It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years since I first heard the sweeping ballads of U2 on one of my first ever CD purchases – the “Joshua Tree”, but it came back like it was yesterday among 40,000 of my closest friends at the band’s visit to Soldier Field in Chicago.
There’s nothing like music to move your soul, and I have to say I never feel as alive as I do when singing (screaming?) along with U2 at full volume during a concert. Which begs the question…why U2? Aren’t they old, a bit overplayed and overdone, just a few chords and moans/groans/yells/screams repeated?
I’ll turn to Q’s Paul Du Noyer, whose Joshua Tree review hits as close to that indescribable feeling as I could find:
“potency lies in a kind of spiritual frustration – a sense of hunger and tension which roams its every track in search of some climactic moment of release, of fulfilment, that never arrives.” [the music] “has the one thing vital to worthwhile rock, a thing so often absent: the urge to exist”
For us uber fans, they are our Beatles, our MJ, our Rolling Stones – they are that band which moves us – especially in an arena, and especially with what is always an innovative, modern stage setup with video, lights, movement, and more. Here’s a shot of the recent Joshua Tree tour staging…. ‘where the streets have no name’, indeed.
Back to the Joshua Tree… it’s hard to find a better album, with nearly every song worthy of greatness, from the high energy, ascending crescendos of Where the Streets Have No Name and Still Haven’t Found what I’m looking for”, to the slower, emotionally charged Running to Standstill and One Tree Hill, to my favorite all time song which is a bit of a combination of all they do well (as well as some great philosophical irony) – “With or Without You”
They won’t be around forever, and Bono’s vocals have already lost some of its magic, but its still a great show. It’s still moving with lines like the following ingrained in a generation of fans memories and psyches:
I wanna run, I want to hide – “Where the Streets Have No Name”
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for – “Still Haven’t Found what I’m looking for”
Step on a steam train
Step out of the driving rain – “Running to Standstill”
You gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice – “Running to Standstill”I’m hangin’ on
You’re all that’s left to hold on to – “Red Hill Mining Town’Oh great ocean
Oh great sea
Run to the ocean
Run to the sea – “One Tree Hill”
Check out the full concert here: