Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Shirley You Can't Be
Serious podcast. We are here for part two of our
episodes on you two. If you didn't tune in last week,
you missed the stories of Bono saving a Wham fan
and and threats of assassination and magic mushrooms.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there was a lot of cool stuff in
last week's episode. If you haven't heard that, and you
definitely want to go back and listen to it. But
this is a comparison to Princess Sign of the Times album,
so you definitely want to go back and hit that
one up. So Princess Sign of the Times two weeks ago,
Part one of Joshua Tree last week, Part two this week.
All right, yeah, we ready to jump into the songs
on the album.
Speaker 1: I am so ready to jump into the songs on
this album. So ready, let's do it.
Speaker 2: Okay. First song right out of the gate is a
song called Where the Streets Have No Name.
Speaker 1: Okay, before we fully fully jump into this album. As
this first song begins, I've got to tell you a story.
Every time I hear this song, it takes me back
to having just graduated from college. I was a theater major,
I was going into law school, but that summer in
between those two facets of my life, we put together
a theater company and I got to direct our first show,
and our first show was The Breakfast Club, and we
convinced the Norman High School over here to let us
perform it in their library. So it's really like you're
inside of the movie as it was going on. And
so I was resoundtracking the whole movie to kind of
update it a little bit, but I also wanted to
have the feel of the eighties, and I didn't know
how to start it off. And the beginning scene is
like all of the students, one by one coming into
their classroom. One day, I was walking back to my
car and I was listening on headphones and I heard
this beginning that I had ever really heard before, Like
I had always kind of picked it up when the
guitar comes in, but I had never heard this kind
of synthesizer organ thing that's going on. And I was like, Wow,
this is almost like a religious experience. And I was like,
that's it. That's what the beginning of Breakfast Club needs
to be. It needs to be this religious experience. And
so when he crescendo's on that first guitar part, I
had the bell ring and the class start and it
was I still think about it. I'm sorry, but it
just every time it brings me back to that moment
in time that I had. All right, So this first
part is being played by Brian Eno. One of the
producers on the album, the organy church like synthesizer is
Brian Eno. And so then what we have come in
after that is this fantastic guitar by the Edge and
what he's doing here spectacular and it took me until
doing this podcast preparation to figure out how he did
what he was doing.
Speaker 2: This is super interesting. You've got to explain it for
our listeners. I was blown away.
Speaker 1: Okay. So he has an echo effect on his guitar.
The effects pedal causes the amplifier to replay what you
have just played. It echoes it. It's kind of tricky
to do this because when you have an echo effect,
the timing of the echo is precise, but it's through
the pedal and so not only does he have to
match what he's playing to fit that echo, so does
every other member of the band, you know, including the
rhythm section. The bass player and the drummer, So it
gets a little bit complicated. But what he does here,
we can listen to it how it sounds without the
echo effect, and now we can listen to how that
sounds with the echo effect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's incredible.
Speaker 1: It's amazing, right, I mean, it's an entirely different sound.
And he says, it's like playing a duet with yourself.
So not only does he have to create this amazing sound,
but he has to do it in such a way
that whatever the end of the preceding measure is, it
fits in with the beginning of the next measure. So
it's really really a complicated thing. He put this together.
He just used a little four track and a drum
machine and the echo pedal and all this, and he
put this thing together and he played it for the band,
and Adam, the bass player say said, I didn't really
think about how many hours that it took at a time.
All I could think at the moment was this just
sounds like a way to put the rest of us up.
Speaker 2: This song is amazing. When the album begins, it's like
the sun coming up with the horizon. I just love
it so much. They want this album to be cinematic,
and for me, this song really starts off with a
cinematic feel.
Speaker 1: It's got that build that the U two songs have
in its purest essence, and it does some amazing things too.
So this first part with the guitar is in three
four times. It's one two three, one two three one
two three one two three one two three, and then
when it shifts into the part that's behind the lyrics,
it moves into four four time, and so it's one
two three four one two three four one two three four.
It's super fast, super fast tempo. But it's amazing that
he's changing from one tempo three four into four four.
And then of course at the end of the song
he goes back into the three four time and he
does it so seamlessly that it's just unnoticeable but fantastic.
Speaker 2: This song was originally titled White City.
Speaker 1: Okay tell me more.
Speaker 2: Well, that's all I know. I do know that on
their way back from their humanitarian trips, and his wife
Ali were on an airplane and Bono wrote the lyrics
to this song on a barf bag.
Speaker 1: He actually wrote it in a tent. He still had
the airsick bags from air India with him and some
napkins and some other scraps of paper. But he was
sitting in a tent in Ajibar in northern Ethiopia when
he wrote this one.
Speaker 2: Nice apparently in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Yeah, you can tell
what the person makes, what the religion is, what beliefs
they have all based the name of the street in
which they live.
Speaker 1: Right the idea. You know, he's got these dueling concepts
going on, the Northern Ireland concept Belfast and here he
is in Africa where everyone is poverty stricken and none
of the streets have any names, and he wants to
break down these walls and he wants to discover something new.
