Recall that Sweetheart of the Rodeo prominently features pioneering country rocker Gram Parsons Parsons is famously associated with the aura-filled California desert town where he died, Joshua Tree. However, dear friends, the resemblance of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” to another extant song is most definitely not a coincidence, and this provides a terrific clue to the album’s message and mission statement.Īlthough many artists have performed “I Am A Pilgrim” through the years, perhaps the best-known version is on the Byrds’ country’n’mushrooms opus, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. True, the bass line of “With or Without You” bears a fairly strong resemblance to Flipper’s “Ha Ha Ha,” and although it’s very possible that U2 could have encountered that extraordinary and influential nosebleed of a song during their early days dragging their pale Irish asses around American college radio stations, I suspect this may be just a coincidence. “With or Without You” is a miracle, one of the artiest mega-pop songs ever released, and it still stuns when it comes over the radio. Regardless, I am hard pressed to think of another rock song of the stature and success of “With or Without You” that is based on a four-measure repeated, unchanging chord sequence (even “Sweet Jane” and “Blitzkrieg Bop” have distinct bridges with chord changes that differ from the verse and chorus sequence). It starts out mysteriously, ominously, then joyously, ecstatically, wrapping us in a cocoon of ticking guitars and rattling Ramones-meets-Wobble bass and KrautEno ambience and stadium huzzahs and intimate bedtime whispers. This mixture of mathematics and ambience, superficial gimmicks to reach the heart and moments of genuine transcendence, almost comically transparent “appropriations” from other artists and holy bows of tribute, is like the greatest work of the Beatles or Floyd: Accessible to the masses yet full of a genuine edge. Now, Side One of The Joshua Tree is an entirely different story, and if we view The Joshua Tree only through the prism of its first five songs-and I believe this is precisely what most of the world does-even the most cynical amongst us would be convinced you are listening to one of the best rock albums of all time.įor the first 24 minutes of The Joshua Tree, U2 transcend their influences and their corny aspirations to holiness and majesty, and actually becomes the band of their dreams (and our dreams). U2 wandering the desert in search of “the new sound.” YouTube

U2 the joshua tree album lyrics