Speaker 1: What we're gonna do is gon We're gonna show up
at about thirty thousand people. All right, everybody, Welcome to
the Shirley you Can't Be Serious Podcast. Tonight, My co
host D and I we are on top of a
liquor store in downtown Los Angeles. We are broadcasting and
podcasting tonight from that location.
Speaker 2: Okay, Jason, you you get to wrap it up. Man,
the cops you're coming up here. We're shutting the location down.
They're trying to shut us down. Man, they're trying to
shut us down.
Speaker 1: They're gonna shut us down. Okay, let's go.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome to the Surely you Can't Be
Serious Podcast with your co hosts James D. Graves and
Jason Colliban. Welcome back, everybody to the Shirley you Can't
Be Serious Podcast. We are nearing years in with a
fantastic comparison of YouTube's Joshua Tree versus Prince Sign of
the Times, two amazing albums that we just lucked into
deciding to compare. They both came out in nineteen eighty seven,
they both are from March of that year. They both
were up for Album of the Year. I mean these
two are some of the biggest hitters of both of
these bands careers and all of the eighties and all
of music history really.
Speaker 1: And there was an actual rivalry between Prince and you two,
so we know Prince is a competitive guy. When he
met with Michael Jackson about singing on the Bad album
flashback to our Michael Jackson episode, Prince sat cross armed
and was intensely competitive with Michael Jackson.
Speaker 2: Okay, don't forget the ping pong games and the basketball
games either. I mean he would beat him in any
way possible.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right. King of pop my rear, right.
Speaker 2: Brent, your butt is mine? Whoa? Whoa? What what did
you just say?
Speaker 1: You may be the king of pop, but I'm the
king of ping pong. Prince's reaction upon hearing you two,
he said, do you know what I would do if
I had a voice like that? Become a janitor?
Speaker 2: Yeah. At some point, Prince compared these albums and compared
himself to YouTube. He says, the difference between me and
them is I could play every single one of their
songs and they couldn't even play Housequake. That's right.
Speaker 1: Interestingly enough, I guess they softened over the years though,
because while touring Dublin, Prince invited Bono to come on
stage and you can actually YouTube Bono singing Prince's version
of the Cross.
Speaker 2: Both Prince and most of you two have strong Christian
backgrounds and that comes into play in a huge part
in their music.
Speaker 1: Well, last week, if you missed it, we talked about
Princess Sin of the Times album. We walked through the
lineup of songs on that one. Today we're going to
walk through the nineteen eighty seven album The Joshua Tree,
and at the end of this we'll give final judgment
on which one we think is.
Speaker 2: The better album. Yeah, for sure. It's interesting how one,
you know, Prince has conquered rock and roll and is
starting to move away from it, whereas you two is
finding those roots and moving even more towards it from
the punk scene. It's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm anxious to dive in with the history of you
two and start comparing songs.
Speaker 2: Let's do this, Okay, let's jump in. So where does
you two begin? I think you have to begin with Bono, right, sure? Yeah?
So Bono his parents. This is in Ireland in the sixties.
His mother was a Protestant. His father was a Roman Catholic,
and I can see how that would as a youth
having parents of differing denominations could be a really hard
thing to deal with. In nineteen sixties and early seventies.
Speaker 1: Ireland, I mean these it was the basis for war.
Speaker 2: It was the basis for war, right, and so they
had decided early on that they were going to raise
their first child to take him to the Protestant Church,
and that was of course Bono's older brother, and then
the second child they would raise in the Catholic tradition,
and by the time Bono came along and grew up,
he had no interest in going to the Catholic Church.
He ended up going to the Protestant Church with his
mother and brother growing up. But with the trouble that
came along with that position he had in life, he
kind of got disinterested in school, would just not go
to school to avoid the trouble of it. And then,
very sadly, in nineteen seventy four, his grandfather passed away,
his mother's father passed away, and then while at the funeral,
his mother suffers an aneurysm and then she dies two
days later. It's crazy and I cannot express to you
how devastating it is. I lost my mom when I
was thirteen years old. It changes your perspective on life.