And he talks about this being in the desert, we
meet God in parched times, in fire and flood, we
discover who we are. It's this moment that he going
through this humanitarian effort in Ethiopia that he realizes, hey,
here are some of the things that even in our
prosperous world, we're being caged by. And I think it's fantastic.
Speaker 2: I saw an interview with the Edge and when he
was writing this song, and he felt like they didn't
quite have a great live song, something that would be
amazing from the stage, and so he set out to
make the ultimate YouTube live song.
Speaker 1: They spent nearly half of their time just on this song.
They would keep coming back and coming back to the song.
They couldn't just get it the way that they wanted it.
Brian Eno almost erased it. He was getting frustrated at
the fact that they couldn't get it right, and he
felt like the reason they couldn't get it right was
because basically they were working with a flawed version, and
so he thought it would be better to just scrap
it and start again from the beginning. But that's a
scary thing to do, you know, So you can't just
say to the guys, hey, let's just throw away all
this work that we've done and just start with nothing
all over again. So he was going to stage an accident.
Speaker 2: I accidentally hit the dele button fellas.
Speaker 1: Ultimately, they did not erase it. He did not erase it.
They just kept working and kept working and fixed it,
and through all of that work they fell in love
with it, which is why they decided to make it
the first song on the album.
Speaker 2: This is a fantastic song. It's one of the most
iconic songs of the eighties. This song only reached number
thirteen on the Hot one hundred in SI Crack the
top ten Insane. This was the third single released August
seventh of nineteen eighty seven, reached number thirteen the week
did it peaked number one on the chart. I Think
We're Alone now by Tiffany.
Speaker 1: Somebody needs to have their face slapped. I don't know
who it is, but somebody needs to have their face
slapped over that.
Speaker 2: This song deserved better than the top thirteen on the
year apparently one. Okay, I want to talk about the
music video for a second. This might be my favorite
music video of all times. They shot a concert from
the top of a liquor store in downtown Los Angeles. Yes,
and they broadcasted out and invited people down. Hey, YouTube
is playing a concert, and next thing they know, there's
hordes of people coming down to listen to this concert.
Speaker 1: The Beatles had done the same thing where they play
a live set from the top of a building, and
you know, the crowds are blocking the streets trying to
watch these icons make their music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really cool.
Speaker 1: It's really cool.
Speaker 2: I saw a little bit about this and so in
the music video there's actually a lot of drama involving
the police. Right, So there's this one moment where the
police chief comes in and it's like, that's it. We're
shutting it down. This whole thing is shutting it down. Now.
The funny thing is that their manager actually tells a
story that, in actuality, the police kept giving them extensions.
They kept saying, all right, that's it, Okay, one more song,
that's fine, one more song, and they were like, no, really,
you just go ahead and shut us down. It's more
drama for the video. Q Magazine's readers voted the track
the forty third greatest song in history, and this song
is YouTube's most played track from the Joshua Tree in concert.
Speaker 1: Okay, second track on the album, I still haven't found
what I'm looking for. So I gotta say it's amazing
to me that again, we have this rhythm that comes
in with the guitar. The guitar is such a major
facet of the rhythm. You know, you can talk about
chord progression and melody and all of that, but what
the Edge does rhythmically with his guitar is amazing and
unlike anybody else that I can think of out there
in the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When he plays, I hear it and I go,
that's you too.
Speaker 1: It's unquestionable. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This was the second single released May twenty fifth,
nineteen eighty seven. This one reached number one on the
Hot one hundred August eighth of ninet eighty seven, and
Bono has described it as the anthem of doubt right.
Speaker 1: He talks about how his favorite songs are about either
running toward God or running away from God.
Speaker 2: Is interesting one for me because for me to hear
a song like this that's a little bit deeper was
a transition thing for me, and it helped me think
about things larger than just the party scene. It's not
the common theme of searching for love or sex or money,
but the sadness of not finding what you're looking for.
Speaker 1: So the other producer on this album is Daniel Lenoaugh
and Brian Eno. Daniel Lenoaugh contributed massively to this album.
They had also done The Unforgettable Fire before this, but
Larry Mullen talks about how Daniel Lenoaugh really had an
emphasis on percussion unlike Lily White had, and it really
comes through in this song. Now this beat that Larry
Mullin has. He had actually done with the song that
was supposed to be called The Weather Girls, but Daniel
Lenoi said, I don't really like the song, but that
beat is awesome. You should keep that beat, And so
basically he took the beat and then the Edge came
in and added a guitar and the melody and the title.
Edge came up with the title, and then Bono took
that and added all of these gospel themes that I mean,
who else is doing this? Nobody else is doing this
at the time. And then once Bono had his lyrics,
the Edge, Brian Eno and Daniel Noaugh all added backing
vocals over his lyrics. This is great because this is
the top of Bono's range and you can really feel
the intensity that he has when he's singing in the song.
It's fantastic for sure.
