9/19/2023 0 Comments U2 phoenix bullet the blue skyVideos of hitchhikers and vagabonds were projected on a panoramic 8K resolution video screen when they launched into The Joshua Tree with "Where The Streets Have No Name." The visuals portrayed the United States as a diverse, sprawling, and mythical nation that could visually dwarf a band as powerful as the Irish rockers. Bono inserted the lyrics of Simon and Garfunkel’s “America” into the band's Unforgettable Fire ballad “Bad." The music and images showcased a world described in the work of Jack Kerouac and Sam Shepard. When Bono yelped the lyric “fact is fiction and TV reality,” it was clear he had tapped into American issues of that era - and this one. Then, drummer Larry Mullen took the stage and played the familiar snare introduction to “Sunday Bloody Sunday” from the band's 1983 album War. The beautiful, descriptive words, expressing the duality of a great nation that could oppress the weak at one moment and uplift them the next, connect to the themes of the record. A crawl of verse and prose by Langston Hughes, Walt Whitman, and Arizona's inaugural Poet Laureate Alberto Ríos scrolled over a massive screen. Leavitt Wells The concert didn't begin with The Joshua Tree. It's Syria and other Muslim-majority countries now. Refugees are denied entry in attempts to flee countries where American foreign policy has played out in the most atrocious ways. U2 continue to search for the soul of America - one they so vividly documented on Joshua Tree - because, according to their charismatic lead singer, this country “is a great idea that needs encouragement and protection sometimes.”Īs it was in 1987, the United States is once again led by a man with a background in entertainment. U2 played all of the record's 11 songs in album order and in their entirety during Tuesday night's show. And the Irish activist rock quartet can now fill a football stadium named after a for-profit college that's used questionable recruitment procedures.ĭuring the band's celebration of that iconic album at Glendale's University of Phoenix Stadium on September 19, Bono put it perfectly: Nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed.ĭespite its age, The Joshua Tree feels as relevant as ever. The campus venue where they played now bears the name of a financial services institution known for devious practices. So much has changed in the three decades since that legendary show on April 2, 1987. Thirty years ago, U2 began a tour to support their fifth album, The Joshua Tree, with a series of concerts at Arizona State University's Activity Center in Tempe.
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