And obviously he had already had some turmoil in his life,
and then this, this happens to him, and fortunately God
looked with favor upon him. And just shortly after this,
a new school open called the Mount Temple Comprehensive School,
which was non denominational and had his co ed and
a mix of students. Is really quite a good school,
and so he ends up going to school there. And
in nineteen seventy six he sees a posting that a
fellow student has done saying hey, I want to start
a band. And that fellow student was Larry Mullen Junior,
who was a couple years younger than Bono. He had
noticed him in the hallways. They hadn't really been close,
but Bono says, hey, that sounds good. I'd like to
be in a rock band. So he shows up with
a few other guys to Larry Mullen's house. They have
their first rehearsal in his kitchen, and among the guys
that show up, you've got David Evans, who would later
become the Edge, and of course Bono at that time
was still known as Houston. And then you had the
Edge's brother, Dick Evans, who was also playing guitar. And
then Adam Clayton, who was a friend of the Evans,
came in and really didn't know how to play bass guitar,
but had talked a really good game and talked about
fret boards and music production and stuff like that, so
they thought he was cool enough guy to be in
the band. And then there were a couple of well,
for lack of a better term, couple of mark Stones.
Among the guys that showed up as well, there's a
guy named Ivan McCormick and a guy named Peter Martin
who were friends of Larry's but they ultimately didn't last
with the band.
Speaker 1: And Dick Evans, who was the older brother. You know,
I can see this playing out. I'm eighteen, you guys
are fifteen. I'm out of here. I'm gonna go chase
chicks while you guys started around with your instruments. Oh,
you guys became you two.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So on that first rehearsal, Larry said, I thought
this was gonna be the Larry Mullen band for about
ten minutes until Bono walked in and blew away any
chance I had of being in charge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I heard him say that he has been relegated
to hiding behind the drums for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: And that's an interesting dynamic. You know, both Adam and
Larry have a great role in the band, but it
is much more a foundational role. It is like you said,
they stand in the background and they hold the band
up right. You know, that's their job. They're not out
there to put on some spectacular show. They are there
to provide that rhythm section for The Edge and Bono.
By the time they get rolling and they're actually people
are starting to listen to them with the consideration of
managing or recording or signing, these guys, Adam and Larry
still don't really know how to play their instruments very
well at the Edge. And by the way, you know
they got these names, Bono and the Edge, they got
these names after a list of nickname I'm sure you
guys in high school too, people just got nicknamed sometimes,
and usually it was you know, pointing out whatever the
person was most insecure about and making that their nickname.
And so Bono had to do with where he lived,
and so did the Edge. But then the Edge ultimately
got his because of how pointy his chin is. That's
why it's called the Edge. So the Edge knows how
to play the guitar. By the time people are listening,
he is an accomplished musician. He has got his own
technique and Bono he doesn't have an amazing voice, but
he has a voice that you just kind of want
to listen to. Right. It's not like you're amazed by
the beauty of his voice, but the style of his singing,
and of course his lyrics draw you in.
Speaker 1: What he does with his voice is he portrays emotion
better than most singers that I can think of.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, he leans into it.
Speaker 1: It makes me want to weep. It is powerful.
Speaker 2: It's from the heart. Yeah, it's truly from the heart.
And he said that very early on into the experience.
He developed a Messiah complex and probably was very difficult
to deal with. But just the idea that he might
be able to have influence over the world from this
thing that he loved more than anything else just got
his juices flowing. I mean, it made him an incredible
front man. You watch Old videos of this, you know,
And we talked about how the band would freak out
whenever Eddie Vedder would start climbing on the rafters. Well,
Bona was doing that over a decade before him. Right,
he was jumping into the crowd, a decade before Kurt
Cobain ever thought about it. He was punk rock. They
listened to the Jam I think Bono said his first
show was the Clash. They listened to the Buds Cocks
and the sex Pistols, and Bono had he would listen
to Bowie and Dylan and Leonard Cohen and he also
liked Mark Bolan from t Rex. They realized, hey, you know,
punk rock is really at the forefront right now, especially
here in Ireland. And it turned out you don't have
to be a good musician in order to play punk rock.
So they and the Police were on the same page
with that, right.
Speaker 1: Hey, before you get too far, I was just gonna
mention when they first got together they called themselves Feedback. Yes,
that was the name of their band, Feedback, because that's
what their rehearsals sounded like the entire time, right, okay,
Neat just like Nikki six splashback to ar Motley Creue episode.
The fact that these guys can't play their instruments does
not slow them down from being rock stars.
Speaker 2: Right. It's a passion for sure. I mean, you know,
like with def Leppard, they realized early on that Joe
Elliott didn't have the best voice, but he had that passion,
and that passion means a whole lot, right, that's right.
I mean I can remember when I got together with
a band for the first time. It was a guy
that I knew pretty well, but in the hallway just went, hey,
I heard you're playing guitar. And at that point I
had maybe been playing for two years. I didn't know crap.