Speaker 2: For sure, I heard Bono talking about the difficulty of
taking a gospel tune and bringing it into the modern world.
Speaker 1: Right, So do you remember the video for this one? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I really like the video on this. They're down on
Fremont Street in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's this one part where, like you know, they're
just They're walking around in the street and people are
just kind of walking around and Bono is singing to
different people, and then he turns to the Edge. And
this is back when the Edge wore the kind of
big cowboy hat looking hat and just was quiet and
as stoic as you could be. But back then I
was just like, what's up with this guy? He just
doesn't talk. So anyway, he's there. He's just there with
his acoustic guitar playing along, and all of a sudden
bonds like kind of pressing up close to him and
singing and right singing right in his face, and you
get this classic like my teenage kid couldn't do a
better I roll of Oh my gosh, would you just
stop already?
Speaker 2: So I went to Las Vegas a couple of years ago. Okay, yeah,
and so you've got you know, the modern area where
all the kind of all the casinos are, the big
casinos and stuff like that. Fremont Street is kind of
down and kind of by itself. It's Old Vegas, and
I didn't know that. I was there for the first time,
and I'm walking around and all of a sudden it
hits me like I walk into a movie right, and
I walk in and I'm on Freemont Street and I'm like,
holy crap, this is where they shot Dimes Are Forever.
And I still haven't found what I'm looking for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't tell this story during James Bond, but
I'll tell it now. So, my grandmother was from Henderson, VA,
which is just outside of Las Vegas, and she, you know,
she passed away, and I went to her funeral, of course,
and my brother was there. He, like us, had grown
up watching James Bond, so he just drunk it in,
you know, memorized every scene in the movie was Diamonds
Are Forever. Well. Then, of course, you know, you fast
forward multiple years later, and my grandma was awesome. You know.
I went through Las Vegas like you did and met
with her, and she gave me and my buddy one
hundred bucks and said you can't spend this on anything necessary.
And I was like, yeah, that's awesome, Grandma, that is fantastic, right,
And so when she passes, we're at her funeral and
my brother starts looking around at this funeral home that
we're at and he's like, I know this place. How
do I How do I know this place? And he's like,
oh my gosh. And he goes over to the you know,
the funeral director, and he's like, is this the place
that they shot Diamonds or Forever? And the funeral Director's
like yep, and he's like, oh my gosh. He was
in a casket, like in that wall over there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I just felt like it was almost a nod
from above of Hey, I want you guys, even though
this is a sad moment, I still want you to
have a little bit of fun on me.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's cool, man, that's really cool. Okay, we done
with this one.
Speaker 1: I think we're done with I still haven't found what
I'm looking for.
Speaker 2: Huge song, number one hit in eighty seven. Okay. That
brings us to the third song on the album. This
song was the first single released on March twenty first,
nineteen eighty seven.
Speaker 1: This is With or Without You. Okay, So once again,
this song is so so incredible.
Speaker 2: This is one of those songs I've heard ten thousand
times in thirty three years and I still want to
weep every time I hear it.
Speaker 1: See the Stones sets, see the song twist Em, sid
Oh Wi for You. It's a song that Bono had
been working on since eighty five, right, so he's two
years coming on this one. And it's a four chord song.
Like you know, I've talked before about how a lot
of the greatest hits that we have of the eighties,
especially like Don't Stop Believing in Africa and down Under,
there are four chord songs are the same four chords
in the same order, and that's the way this song
is as well. And it's fantastic, of course, it's a
big hit, but it was something that the band couldn't
find the right feel for and after a while, everybody
except Bono had given up on it. They're like this,
we're just never going to get it right. And this
song had meant quite a lot to Bono because it
was kind of his take on being married and being
on the road, which of course is had taken a
lot of things through the journey back in there again.
But they were ready to trash it, and Bono kept
holding on, and there's a guy named Gavin Friday who's
involved with them quite a bit, and he was sure
that it could be a hit, and so they work
together and they kind of rearranged it a little bit,
and it still wasn't quite right. But then this magical
thing happens. Enter Michael Brooke. And Michael Brooke is a
producer and musician. He's done some cinematic stuff, but he
is also an inventor. And he invented a guitar that
was called the Infinite Guitar. And when he first created them,
two of them went out. One was to Daniel Lenoa
and the other was to the Edge. And so the
Edge gets this guitar, opens up the case. It's his
first day to have this guitar. He opens it up
and he starts playing it. Now, the way this Infante
the guitar works is kind of mind blowing. I mean,
it's just it's brilliant. You got to understand that microphones
and speakers are very similar in the way they work.
