
<v Speaker 2>you just say?
<v Speaker 1>You may be the king of pop, but I'm the
<v Speaker 1>king of ping pong. Prince's reaction upon hearing you two,
<v Speaker 1>he said, do you know what I would do if
<v Speaker 1>I had a voice like that? Become a janitor?
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. At some point, Prince compared these albums and compared
<v Speaker 2>himself to YouTube. He says, the difference between me and
<v Speaker 2>them is I could play every single one of their
<v Speaker 2>songs and they couldn't even play Housequake. That's right.
<v Speaker 1>Interestingly enough, I guess they softened over the years though,
<v Speaker 1>because while touring Dublin, Prince invited Bono to come on
<v Speaker 1>stage and you can actually YouTube Bono singing Prince's version
<v Speaker 1>of the Cross.
<v Speaker 2>Both Prince and most of you two have strong Christian
<v Speaker 2>backgrounds and that comes into play in a huge part
<v Speaker 2>in their music.
<v Speaker 1>Well, last week, if you missed it, we talked about
<v Speaker 1>Princess Sin of the Times album. We walked through the
<v Speaker 1>lineup of songs on that one. Today we're going to
<v Speaker 1>walk through the nineteen eighty seven album The Joshua Tree,
<v Speaker 1>and at the end of this we'll give final judgment
<v Speaker 1>on which one we think is.
<v Speaker 2>The better album. Yeah, for sure. It's interesting how one,
<v Speaker 2>you know, Prince has conquered rock and roll and is
<v Speaker 2>starting to move away from it, whereas you two is
<v Speaker 2>finding those roots and moving even more towards it from
<v Speaker 2>the punk scene. It's kind of interesting.
<v Speaker 1>I'm anxious to dive in with the history of you
<v Speaker 1>two and start comparing songs.
<v Speaker 2>Let's do this, Okay, let's jump in. So where does
<v Speaker 2>you two begin? I think you have to begin with Bono, right, sure? Yeah?
<v Speaker 2>So Bono his parents. This is in Ireland in the sixties.
<v Speaker 2>His mother was a Protestant. His father was a Roman Catholic,
<v Speaker 2>and I can see how that would as a youth
<v Speaker 2>having parents of differing denominations could be a really hard
<v Speaker 2>thing to deal with. In nineteen sixties and early seventies.
<v Speaker 1>Ireland, I mean these it was the basis for war.
<v Speaker 2>It was the basis for war, right, and so they
<v Speaker 2>had decided early on that they were going to raise
<v Speaker 2>their first child to take him to the Protestant Church,
<v Speaker 2>and that was of course Bono's older brother, and then
<v Speaker 2>the second child they would raise in the Catholic tradition,
<v Speaker 2>and by the time Bono came along and grew up,
<v Speaker 2>he had no interest in going to the Catholic Church.
<v Speaker 2>He ended up going to the Protestant Church with his
<v Speaker 2>mother and brother growing up. But with the trouble that
<v Speaker 2>came along with that position he had in life, he
<v Speaker 2>kind of got disinterested in school, would just not go
<v Speaker 2>to school to avoid the trouble of it. And then,
<v Speaker 2>very sadly, in nineteen seventy four, his grandfather passed away,
<v Speaker 2>his mother's father passed away, and then while at the funeral,
<v Speaker 2>his mother suffers an aneurysm and then she dies two
<v Speaker 2>days later. It's crazy and I cannot express to you
<v Speaker 2>how devastating it is. I lost my mom when I
<v Speaker 2>was thirteen years old. It changes your perspective on life.
<v Speaker 2>And obviously he had already had some turmoil in his life,
<v Speaker 2>and then this, this happens to him, and fortunately God
<v Speaker 2>looked with favor upon him. And just shortly after this,
<v Speaker 2>a new school open called the Mount Temple Comprehensive School,
<v Speaker 2>which was non denominational and had his co ed and
<v Speaker 2>a mix of students. Is really quite a good school,
<v Speaker 2>and so he ends up going to school there. And
<v Speaker 2>in nineteen seventy six he sees a posting that a
<v Speaker 2>fellow student has done saying hey, I want to start
<v Speaker 2>a band. And that fellow student was Larry Mullen Junior,
<v Speaker 2>who was a couple years younger than Bono. He had
<v Speaker 2>noticed him in the hallways. They hadn't really been close,
<v Speaker 2>but Bono says, hey, that sounds good. I'd like to
<v Speaker 2>be in a rock band. So he shows up with
<v Speaker 2>a few other guys to Larry Mullen's house. They have
<v Speaker 2>their first rehearsal in his kitchen, and among the guys
<v Speaker 2>that show up, you've got David Evans, who would later
<v Speaker 2>become the Edge, and of course Bono at that time
<v Speaker 2>was still known as Houston. And then you had the
<v Speaker 2>Edge's brother, Dick Evans, who was also playing guitar. And
<v Speaker 2>then Adam Clayton, who was a friend of the Evans,
<v Speaker 2>came in and really didn't know how to play bass guitar,
<v Speaker 2>but had talked a really good game and talked about
<v Speaker 2>fret boards and music production and stuff like that, so
<v Speaker 2>they thought he was cool enough guy to be in
<v Speaker 2>the band. And then there were a couple of well,
<v Speaker 2>for lack of a better term, couple of mark Stones.
