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The secret history of 'The Joshua Tree'

For many people it is U2's greatest album. Twenty years on, to mark it's re-release, Colm O'Hare talks to Daniel Lanois and reflects on the extraordinary background to a monumental album.

Colm O Hare, 21 Nov 2007

Mothers of the Disappeared

The closing song on The Joshua Tree grew out of the band’s close association with Amnesty International and their participation in the Conspiracy Of Hope tour during the summer of 1986. Bono wrote it following his visit to Central America later that year. He was particularly moved by the plight of the hundreds of opponents of regimes in several countries throughout the '70s and '80s who had seemingly disappeared without trace. An organisation, Mothers Of The Disappeared, had emerged to highlight this injustice and Bono responded by honouring their cause with a song.

One of the more experimental songs on the album, Eno came up with a sampled drum-loop fashioned by utilising a piano as a percussive instrument. But the key sonic element of the recording is the drone-like texture running through it, evoking an abstract sense of evil and dread.

Though it didn’t make it onto the album, one of the best-known songs to have emerged from The Joshua Tree sessions was ‘Sweetest Thing’ – one of U2’s most pop-oriented songs. The original version appeared on the B-side to ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ and much later became a hit single when it was rescued, re-mixed and embellished for The Best Of 1980-1990 compilation. It’s tempting to speculate that, had it been included on the arguably weaker side of the album in place of say, ‘Trip Through Your Wires’ or ‘Exit’, The Joshua Tree,/i> would have been an even stronger album than it was.

“The fact is we never finished it at that time,” reveals Lanois. “It always had the, 'oh-oh- oh, the sweet-est thing' part and that beat. But it was much later when Bono added the 'oh-la-la' section. There’s always that slightly uncomfortable part of the record-making [process] where something that holds so much promise is not finished and you just have to accept that and move onto something that is more finished. We always cut more than we need for every U2 record – God knows there’s days of jamming and recordings, lovely things actually that are not fully baked cakes, but they always spill into the next album. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb had things that we never finished on All That You Can’t Leave Behind and there were left-overs from The Joshua Tree that made it onto Achtung Baby. We never set out to occupy a certain time-slot. In the end you want to put your best foot forward.”



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Colm O Hare

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