In fact, they're almost identical. It's just one I don't
want to go into that, all right, So biber Bund
and speakers are very they're virtually the same thing, right,
And so what he's what he does, you know, imagine
a guitar electric guitar in your head. What he does,
what Michael Brooke does is he takes that bottom pickup
and instead of making it a microphone. He makes it
a speaker, and so when you play the note on
the guitar, it translates through the pickup into the speaker
that's in the place of the pickup, thereby sending it
back into the strings of the guitar and creating this
infinite loop of sound. Hence the name the infinite guitar, right,
And so that creates this ethereal magic that is again
unlike any other songs out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a symphony almost. It's like a one
note symphony.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a violin. The violin can just staying
the note because the person just keeps moving the bow
back and forth on the note. It's a very similar
type of sound. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 2: I love how in this song you have that slow
build and then the drums start to gather momentum and
then and then you close off with that. I mean,
that's that whoa from Bono. That's so powerful. This song.
Every time I hear it is just magical. It speaks
to my soul. They really did not want to release
this as the first single. There was kind of this
battle going on. Their manager, Paul McGinnis was like, it's
too it's too strange sentence. They kept coming back to it.
It just kind of became everybody's favorite.
Speaker 1: Song, and they had the iconic video on MTV the
black and white where he's got his hair now on
a ponytail. I mean, the mullet that he had going
on during live aid was one of the most intense
mullets that I had seen. I mean, it rivaled David
on The Lost Boys on the intensity of that mullet.
By the time we get to the video for With
or Without You, he's got it all slicked back, looking
very cool.
Speaker 2: I think all four members of the band, their talent
is really on display. Okay, next song, song number four.
Speaker 3: This song is called Bullet the Blue Sky.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is a song that's kicking some button
right out of the gate. Right. We were done with
our kind of pretty ethereal operatic stuff and now we're
out there to kick some booty YEP.
Speaker 2: This is a rocker.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh yeah, I love it. I can't tell
you how much I love this song. This is I
can't figure out why they didn't release this one as
a single. It should have been. It's one of the
best songs on the album. Blows my mind, and about
some i mean some rough subject matter too. I mean
they're talking about El Salvador and the war that's going
on down there that they had when they that they
observed when they visited down there, and it's it's rough stuff.
But what's interesting is we've talked about how Larry and
Adam drums in the bass are typically the foundation, but
they're the standouts on this one. The drums and the
bass are your focus on this one. And the Edge
talked about how the song came about. You know, he
had been playing with this rhythm that he had and
so he comes in and he starts playing it. And
as he's playing along, you know, Larry comes in, sits
down at the drums and he starts drumming, and Adam
comes in and he starts playing the bass, and the
Edge is like, Larry's playing halftime. He's like, this is wrong,
this is the completely wrong rhythm. What are you doing
over here? Then Adam on the bass is doing the
same kind of fast, heavy, like, well, what's going on?
And they play for about five minutes or whatever, and
they get done and they walk into the sound room
and all the guys are like, yeah, yes, that was it.
You finally got it. Still's not he's still not getting
He's like, yeah, yeah, no, but I mean they you know,
they messed it up. They didn't do the right rhythm
and it finally he was like, oh wow, No, this
makes the song this and that it is. It is
the hook, that drum beat as it comes off that
unusual time sequence that he's playing. Uh, too good, too good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing. This is one of the I mean,
I would call it the El Salvador trilogy on this album. Right,
so you've got this song, You've got One Tree Hill,
and you've got Mothers of the Disappeared that sort of
talk about this serious subject matter. While Bono was on
these humanitarian missions, he witnesses US forces burning out villages
to get to these paramilitary members. Bonno was just appalled
that the US would do this and hurt these people
that are impoverished and have nothing. Anyway, the thing that
was most shocking to him was he knew that they
were Christians back in the United States that sort of
sanctioned this behavior, and he was calling upon the scriptures
to help these Christians realize what was going on. Number one,
and how we need to see better answers for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean he's taken biblical imagery like Jesus being
nailed to a cross and Jacob wrestling with an angel
to drive home the point that hey, Christians, wake up
and look what it is that you're supporting here.
Speaker 2: Also, I don't know this for sure, but I got
to believe from the lyrics of this song it mentions
rattle and hum. It's got to be where they came
up with the title for their next.
Speaker 1: Album, Yeah, for sure. And he's got in the middle
of the song, he's got this almost spoken part that
is really unsettling, and you know, talking about throwing the
bills down two right, And in his mind this was
Ronald Reagan was the guy who was doing this. Say
what you will about his intentions. It's still I mean,
the effect is it kicks some major butt, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Great song four for four so far in the album.
Let's move on to song number five. This one's called
Running to stand Still. The beginning of this song is
very interesting to me. It doesn't seem like it fits
with the rest of the song. Is this kind of
bluesy guitar and then you slide into this ballad, it
just doesn't seem to fit.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, Yeah, I mean you talked about, you know,
how they were trying to be cinematic about how the
album went, and you you know, you go through these
ethereal operatic songs. Then it's almost violent in nature bullet
the Blue Sky song, and then all of a sudden,
it's almost as though you're waking up the next morning
from having the crap beaten out of you, and that's
you get that blues feel, and then they start singing
this ballad about drug addiction. So Heroin was a big deal.
If you've seen the movie train spotting issue.