<v Speaker 2>Among the guys that showed up as well, there's a
<v Speaker 2>guy named Ivan McCormick and a guy named Peter Martin
<v Speaker 2>who were friends of Larry's but they ultimately didn't last
<v Speaker 2>with the band.
<v Speaker 1>And Dick Evans, who was the older brother. You know,
<v Speaker 1>I can see this playing out. I'm eighteen, you guys
<v Speaker 1>are fifteen. I'm out of here. I'm gonna go chase
<v Speaker 1>chicks while you guys started around with your instruments. Oh,
<v Speaker 1>you guys became you two.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. So on that first rehearsal, Larry said, I thought
<v Speaker 2>this was gonna be the Larry Mullen band for about
<v Speaker 2>ten minutes until Bono walked in and blew away any
<v Speaker 2>chance I had of being in charge.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I heard him say that he has been relegated
<v Speaker 1>to hiding behind the drums for the rest of his life.
<v Speaker 2>And that's an interesting dynamic. You know, both Adam and
<v Speaker 2>Larry have a great role in the band, but it
<v Speaker 2>is much more a foundational role. It is like you said,
<v Speaker 2>they stand in the background and they hold the band
<v Speaker 2>up right. You know, that's their job. They're not out
<v Speaker 2>there to put on some spectacular show. They are there
<v Speaker 2>to provide that rhythm section for The Edge and Bono.
<v Speaker 2>By the time they get rolling and they're actually people
<v Speaker 2>are starting to listen to them with the consideration of
<v Speaker 2>managing or recording or signing, these guys, Adam and Larry
<v Speaker 2>still don't really know how to play their instruments very
<v Speaker 2>well at the Edge. And by the way, you know
<v Speaker 2>they got these names, Bono and the Edge, they got
<v Speaker 2>these names after a list of nickname I'm sure you
<v Speaker 2>guys in high school too, people just got nicknamed sometimes,
<v Speaker 2>and usually it was you know, pointing out whatever the
<v Speaker 2>person was most insecure about and making that their nickname.
<v Speaker 2>And so Bono had to do with where he lived,
<v Speaker 2>and so did the Edge. But then the Edge ultimately
<v Speaker 2>got his because of how pointy his chin is. That's
<v Speaker 2>why it's called the Edge. So the Edge knows how
<v Speaker 2>to play the guitar. By the time people are listening,
<v Speaker 2>he is an accomplished musician. He has got his own
<v Speaker 2>technique and Bono he doesn't have an amazing voice, but
<v Speaker 2>he has a voice that you just kind of want
<v Speaker 2>to listen to. Right. It's not like you're amazed by
<v Speaker 2>the beauty of his voice, but the style of his singing,
<v Speaker 2>and of course his lyrics draw you in.
<v Speaker 1>What he does with his voice is he portrays emotion
<v Speaker 1>better than most singers that I can think of.
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely, he leans into it.
<v Speaker 1>It makes me want to weep. It is powerful.
<v Speaker 2>It's from the heart. Yeah, it's truly from the heart.
<v Speaker 2>And he said that very early on into the experience.
<v Speaker 2>He developed a Messiah complex and probably was very difficult
<v Speaker 2>to deal with. But just the idea that he might
<v Speaker 2>be able to have influence over the world from this
<v Speaker 2>thing that he loved more than anything else just got
<v Speaker 2>his juices flowing. I mean, it made him an incredible
<v Speaker 2>front man. You watch Old videos of this, you know,
<v Speaker 2>And we talked about how the band would freak out
<v Speaker 2>whenever Eddie Vedder would start climbing on the rafters. Well,
<v Speaker 2>Bona was doing that over a decade before him. Right,
<v Speaker 2>he was jumping into the crowd, a decade before Kurt
<v Speaker 2>Cobain ever thought about it. He was punk rock. They
<v Speaker 2>listened to the Jam I think Bono said his first
<v Speaker 2>show was the Clash. They listened to the Buds Cocks
<v Speaker 2>and the sex Pistols, and Bono had he would listen
<v Speaker 2>to Bowie and Dylan and Leonard Cohen and he also
<v Speaker 2>liked Mark Bolan from t Rex. They realized, hey, you know,
<v Speaker 2>punk rock is really at the forefront right now, especially
<v Speaker 2>here in Ireland. And it turned out you don't have
<v Speaker 2>to be a good musician in order to play punk rock.
<v Speaker 2>So they and the Police were on the same page
<v Speaker 2>with that, right.
<v Speaker 1>Hey, before you get too far, I was just gonna
<v Speaker 1>mention when they first got together they called themselves Feedback. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>that was the name of their band, Feedback, because that's
<v Speaker 1>what their rehearsals sounded like the entire time, right, okay,
<v Speaker 1>Neat just like Nikki six splashback to ar Motley Creue episode.
<v Speaker 1>The fact that these guys can't play their instruments does
<v Speaker 1>not slow them down from being rock stars.
