A fair case could be made for at least three other U2 albums being their definitive statement, but The Joshua Tree remains the flashpoint. Released in May 1987, it propelled the band out of arenas and into the stadia, topping the Billboard chart and spawning a triptych of monster singles, beginning with the bittersweet slow burner ‘With Or Without You’.
Few U2 albums enjoy an easy gestation, and this one was no different. Post Live Aid, the band suffered a crisis of confidence that was only broken by Adam Clayton’s ultimatum that they record another album and then split. The resulting sessions produced enough material for a double album. They also saw the band expand their range from the primarily post-punk palette of the first four albums to incorporate blues, gospel, country and Zeppelin-esque dynamics.
Intrigued by writers like Raymond Carver, Sam Shepherd and the New Journalism, Bono rapidly matured as a lyricist, taking America’s heartlands as well as its foreign policy as his inspiration, from the Central American atrocities of ‘Bullet The Blue Sky’ (featuring a John Bonham sized breakbeat from Larry Mullen Jr. and Edge’s first unreconstructed guitar solo) to the road-movie panorama of ‘In God’s Country’. Even when the band addressed Dublin (‘Running To Standstill’), Ethiopia (‘Where The Streets Have No Name’) or the 1984 miners’ strike in Britain (‘Red Hill Mining Town’), Reaganomics – and by natural extension, Thatcherism – was the subtext. Along with REM’s Document, released the same year, The Joshua Tree was a totem of rock ‘n’ roll’s socio-political engagement in a time of flash ‘n’ cash. It remains many U2 fans’ favourite U2 album.