Speaker 2: Right, it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well in Ireland specifically, and so this is kind
of a you know, a couple talking about the one
way out being, you know, go somewhere and score some
drugs in order to bring it back and make ourselves rich,
not just to take them, but just to sell them.
And so that's the that's the white Gold Pearls that
she brings back. But it's again, it's not just a
song about drugs. It's another political commentary by Bono about
what had happened in some of the poorer neighborhoods. These
were housing setups that were meant to bring people out
of poverty and to clean up the neighborhoods, and it
just ended up making it worse. Ballyman Flats in Ireland,
that's what the place that he's singing about in his song.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a beautiful song. Once again, it's a
slow burn. It builds. You've got bono on harmonica. The
producer Daniel LANMWOII is playing the rhythm guitar on this song.
But it's just a beautiful build.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The Edge is the one playing the pian on
this one.
Speaker 2: Nice so far Five in a row, No skippers.
Speaker 1: No, no, not at all.
Speaker 2: After running to stand still. The next song on the
album is called Red Hill Mining Town.
Speaker 1: So this again we have another unique sound. This song
doesn't sound like any of the other songs on the
album so far, and to me, this could be a
song in like a John Hughes movie, right, especially when
he comes in on the chorus. Just that amazing passion
that he has in his voice. I mean, I can see,
you know, one of the rat pack raising the fist
above their head in the song. But of course he's
singing about something that's not at all what you would
have in a John Hughes movie. This is about like
a minor strike in the mid eighties. Margaret Thatcher had
closed down some unprofitable coal mines in the UK and
that left a whole lot of people without jobs, and
so this song is about the struggle that they have
of trying to provide for their families after not having
a job anymore.
Speaker 2: Right, The subject matter on this type of stuff way
over my head at age fourteen. This sounds like it's
more of like a Bruce Springsteen type of song, you know,
the working man and trying to make a living and
that type of thing. I've heard it said that it
was either planned to be the second single or the
third single, but the band couldn't really agree, and urban
legend is that they didn't want to have to play
this song in constant too much because of the high
notes for Bono to hit. This is the only song
from the Joshua Tree prior to their reunion concert to
have never been played live. Wow, which is crazy because
this seems like such a single long wave your hands
in the air type of song.
Speaker 1: Yeah, break out the lighters.
Speaker 2: So that brings us to the end of side one of.
Speaker 1: The Joshua Tree push stop on you tay player, kick.
Speaker 2: It out, flip it over, put it back in press,
play next song in God's Country.
Speaker 1: Once again, something completely different. We're not getting anything repetitive
on this album.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this was the fourth single. This was released in
North America only, which seems kindstry. I never really understand
that if you're going to release a song, why don't
you just release it?
Speaker 1: Well, the I mean the thing about this is this
is a very American song. I mean this one really
he's talking about the when he's talking about the deserts
in this song, he's talking about the American deserts. And
you know, God's Country is about America. And he ultimately
dedicated this song to the Statue of Liberty. He said
he wanted to write about America and you know, the dream,
the American dream, and he said, I wonder where are
the people that will rise to the challenge, you know,
where are the new dreamers? And so it was this
kind of idea of the desert, not as a barren wasteland,
but as an empty can this on which to build
something new.
Speaker 2: Okay, I've got a friend and I've mentioned her before,
but she's a pop culture encyclopedia and she is a
huge You Two fan. She got on our Facebook page
the other day and mentioned that some husbands buy roses
for their wives. Her husband buys her YouTube tickets, right,
yeah was Her name is Jeanie Alexander, and so I
hit her up right before we record this, and I'm like,
you know, hey, tell me about what your takes are
in justure Tree. And of course she's got a long
litany of things that she loves about this album. But
she was talking to me about Bono's vision of America
as two Americas. Right, you have the American dream, you
have the prosperity, you've got the freedom, and then you've
got the addictions and the crime and the poverty and
the problems of America's the two Americas. That's what I
think about when I when I listen to this song,
The two Americas.
Speaker 1: It's fantastic.
Speaker 2: Thanks Jeannie for all your help on this episode.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you. Yeah, thank you for your support. Thank you
for educating us.
Speaker 2: Okay, we done within God's Country. Yes, shout out to
the Statue of Liberty, and we're on to the next song.
Speaker 1: Trip through Your wires. Oh, listen to that beat and
that harmonica. Baby, I'm playing some.
Speaker 2: Blues rhythm and blues baby. Nobody gets out of here
without playing the blues.
Speaker 1: Did you just quote did you just quote Adventures and
babysitting on her? Yes?
Speaker 2: I did, Thank you, good job.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. All right, so this one, this is
a great This is a very very blues song. And
Bonno really thought that this needed to be paired with
Sweetest Thing, but he got outvoted and so it didn't
make it on. It was just on the B side,
I think, is where that ended up. But there, Bono
feels like Wires and Sweetest Thing are hairs. They need
to be get together, both about love, but one's about
being enticed and the other one's about being apologetic. And
Wires is obviously bluesy it. Where's Sweetest Thing is more
r and.