<v Speaker 2>Right. It's a passion for sure. I mean, you know,
<v Speaker 2>like with def Leppard, they realized early on that Joe
<v Speaker 2>Elliott didn't have the best voice, but he had that passion,
<v Speaker 2>and that passion means a whole lot, right, that's right.
<v Speaker 2>I mean I can remember when I got together with
<v Speaker 2>a band for the first time. It was a guy
<v Speaker 2>that I knew pretty well, but in the hallway just went, hey,
<v Speaker 2>I heard you're playing guitar. And at that point I
<v Speaker 2>had maybe been playing for two years. I didn't know crap.
<v Speaker 2>I was terrible, right, And I was like, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay,
<v Speaker 2>he goes I was thinking about putting a band together.
<v Speaker 2>You want to meet up? And I was like sure,
<v Speaker 2>because hey, being in a band sounds cool, right. Nobody
<v Speaker 2>at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old is thinking I want
<v Speaker 2>to change the world with my music. They they're thinking
<v Speaker 2>it'd be really cool to be in a band. You
<v Speaker 2>probably get some chicks that way. So these guys when
<v Speaker 2>they very first got together, they had this passion. They
<v Speaker 2>did not, unlike a lot of bands, they did not
<v Speaker 2>cover a bunch of songs by other artists, and they
<v Speaker 2>said it wasn't because they thought they were better than
<v Speaker 2>the artist. It was because they weren't good enough yet
<v Speaker 2>to be able to cover those artists, right. So they
<v Speaker 2>in doing their own stuff, they really developed their own style.
<v Speaker 2>So they're playing all these original tunes and this TV
<v Speaker 2>guy from a show called Young Line, he's looking for
<v Speaker 2>artists to put on his show, and he hears that this.
<v Speaker 2>You know, these young teenage boys are doing original songs.
<v Speaker 2>They know he's coming over and they've they've got basically
<v Speaker 2>one original maybe two original songs that they know. And
<v Speaker 2>they're in the kitchen again arguing about how they're going
<v Speaker 2>to do the song. You know, they can't decide who's
<v Speaker 2>going to start with the music, and they get this
<v Speaker 2>big argument, and then there's the knock at the door
<v Speaker 2>and the guy comes in and he's like, so here
<v Speaker 2>you boys are playing original songs and they're like, yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>we are, and he goes, can I hear one? And
<v Speaker 2>he says, sure, here's an original song of ours called
<v Speaker 2>Glad to See You Go, which is a ramone song.
<v Speaker 2>It's not you two song at all, and so they
<v Speaker 2>play him this Ramote song and he's like, oh, so
<v Speaker 2>that's your song, huh. And they're like, yep, that's us
<v Speaker 2>And they get on TV with it, right, they get
<v Speaker 2>on TV. They and when they get on TV, they
<v Speaker 2>actually play their own original song. But it was it
<v Speaker 2>was a Ramone song that got them their first TV gig,
<v Speaker 2>which may be the reason that they later wrote a
<v Speaker 2>song called the Miracle of Joy Remote. We have a
<v Speaker 2>great song that you might like to hear.
<v Speaker 1>It's called Bohemian Rhapsody. Like I said, they were called
<v Speaker 1>Feedback initially. They then changed their name to The Hype,
<v Speaker 1>and as the Hype they were playing around doing some gigs,
<v Speaker 1>getting in front of people. But in March of nineteen
<v Speaker 1>seventy eight, Larry spotted an ad for a talent contest
<v Speaker 1>and there was CBS Music was involved in it. A
<v Speaker 1>small cash reward for this thing when the five hundred
<v Speaker 1>pounds thank you when so they entered and thought, hey,
<v Speaker 1>you know, great exposure whatever. They were shocked and surprised
<v Speaker 1>when they actually won the talent contest.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah. And so by that time they had scored themselves
<v Speaker 2>a manager. His name was Paul McGinnis, and they realized
<v Speaker 2>that one of the things that they liked best about
<v Speaker 2>him was that he got them beer chicks and beer,
<v Speaker 2>beer and chicks. Yes. So Paul McGinnis had been involved
<v Speaker 2>in I believe it was Irish movies and had decided
<v Speaker 2>to get involved in the music scene, and so he's
<v Speaker 2>excited about you two. They're one of the first bands
<v Speaker 2>that he manages, but he ends up with several and
<v Speaker 2>after this talent competition, he goes to meet with this
<v Speaker 2>guy named Chazz Dewaaley and he's got this suitcase full
<v Speaker 2>of tapes for all these bands, and he pulls out
<v Speaker 2>the U two tape and says, hey, these guys just
<v Speaker 2>won the CBS talent competition. That might be a good
<v Speaker 2>band for you to go check out. And so Chazz
<v Speaker 2>Dewayey's listens to the tape. He's like, Okay, these guys
<v Speaker 2>are not bad. I'll go see them play. And so
<v Speaker 2>he travels up to a bar to watch them play
<v Speaker 2>and he says, I'll walk in and the bar is
<v Speaker 2>only half full because half of their fan base was
<v Speaker 2>too young to come in. And he said the band
<v Speaker 2>was good about a standard band for the day. You know,
<v Speaker 2>it was exactly what he would expect, but he said
<v Speaker 2>Bono was mesmerizing. He said he performed like a Shakespearean tragedy.
