U2 and The Joshua Tree at 30 with Daniel Lanois Part 1

On March 9, 1987—a little more than ten years after a bunch of kids met up in a Dublin kitchen—U2 released their fifth album…expectations were running pretty high…after establishing themselves with their first two albums, there was a leap ahead with the “War” album in 1983…

But then came “The Unforgettable Fire” in 1984…that represented another leap forward…things seemed more sophisticated, stronger, bigger, better…much of the credit has to go to the new production team of Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, guys who found new ways to bring new things from the band…

The partnership worked so well that everyone agreed that they should work together on the next record, too…maybe they could take things even further, built up the band even bigger…

The result was “The Joshua Tree”…it has sold somewhere north of 25 million copies, making one of best-selling albums of all time…it became a number one album in two dozen countries…five of the eleven songs were released as singles, several of which sold more than a million copies on their own…

The tour in support of the record had to grow from arenas to stadiums…it resulted in a live record called “Live From Paris” and a documentary film called “Rattle and Hum”…and it earned U2 two Grammys: album of the year and group of the year…

“The Joshua Tree” set the band up as one of the biggest in the world…and over the coming decade, they would become the biggest band in the world….the album has been studied at all levels of academia…its songs covered thousands of times…the material has even been adopted as hymns for modern church services…

And later, in 2014, the album was added to the us library of congress as a recording considered to be “culturally, historically and aesthetically significant” …

Wow…that’s a lot stuff to think about when it comes to just one single album…. doesn’t it make you curious about what went into making it?...that’s how I felt…so I thought I’d talk to one of the guys who was there with the band the whole time…let’s get his story on the making of “The Joshua Tree”….

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