Speaker 2: B Yes, yes, I heard that story as well. I
need to tell a quick story about the Sweetest Thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah.
Speaker 2: Apparently the story is that Bono forgot his wife's birthday
and as a way of apologizing. As a way of
apologizing to her, he wrote this song called the Sweetest
Thing and gave it to her. As a gift, right right,
and she said to him, Okay, you're giving me this
song as a gift. That's very sweet. I want the publishing.
Speaker 1: That's awesome. That is awesome.
Speaker 2: This song is awesome, man. I love this is in
the top three or four for me in the album.
Speaker 1: It just is a.
Speaker 2: Feel good The core is just awesome.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 2: This is one of my favorite songs on the album.
Speaker 1: Love it too, I'll dig it.
Speaker 2: Okay, love this song. Moving on to a song called
One Tree Hill.
Speaker 1: All right, So this song starts off and it has
a very definite feel to it. It's almost native in
the way that the instrumentation comes in, and I think
that has to be a throwback to New Zealand and
the Maori folks in New Zealand, because this is about
a guy who is very special to you two who
was from New Zealand, a Maori from New Zealand.
Speaker 2: So One Tree Hill was written for a guy named
Greg Carroll, whom the band met when they landed in Auckland,
New Zealand, while on tour for The Unforgettable Fire in
nineteen eighty five. Bonald gets there, he's got major jet
LaGG he can't sleep, and so he decides, Hey, I'm
gonna go hit the town and he meets some native guys,
some local guys. One of them is this guy named
Greg Carroll and takes him around. They became friends, and
he ends up taking him to this place called One
Tree Hill, which is significant spiritual volcanic sight. Right, I
don't really know because I've never really been there, but
so it's called One Tree Hill. He becomes a roadie.
Bono appreciates his sense of humor in his work ethics,
so he's hired to be his personal assistant. During the
Live Aid concert, you can actually see him handing him
a guitar on stage. It's pretty cool. But he was
driving Bono's motorcycle returning it to Dublin when he was
killed in a motorcycle accident on July third, nineteen eighty six. Yeah,
he was twenty six.
Speaker 1: When that happened. Yeah, this was a really devastating moment
for the band, for the whole band, They really loved
this guy. Larry Mullen said, his death really rocked us.
It was the first time anyone in our working circle
had been killed. Bono had actually flown to Texas to
sing with Willie Nelson By An hour after he arrived,
he heard the news of Carol's death and immediately flew
back to Ireland. This was obviously a big important guy
to them, and it packs this song with a whole
lot of meaning that I didn't understand before. And I'm
glad I know the story now.
Speaker 2: Apparently at the funeral, Bono's saying, let it be knocking
on Heaven's door. But he wanted to do more to
honor Greg and so he wrote the song One Tree
Hill And when he recorded it, he recorded the vocals
in one take. He felt too emotionally wiped out to
any more than once.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was. It was months before he was ever
able to perform it live.
Speaker 2: It don't play this song live very often, but every
time they go to New Zealand, they always play One
Tree Hill.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, here's another interesting tidbit on this song, Okay, and
I'm gonna try and describe this for our younger listeners.
Way back in the eighties, he had this thing called
long distance long distance elephone calls. Yeah, and transatlantic long
distance calls were super expensive. So while they were recording
this song, there were these three Toronto bassed musicians who
were recording the string section portion of this song. The
Edge and Daniel Lanois are across the Atlantic Ocean directing
them and they're on the phone for six hours.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: I love this song. It's it's mournful, but it's upbeat.
It makes me smile. It's like sad smiling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of the notion of the wake. You know.
It's a celebration of someone who's passed. It's a celebration
of their life.
Speaker 2: Right, great song. I love it. One Tree Hill is
the fifth single released from this album, but it was
only released in Australia and New Zealand. Interesting next song
on the album is a song called Exit.
Speaker 1: He used to stay away to drive the dreams. All right,
So here we go with another feel good song. Just kidding,
just kidding. This song it has it has kind of
a dark beginning and middle and end.
Speaker 2: This is a dark star song all the way through
it is. This song was originally supposed to be titled
Executioner's Song.
Speaker 1: So this song came about after Bono had been reading
some American novels about murders. Basically, so he had read
Norman Mahler's The Executioner's song and Truman Capote's in Cold Blood,
And this was his attempt is what these are his words.
This was my attempt at writing a story in the
mind of a killer. It's all very well to address
America and the violence that is in an aggressive foreign policy,
but to really understand that, you have to get under
the skin of your own darkness, the violence that we
all contain within us.
Speaker 2: Okay, this is where it gets interesting. Okay, so Bono
wrote this song said after reading some stuff about murder.
One of the guys was Gary Gilmore, who was this
guy who executed some people, and then he wanted the
court to hurry up with his own death sentence, like
he wanted them to execute him as soon as possible.
Very dark, very interesting story. But where it really gets
weird is when this guy, Robert John Bardo comes along.