<v Speaker 2>And Dewayaley says, I was in university I had seen
<v Speaker 2>a young actor portraying Hamlet and Shakespeare and that actor
<v Speaker 2>was Ian McKellen. So that's pretty cool. He said. When
<v Speaker 2>he saw Bono on stage, it was though. Bono embodied
<v Speaker 2>those same dramatic techniques that Ian McKellen had used when
<v Speaker 2>he was performing Shakespeare. I was like, wow, I mean, yeah,
<v Speaker 2>how do you not sign that band? So Chas Dewayey
<v Speaker 2>ends up being the guy that produces their first press records.
<v Speaker 1>Wow, that's incredible.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Chas Dwaylley said that, you know, as there as
<v Speaker 2>he was trying to record that first album, he was
<v Speaker 2>kind of a jerk to him, specifically to Larry Mullen,
<v Speaker 2>because Larry mull at that point still couldn't keep rhythm.
<v Speaker 2>He couldn't keep a steady beat, and so he'd go, Nope,
<v Speaker 2>that was terrible, do it again, Okay, you're terrible, do
<v Speaker 2>it again, and so he could. He said, I understood
<v Speaker 2>why Larry would have been rather mad at me. He goes,
<v Speaker 2>I didn't even realize it until I read the book
<v Speaker 2>years later, but apparently Bono was so seething mad at
<v Speaker 2>me that he was just shy of punching me out,
<v Speaker 2>which I gotta say, I probably deserved the way I acted,
<v Speaker 2>but I had no idea. He contained it very well.
<v Speaker 1>Wow.
<v Speaker 2>So you got a list for ust of albums for YouTube?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, so just covering the chronology of YouTube. So that.
<v Speaker 1>They had an album in nineteen seventy nine called three.
<v Speaker 1>This is known as their debut. It was released in
<v Speaker 1>Ireland but not an international release. Then in nineteen eighty
<v Speaker 1>they had the album Boy Yep, and then in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>eighty one they had October. They hit Stuff that Fire
<v Speaker 1>and Gloria.
<v Speaker 2>October is kind of known as their Christian album as
<v Speaker 2>much as any U two album as a Christian album.
<v Speaker 2>In the interim, as they're soaring up their fame ladder,
<v Speaker 2>they start going to a charismatic church. The four of
<v Speaker 2>them and three of them everybody except for Adam, are
<v Speaker 2>enticed and become born again Christians. And this is a
<v Speaker 2>huge moment in the life of the band because they
<v Speaker 2>all become very strong in their faith. Adam is this
<v Speaker 2>twenty one year old guy who wants to live the
<v Speaker 2>rock star lifestyle, and so it's these things are at odds,
<v Speaker 2>you know, obviously, and so he's wanting to use the
<v Speaker 2>back of the bus for one reason, and they're wanting
<v Speaker 2>to use it for a place to do a Bible study.
<v Speaker 2>So it becomes very tricky and they almost broke up.
<v Speaker 2>A lot of they're born again Christian friends were saying,
<v Speaker 2>you can't lead a Christian lifestyle and be a rock
<v Speaker 2>and roll band. You have to give this up. You
<v Speaker 2>have to make the sacrifice. And it's a little scary,
<v Speaker 2>especially for Adam who's just thinking, Wow, you know, we've
<v Speaker 2>come all this way and suddenly these guys are just
<v Speaker 2>going to leave me. And ultimately, one by one Bono decides, no, what,
<v Speaker 2>I'm not listening to these guys. I'm not going to
<v Speaker 2>give up my band. I can be a Christian and
<v Speaker 2>a rock and roll star. And then Larry follows suit.
<v Speaker 2>He's like, no, I'm not going to do that either.
<v Speaker 2>And the Edge is the one that's holding out. And
<v Speaker 2>I mean the Edge really is the sound and the band.
<v Speaker 2>I mean it's that's a huge, huge thing. Yep. And
<v Speaker 2>so at some point Bono says, hey, let's go for
<v Speaker 2>a walk and the Edge says he fully expected Bono
<v Speaker 2>to say, stay in the band, don't leave us, But
<v Speaker 2>what Bono said instead was you have to follow your heart.
<v Speaker 2>You have to do what is right for you, and
<v Speaker 2>whatever you do, I will support you in it. And
<v Speaker 2>that was what caused him to stay with the band.
<v Speaker 1>That's a great story. And you know, the idea that
<v Speaker 1>you cannot be a Christian and being a rock band,
<v Speaker 1>I think has been somewhat dispelled because of the amount
<v Speaker 1>of good that this band has done internationally.
<v Speaker 2>Say what you will about And I remember hearing the
<v Speaker 2>joke way back when of you know, the guy dies
<v Speaker 2>and goes to rock and roll Heaven and he's like,
<v Speaker 2>oh look there's Elvis. He really was dead. And oh
<v Speaker 2>look there's Jim Morrison. He really was dead. And he's like,
<v Speaker 2>wait a minute, is that Bono. I didn't even know
<v Speaker 2>Bono was dead. And the other guy goes, oh, no,
<v Speaker 2>that's God. He just thinks he's Bono. But but for
<v Speaker 2>a guy who has done the philanthropic work, yeah he
<v Speaker 2>has done. I mean he's he is a guy who
<v Speaker 2>backs up what he says with what he does. When
<v Speaker 2>they finished with Live Aid, everybody else went back home,
<v Speaker 2>or went and had a party, or went on tour,
<v Speaker 2>and he and his wife went to Ethiopia to work
<v Speaker 2>with the starving people.
<v Speaker 1>And that's right, that's yeah, freak and awesome.
<v Speaker 2>So October was their quote unquote Christian album, and they
<v Speaker 2>weren't preaching, They weren't telling people how to live. They
<v Speaker 2>were talking about what their faith meant to them. And
<v Speaker 2>I think because of that, it was an album that
<v Speaker 2>everybody could welcome. They didn't see it as hypocritical or
<v Speaker 2>anything like that. It was an album that increased their fame,
<v Speaker 2>increased their popularity instead of taking away from it.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, after October in nineteen eighty one, they come out
<v Speaker 1>with the album called War in nineteen eighty three.
<v Speaker 2>Right, which has a picture again of that little boy
<v Speaker 2>that was on Boy and he looks a little angrier
<v Speaker 2>and a little bit more beat.
<v Speaker 1>Up on War, That's right. Songs off this one that
<v Speaker 1>you may know New Year's Day, definitely Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
<v Speaker 2>That was the first time I remember hearing you two
<v Speaker 2>was we're seeing that video on MTV of Sunday Bloody Sunday,
<v Speaker 2>huge hit.
<v Speaker 1>There was an album released at the end of nineteen
<v Speaker 1>eighty three. It's a live album. It's called Under a
<v Speaker 1>Blood Red Sky. Yeah, but really The Unforgettable Fire in
<v Speaker 1>nineteen eighty four was what really made them rock heroes.
<v Speaker 1>Hits off this album, Pride in the Name of Love
<v Speaker 1>one of their signature songs. They have a song called
<v Speaker 1>The Unforgettable Fire and then the song Bad that. If
<v Speaker 1>you've ever seen their performance of Bad at Live AID
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen eighty five, which again I'm getting ahead of
<v Speaker 1>myself a little bit, it is.
<v Speaker 2>Amazing. Right. Yeah, you mentioned Pride. I got a bit
<v Speaker 2>of a story on that one. So they have played
<v Speaker 2>Pride more often than they've played any other song. And
<v Speaker 2>it's a song about Martin Luther King, right, yep. And
<v Speaker 2>so when they were on tour with Joshua Tree right,
<v Speaker 2>the album that we're discussing today, when they were on
<v Speaker 2>tour with that, they had been campaigning for Martin Luther
<v Speaker 2>King Day as a holiday in Arizona. Just a quick
<v Speaker 2>bit of history there. Ronald Reagan had made Martin Luther
<v Speaker 2>King Junior Day a day to be honored, people get
<v Speaker 2>off work. It was a national holiday, and Arizona's governor
<v Speaker 2>had followed suit and said, yes, this is going to
<v Speaker 2>be Martin Luther King Junior Day. But then another governor
<v Speaker 2>got elected and he changed the day from a Monday
<v Speaker 2>to a Sunday, so that nobody was getting off of
<v Speaker 2>work it was this time, and so there was this
<v Speaker 2>big petition in Arizona to say, hey, no, this needs
<v Speaker 2>to be on the Monday that we said it was
<v Speaker 2>going to be on. And it was a pretty heated thing.
<v Speaker 2>So when they come through on their Joshua Tree tour,
<v Speaker 2>they're getting death threats from some people in Arizona because
<v Speaker 2>they've campaigned for the Martin Luther King Day. And the
<v Speaker 2>FBI comes to them and says, hey, you know, I
<v Speaker 2>don't want We're not going to tell you guys not
<v Speaker 2>to do the show, but we would really encourage you
<v Speaker 2>not to do Pride in the Name of Love because
<v Speaker 2>there have been people who said you will be assassinated
<v Speaker 2>if you do this song. And so Bono said, okay, well,
<v Speaker 2>we're not going to be intimidated by that. We will
<v Speaker 2>do it, and if it happens, it happens. And so
<v Speaker 2>in the middle of the you know, in the middle
<v Speaker 2>of the set, they're going to do that song, and
<v Speaker 2>they start singing the song and there's this line where
<v Speaker 2>very explicitly, you know, April four talking about the bullets
<v Speaker 2>ringing out at Memphis, and he knows, Hey, if I
<v Speaker 2>was gonna assassinate me, I would do it when I'm
<v Speaker 2>singing this these lyrics. So at this point he kneels down,
<v Speaker 2>you know, in almost like a execution style pose, ready
<v Speaker 2>for whatever is about to come. And just as he's
<v Speaker 2>doing that, he sings the lyrics. Nothing seems to happen.
<v Speaker 2>He looks up and Adam is standing in front of him,
<v Speaker 2>chest out, chin out, ready to take whatever bullets are
<v Speaker 2>gonna come Bono's way.
<v Speaker 1>That is awesome.