If you were around in the eighties, you'll remember this
is the guy who stalked and murdered the actress Rebecca
Schaeffer on July nineteenth, nineteen eighty nine. Oh gosh, do
you remember that. Yeah, she was in that TV show
called My Sister Sam. Yeah, him Dabber, the girl from
More Committy. He so he stalked her, shot her, killed her,
and then during his trial, his attorneys said that this
song influenced him to commit these deeds, and so they
played it during the court sessions and when they played it,
he's bobbing his head and along in court.
Speaker 1: Oh my, really weird.
Speaker 2: This was recorded the last day of the Joshua Tree sessions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this came. This came out of the band doing
some jam sessions. They only played at one time, and
then Brian Eno came in and cut it down into
the final product. But it was a one take kind
of deal for them. Yep.
Speaker 2: Pretty amazing. This song was played on all one hundred
and nine in the Joshua Tree Tour shows, but has
been played only once until they did the Reunion tour
for the thirtieth Joshua Tree Reunion Tour.
Speaker 1: Huh. It has an intensity that is unmistakable and the
you don't want to say you love this song, but
you feel the impact that they were trying to convey
without question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is a dark song. I'm kind of out
on this one. It's got an interesting history, but this
is the first one where I'm like Skipper.
Speaker 1: Now, I still I wouldn't skip this song. It's just
it's got to be the right moment. I mean, I'm
not going to listen to this with the kids in
the park. But you know, if I'm driving in the
morning to go work out, maybe this is the song
I get to kind of intensify my testosterone levels or something.
I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's gonna take a playing of playing in the
sunshine and starfish and coffee and wake me up before
you go go to pull me out of the funk.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Well, and Bono talks about how I'll take
a walk occasionally and have a drink with the devil,
but I'm not moving in with him.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 1: I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, have you ever danced with the devil in the pillow?
Speaker 1: What did you say?
Speaker 2: I always asked, out of all my brain. I just
like the sound of it.
Speaker 1: So Oddly, exit is not the last song. It seems
like it would be, but it's not.
Speaker 2: It should be. Yeah, maybe it is.
Speaker 1: And this is the encore. The encore is Mothers of
the Disappeared.
Speaker 2: Okay, once more, this is not a feel good so.
Speaker 1: So you have this really fascinating beginning here. This is
obviously a pick on the edge of the wound strings
on a guitar, and it has an almost industrial sound
to it, you know, like machinery or somebody scratching at
something metal, and it creates a scene that to me
is very dark and mysterious. And then when the bass
comes rolling in here and it's got a twang to
the bass. It's got that kind of vibration going on
in the bass, and it's almost what we would later
describe as industrial and its sound. But then the lyrics
come in and it's a God's tragedy. You know that
we've got these oppressive governments in these South American countries
who when the government is oppressive, you will have college
students who protest what the government is doing. And what
the government would then do with those students is disappear them,
would cause them to no longer be there. They would
be kidnapped in the night and never seen again, very
in an unmarked grave somewhere. And it's the mothers of
the disappeared is actually another type of protest group that
began in the seventies and eighties of these mothers, I
mean exactly what it is, mothers of these students who
have disappeared. It's an emotional subject and an emotional song
and so intense. And again, I love it for what
it does. It captures something, and I love the sound
of it. It is cinematic in its ability to paint
a picture with the music and the sounds that come
from these instruments.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's haunting and beautiful and sad. You know, did
you know? I don't know if you know this or not,
but the song's guitar melody comes from an original piece
that Bono composed to help teach children about basic heiji
while he was in Ethiopia nineteen eighty five. Huh. Now,
he had a little ditty, you know, teaching them to
brush their teeth or whatever, and he transformed it into
this song.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's awesome.
Speaker 2: This again is part of that trilogy involving One Tree
Hill and Bullet Blue Sky. Okay, I don't know if
you know this or not, but on February fifth, nineteen
ninety eight and February eleventh, nineteen ninety eight, you two
performed this song live in Argentina, and then again a
week later in Chile. He brought the mothers on stage
and called upon the government to tell these women where
the bones of their children.
Speaker 1: Are Can you imagine. I mean, that's some brass tax
right there. Bro. Seriously, I mean you were throwing out
these accusations and making these demands of a government who
obviously has no hesitation about taking the lives of its
own citizens, let alone the lives of some Irish band
who's coming out here mocking.
Speaker 2: Us my got punk rock star.
Speaker 1: Yeah, brassball, baby, brassball.
Speaker 2: That's what I love most about Bonall. Mean, he is
not afraid to use his platform to do the good
things that he feels like he's been called pot to do.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Good finish to the album. I know you had
one skipper in there, but there were no skippers for me.
Fantastic from beginning to the end.
Speaker 2: It is a fantastic album. So the Joshua Tree did
win the Grammy four the Album of the Year in
nineteen eighty seven, beating out Princess Sya the Times album.
This album topped the chart in over twenty countries and
it became the fastest selling album in British history. It
went platinum in forty eight hours.