<v Speaker 2>You've got to love that. You've got to love that.
<v Speaker 2>That is amazing.
<v Speaker 1>A couple of things I want to mention T and
<v Speaker 1>D before we move on from Unforgettable Fire. Prior to this,
<v Speaker 1>in nineteen eighty three, YouTube performed at.
<v Speaker 2>The festival, of course, because as every band we talk
<v Speaker 2>about performs at the S Festival.
<v Speaker 1>Isn't that a crazy coincidence?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 1>It's crazy in excess the police.
<v Speaker 2>Not only can Steve Wozniak make some dang good computers,
<v Speaker 2>he can pick some dang good bands to be in
<v Speaker 2>his show. I'll tell you Van Halen, You two, Motley.
<v Speaker 1>Cruze, Motley Crue I mean, what kind of awesome concert
<v Speaker 1>would that have been?
<v Speaker 2>Right?
<v Speaker 1>Okay, there's something I want to talk about, in particular
<v Speaker 1>regarding the Unforgettable Fire.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, go for it, Yeah, all right.
<v Speaker 1>On July thirteenth, nineteen eighty five, you two was involved
<v Speaker 1>in the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium. Okay, ye,
<v Speaker 1>Live Aid if you don't remember, that was to support
<v Speaker 1>and help with the Ethiopian famine, which was this huge
<v Speaker 1>thing in the eighties. And while they were there, You
<v Speaker 1>Two's on stage. They're kind of the up and coming
<v Speaker 1>band right right, not the big boys quite yet. They're
<v Speaker 1>singing the song bad off the Unforgettable Fire album, and
<v Speaker 1>Bono notices in the front road there's a girl who's
<v Speaker 1>getting crushed and he starts to gesture to the ushers
<v Speaker 1>and they don't understand what he's saying. And I think
<v Speaker 1>it's really cool. It's in the middle of this song
<v Speaker 1>and his bandmates just continue to play.
<v Speaker 2>Right.
<v Speaker 1>He stops singing. He's gesturing to this girl. She's hurt,
<v Speaker 1>she's getting crushed. He jumps like fifteen feet down from
<v Speaker 1>the stage, goes over pulls her out of the crowd
<v Speaker 1>and is like hugging her and like almost like a
<v Speaker 1>slow dance with her. She was there to see Wham,
<v Speaker 1>which I thought was kind of interesting. Right, she may
<v Speaker 1>not even know who these guys are. He pulls her
<v Speaker 1>out of the crowd, slow dances with her, and sort
<v Speaker 1>of saves her. Years later, she comes out and says, listen,
<v Speaker 1>if he hadn't have pulled me out, I'd have been
<v Speaker 1>crushed to death. And that performance of that song, if
<v Speaker 1>you can watch it on YouTube, it'll blow you away.
<v Speaker 1>And that performance resonated with people, and they saw how
<v Speaker 1>Bono connected with audiences, and a week later, all of
<v Speaker 1>their albums are in the charts.
<v Speaker 2>Even when they were doing small shows, he had this
<v Speaker 2>vision of breaking through the fourth wall. Like he never
<v Speaker 2>wanted to be a distant player from his audience. He
<v Speaker 2>wanted to end up in his audience's lap, which is
<v Speaker 2>why he was you know, he was stage diving back
<v Speaker 2>in the early eighties and climbing the rafters and jumping
<v Speaker 2>into the crowd because he wanted to develop a deeper,
<v Speaker 2>closer connection with the audience members. Right, So you're talking
<v Speaker 2>about you know this girl who was there for Wham
<v Speaker 2>who he saves and slow dances with and consoles her
<v Speaker 2>through this process. You two did a Joshua Tree concert
<v Speaker 2>three years ago. It was thirty years you know. Thirty
<v Speaker 2>years later they redo the Joshua Tree tour, right right,
<v Speaker 2>she comes to the show.
<v Speaker 1>That is how you know you've made an impact on
<v Speaker 1>somebody's life.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, you talk about how that was a pivotal moment.
<v Speaker 2>By eighty six, they are headlining the Amnesty International Conspiracy
<v Speaker 2>of Hope Tour. They have been named by Rolling Stone
<v Speaker 2>as the band of the eighties. I mean they've gone
<v Speaker 2>from up and coming to the band of the eighties.
<v Speaker 2>And so in nineteen eighty six they headline this tour.
<v Speaker 2>The last show of the tour is at Giant Stadium,
<v Speaker 2>and for that show, it's being broadcast live on MTV.
<v Speaker 2>And who should come in for a reunion after not
<v Speaker 2>having played together for three years the band we talked
<v Speaker 2>about as the band the Police come in and do
<v Speaker 2>this is their last show of the eighties until they
<v Speaker 2>get together, I mean twenty something years later, their last
<v Speaker 2>show for a long, long time flash show. As far
<v Speaker 2>as anybody can tell, they do this reunion set. When
<v Speaker 2>they get done with their set, You Two comes on stage,
<v Speaker 2>they hand their instrument a passing of the torch to say,
<v Speaker 2>we were the band of the decade, and now you
<v Speaker 2>are the band of the decade. That is an amazing story.
<v Speaker 2>So that leads us to nineteen eighty seven and the
<v Speaker 2>release of Joshua Tree. Joshua Tree comes about because in
<v Speaker 2>their touring of The Unforgettable Fire, they tour America, right
<v Speaker 2>and so they're on a tour bus moving through the
<v Speaker 2>US and they see the parched desert as it comes
<v Speaker 2>up later on in the lyrics of the US, and
<v Speaker 2>they have this idea of the mythical America. You know,
<v Speaker 2>there's the idealistic America that we maybe even don't appreciate
<v Speaker 2>as much since we're from here. But it's this kind
<v Speaker 2>of notion of land of the free, home of the brave,
<v Speaker 2>this genuine idealistic idea, and that is the inspiration for
<v Speaker 2>what will become the Joshua Tree. So that's why on
<v Speaker 2>the cover of the album they have themselves standing in
<v Speaker 2>front of a large desert and why the album is
<v Speaker 2>named after Joshua Tree, which is a desert park in California.
<v Speaker 1>I'd love to go there sometime I think that's really.
<v Speaker 2>I've been there, have you. Yeah, I've climbed rocks and
<v Speaker 2>Joshua Tree. It's it's it was a long, a long
<v Speaker 2>time ago, long more than half a life ago. But
<v Speaker 2>is that when you sell movies for the first time,
<v Speaker 2>not that long ago? No, no, yeah, it was. It
<v Speaker 2>was more like first experiences with drugs as opposed to boobies.
<v Speaker 2>But yeah, I was nice and I went out there
<v Speaker 2>finding myself. Still haven't found what I'm looking for. So
<v Speaker 2>they've got this idea of the mythic America and they
<v Speaker 2>start talking to guys. They start meeting with musicians who
<v Speaker 2>have this rock and roll history. You know, I talked
<v Speaker 2>before about how they have come from a post punk
<v Speaker 2>or punk rock history, and that was kind of their sound.
<v Speaker 2>And with The Unforgettable Fire, they kind of moved in
<v Speaker 2>this sort of experimental, ambient music type of thing. And
<v Speaker 2>once they started meeting with guys like Bob Dylan and
<v Speaker 2>Keith Richards and some of these other guys, they realized
<v Speaker 2>that all of these guys had listened to traditional American music,
<v Speaker 2>and that they had been because of their punk history,
<v Speaker 2>had been kind of apathy for any kind of tradition.
<v Speaker 2>And so they start studying these old bands, and they
<v Speaker 2>start to become interested in this folk tradition. They start
<v Speaker 2>listening to blues, they start listening to country and honky talk.
<v Speaker 2>They become huge fans of Johnny Cash, which you'll see them.
<v Speaker 2>It's a pretty famous photograph of them for the Rattling
<v Speaker 2>Hum movie that came out, where they've got a picture
<v Speaker 2>of Johnny Cash up. But they they start adopting this
<v Speaker 2>kind of American traditional sound, but then also blending that
<v Speaker 2>with the Irish music, that kind of the indigenous Irish music,
<v Speaker 2>and so it gives them this I mean, they are
<v Speaker 2>they're already unique, they already have their own sound, but
<v Speaker 2>it really gives them a framework to build upon. And
<v Speaker 2>the Edge was kind of against it initially, but he
<v Speaker 2>started listening to guys like Robert Johnson, who's an old
<v Speaker 2>blues guy. He one of the main historical references in
<v Speaker 2>Crossroads with Ralph Montiel Nice. Okay, I bought the I
<v Speaker 2>bought the Robert Johnson tape. After seeing that movie. I
<v Speaker 2>was not as impressed as the Edge was. But you
<v Speaker 2>know that's probably because I was stupid. That's that's not
<v Speaker 2>any reflection on Robert Johnson. But he listens to Robert Johnson,
<v Speaker 2>Howland Wolf, Hank Williams, Senior, Lefty Frizelle, all of these
<v Speaker 2>guys that are getting played on public radio stations, and
<v Speaker 2>he becomes inspired by this. And so these guys they're
<v Speaker 2>always against kind of whatever is popular at the time.
<v Speaker 2>You know, Duran Durant is popular at the time, but
<v Speaker 2>they're doing stuff with synthesizers. They've got very modern clothes,
<v Speaker 2>and you Tube was trying to go the other direction
<v Speaker 2>from that, which is why you've got almost no synthesizers
<v Speaker 2>at all. I mean, it's it's really like a spice
<v Speaker 2>in their songs as opposed to a major facet like
<v Speaker 2>Duran Durant or like Prince in Side of the Time times. Right. Sure,
<v Speaker 2>So they start their recording, they were they did almost
<v Speaker 2>all of their recording in two different houses. They thought,
<v Speaker 2>we want to feel like we're a family, like we're
<v Speaker 2>living together, and so they decided to go to a house,
<v Speaker 2>huh to record their music, and they you know, they
<v Speaker 2>set up the drums in the dining room and then
<v Speaker 2>I don't think they even called it the sound room.
<v Speaker 2>They just had a different name for everything, was the
<v Speaker 2>living room. But it was really created.
<v Speaker 1>Room was called the Lyrics Room.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, there you go, thank you.