Speaker 1: Forty eight hours. There's a lot of records.
Speaker 2: It's incredible. This was a huge album. Nineteen eighty seven.
We ready for final judgment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's move on to final judgment. Okay. So I
called you up a few days ago and I said,
do you know where you stand on that between these
two Mammoth albums of March of nineteen eighty seven? And
you said yes, And that is all that you told me.
And so I'm waiting with baited breath to find out
whether we are about to go to war or where
their two Hearts beat is one. I could not find
what I was looking for when I call it you.
Speaker 2: Okay, So I didn't really have a relationship with either
one of these albums. I knew the hits very well
and loved the hits very well. So when we Dove Deep,
it was the first time that I had heard some
of these songs. So when I listened to Sign of
the Times, I have fun. I enjoy what I'm listening to.
I'm dancing, I'm singing. There are some highs and lows
on Sign of the Times. I don't think it's as
good as Joshua Tree all the way through. However, if
I'm going on a road trip, the first CD I'm
grabbing of these two is Sign of the Times.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: It just fits my personality more.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're up all right. Well, when we started comparing
these albums, I started listening to Sign of the Times first,
because number one, we were covering it first, and number two,
I had heard Joshua Tree one thousand and one times.
This was one of those albums that I just listened
to beginning to end over and over again. And so
Sign of Times was something that I had to become
familiar with. You had talked about being kind of a
YouTube greatest hits guy Prince for me was Purple Rain
and then whatever hits came out after and before Purple Rain.
And so when I started listening to Sign of the Times,
we had discussed quite a bit about how we wanted
to compare something to Purple Rain because it's so iconic, right,
but what do you compare that to? And then I
wanted to do Joshua Tree. What do we do to
compare that to? We came up with Sign of the Times.
I said, okay, sure. I started listening to it. After
about the first five songs, it was just like the Police.
After the first five songs, I called Yep, and I said,
how much work have you done? Because I don't think
that this can even compare to Joshua Tree. Right this,
I remember that, really, these songs are not good. First
songs good, the rest of everything that I've heard so far,
and it's a long album. I wasn't all the way
through it, but it was not good. And You're like, dude,
this is considered his best album. And I said, nuh uh,
and you said, yes, critics consider this his best album.
I'm like, okay, then there must be something wrong with
my day to day. And so I listened to the
whole album and I didn't love it, and so I
said I need to listen to it again. I listened
to it again and I liked it a little bit better.
And then I listened to it again and I still
didn't love it. It was okay, And on the fourth listen,
I just said, this album is not my album. I'm
glad that everybody loves it, It's just not for me.
And when we started going into Joshua Tree, I had
the fantastic pleasure of just letting this play on repeat
in my car. If I wasn't listening to some sort
of podcast on Joshua Tree, I was listening to Joshua
Tree the album and loving every second of it and
loving it more and more the more I heard. It
was great to come back to this thing. So sorry,
Sign of the Times. Sorry Prince fans. I don't despise him.
I think he's a brilliant musician. I think he probably
could have played all of the songs on Joshua Tree,
and they probably couldn't have played his songs, but he
didn't play them. They played them. They came up with them.
I can play Nirvana's first album probably too, but I didn't.
It was them that did it, and so I have
to go Joshua Tree one hundred and ten percent. Sign
of the Times, despite my best effort, couldn't find its
way into my heart.
Speaker 2: Okay, well that's great and it's not for everybody, but
that's fine. Where are you, guys, We love to hear
from you. Hit us up on Facebook, hiss up on Twitter,
email us.
Speaker 1: Don't forget to go to patreon dot com, slash Shirley
Podcast and become an executive producer of the show. We
will say your name at the beginning of the show.
This show brought to you by executive producer whatever your
name is, Buckley. Go and yes, James Buckley, Thank you
James Buckley for jumping out there on the very first day. Fantastic,
But we have got We aren't asking for money for nothing.
We're not asking for the chicks for free. We we
will send you stuff you join us. You know, the
first stage is your executive producer. Second stage is you
get like a thirty dollars set of nice earbud headphones
that are waterproof and bluetooth and they're amazing. Next stage
you get a custom engraved stainless steel coffee mug. It's fantastic.
And then if you want to go if you want
to go full hog, if you want to go Prince
akeem level, you get to pick an episode on what
we talk about, whatever movie or song or album or
comparison you want to hear. We will do it for you.
So jump on patreon dot com, look us up Shirley
Podcast and become a member of our happy little family.
Speaker 2: Love it, love it. If you like what you hear,
we could sure use a five star review on Apple Podcasts.
Take a few moments, go there, click five stars and
tell everybody how great we are. We appreciate it, all right.
Speaker 1: It's been super fun to hit these albums can't wait
for next week.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about next week real quick. Next week we
dive into two of the greatest Christmas movies ever made,
Leath the Weapon and die Hard Mofos. We're getting into it.
Speaker 1: I'm getting too old for this.
Speaker 2: We'll see you next time
Speaker 1: All right, good night,