<v Speaker 1>They called it the Milbeach House and the Danesmote House
<v Speaker 1>danes Mote yep. But they rented it from this guy,
<v Speaker 1>and I mean it's just kind of out in the
<v Speaker 1>middle of nowhere and they're like.
<v Speaker 2>Hey, we're a rock band.
<v Speaker 1>We want to rent your house.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, Okay, go for it. Thank you, come again. Bono
<v Speaker 2>is changing the way that he's writing music now. He said,
<v Speaker 2>I used to think I think that writing words was
<v Speaker 2>old fashioned. So I sketched, I wrote words on the
<v Speaker 2>microphone for the Joshua Tree. I felt the time had
<v Speaker 2>come to write words that meant something out of my experience.
<v Speaker 2>And I have to think that his meeting with Bob
<v Speaker 2>Dylan and some of those other guys that we talked
<v Speaker 2>about before it had to have had a huge impact
<v Speaker 2>on that. He describes his talk with Bob Dylan in
<v Speaker 2>a biblical way. He refers to it as almost a
<v Speaker 2>bestowing of a blessing, sort of like the laying on
<v Speaker 2>of hands like Abraham did to Isaac. When he met
<v Speaker 2>with Bob Dylan, it was like so moving to meet
<v Speaker 2>with someone who he had idolized and then adopt and
<v Speaker 2>learn from his techniques.
<v Speaker 1>Bob Dylan sort of another spiritual Christian rock star, sort
<v Speaker 1>of a brother in that same spiritual area.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, all right, so before we move into the album,
<v Speaker 2>one quick story to kind of be the flip side
<v Speaker 2>of that whole Christian thing. So in these houses, in
<v Speaker 2>these houses that they were living in, they had wild
<v Speaker 2>magic mushrooms growing out in like the field. And the
<v Speaker 2>Edge said that one night he goes to this party
<v Speaker 2>at the place that Adam is staying at, and these
<v Speaker 2>guys at the party offer him some magic mushrooms and
<v Speaker 2>he's like, well, I've never really done that before, but okay,
<v Speaker 2>it'll be kind of like a you know, a mind
<v Speaker 2>expansion experiment. Let's give it a shot, you know, right,
<v Speaker 2>So he takes a dose of magic mushrooms and then,
<v Speaker 2>you know, after forty minutes, he doesn't feel anything. So
<v Speaker 2>he does the rule one wrong thing to do. He
<v Speaker 2>doesn't wait, he takes more. He doubles down on the
<v Speaker 2>magic streussrooms, and then when he doesn't feel something immediately
<v Speaker 2>he triples down. He triples down on the magic mushrooms,
<v Speaker 2>and he said, and then I broke Rule number two
<v Speaker 2>which is, don't be in the dark. I went home
<v Speaker 2>and I went to bed, and then all of a sudden,
<v Speaker 2>I'm laying in bed in pitch black, but I'm watching
<v Speaker 2>a fireworks show that isn't actually happening. And he says,
<v Speaker 2>after quite some time of doing this, I start to
<v Speaker 2>ask the big questions of life, you know, asking what
<v Speaker 2>the you know, the secrets, the deep secrets of life are,
<v Speaker 2>and he says, and I figured it out. I figured
<v Speaker 2>out what the secrets of the universe were. And I
<v Speaker 2>thought to myself, oh my gosh, I'm not going to
<v Speaker 2>remember this in the morning. I've got to I've got
<v Speaker 2>I've got to get these down on tape. And so
<v Speaker 2>he goes to get his tape recorder, which is across
<v Speaker 2>the room, and it only takes him about twenty five
<v Speaker 2>minutes to crawl there, and he gets it back to
<v Speaker 2>his bed and he turns it on, and he says,
<v Speaker 2>and then I was captivated by that little red light
<v Speaker 2>for about another twenty five minutes. And so then I
<v Speaker 2>start describing all of the secrets of the universe, and
<v Speaker 2>then you know, I wake up the next morning. It's
<v Speaker 2>not until probably eight at night the next day that
<v Speaker 2>I went, oh, wait a minute, I recorded all the
<v Speaker 2>secrets to the universe, and he says, So I go back,
<v Speaker 2>and you know, the tape has it still has record down,
<v Speaker 2>So the batteries are completely dead. I go find replacement batteries.
<v Speaker 2>I put those in, I push play, and all I
<v Speaker 2>can hear is and so like whatever it was he
<v Speaker 2>had said, he talked into the battery and of the
<v Speaker 2>recorder instead of the microphone. So all the secrets of
<v Speaker 2>the universe were lost.
<v Speaker 1>Oh tragic, tragic. If only we could have had those recordings,
<v Speaker 1>how much further ahead would be in society.
<v Speaker 2>All right, with that, I say we jump into the album.
<v Speaker 1>Let's jump into the.
<v Speaker 2>Album next week. It's a cliffinger. Sorry to be continued.
<v Speaker 2>Let's talk about next week real quick. Yeah, next week,
<v Speaker 2>tune in and we will have the full track by
<v Speaker 2>track analysis of Joshua Tree, followed by our final judgment.
<v Speaker 1>We'll see you next time.
<v Speaker 2>All right, good night,