I was terrible, right, And I was like, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay,
he goes I was thinking about putting a band together.
You want to meet up? And I was like sure,
because hey, being in a band sounds cool, right. Nobody
at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old is thinking I want
to change the world with my music. They they're thinking
it'd be really cool to be in a band. You
probably get some chicks that way. So these guys when
they very first got together, they had this passion. They
did not, unlike a lot of bands, they did not
cover a bunch of songs by other artists, and they
said it wasn't because they thought they were better than
the artist. It was because they weren't good enough yet
to be able to cover those artists, right. So they
in doing their own stuff, they really developed their own style.
So they're playing all these original tunes and this TV
guy from a show called Young Line, he's looking for
artists to put on his show, and he hears that this.
You know, these young teenage boys are doing original songs.
They know he's coming over and they've they've got basically
one original maybe two original songs that they know. And
they're in the kitchen again arguing about how they're going
to do the song. You know, they can't decide who's
going to start with the music, and they get this
big argument, and then there's the knock at the door
and the guy comes in and he's like, so here
you boys are playing original songs and they're like, yeah, yeah,
we are, and he goes, can I hear one? And
he says, sure, here's an original song of ours called
Glad to See You Go, which is a ramone song.
It's not you two song at all, and so they
play him this Ramote song and he's like, oh, so
that's your song, huh. And they're like, yep, that's us
And they get on TV with it, right, they get
on TV. They and when they get on TV, they
actually play their own original song. But it was it
was a Ramone song that got them their first TV gig,
which may be the reason that they later wrote a
song called the Miracle of Joy Remote. We have a
great song that you might like to hear.
Speaker 1: It's called Bohemian Rhapsody. Like I said, they were called
Feedback initially. They then changed their name to The Hype,
and as the Hype they were playing around doing some gigs,
getting in front of people. But in March of nineteen
seventy eight, Larry spotted an ad for a talent contest
and there was CBS Music was involved in it. A
small cash reward for this thing when the five hundred
pounds thank you when so they entered and thought, hey,
you know, great exposure whatever. They were shocked and surprised
when they actually won the talent contest.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And so by that time they had scored themselves
a manager. His name was Paul McGinnis, and they realized
that one of the things that they liked best about
him was that he got them beer chicks and beer,
beer and chicks. Yes. So Paul McGinnis had been involved
in I believe it was Irish movies and had decided
to get involved in the music scene, and so he's
excited about you two. They're one of the first bands
that he manages, but he ends up with several and
after this talent competition, he goes to meet with this
guy named Chazz Dewaaley and he's got this suitcase full
of tapes for all these bands, and he pulls out
the U two tape and says, hey, these guys just
won the CBS talent competition. That might be a good
band for you to go check out. And so Chazz
Dewayey's listens to the tape. He's like, Okay, these guys
are not bad. I'll go see them play. And so
he travels up to a bar to watch them play
and he says, I'll walk in and the bar is
only half full because half of their fan base was
too young to come in. And he said the band
was good about a standard band for the day. You know,
it was exactly what he would expect, but he said
Bono was mesmerizing. He said he performed like a Shakespearean tragedy.
And Dewayaley says, I was in university I had seen
a young actor portraying Hamlet and Shakespeare and that actor
was Ian McKellen. So that's pretty cool. He said. When
he saw Bono on stage, it was though. Bono embodied
those same dramatic techniques that Ian McKellen had used when
he was performing Shakespeare. I was like, wow, I mean, yeah,
how do you not sign that band? So Chas Dewayey
ends up being the guy that produces their first press records.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chas Dwaylley said that, you know, as there as
he was trying to record that first album, he was
kind of a jerk to him, specifically to Larry Mullen,
because Larry mull at that point still couldn't keep rhythm.
He couldn't keep a steady beat, and so he'd go, Nope,
that was terrible, do it again, Okay, you're terrible, do
it again, and so he could. He said, I understood
why Larry would have been rather mad at me. He goes,
I didn't even realize it until I read the book
years later, but apparently Bono was so seething mad at
me that he was just shy of punching me out,
which I gotta say, I probably deserved the way I acted,
but I had no idea. He contained it very well.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So you got a list for ust of albums for YouTube?
Speaker 1: Okay, so just covering the chronology of YouTube. So that.
They had an album in nineteen seventy nine called three.
This is known as their debut. It was released in
Ireland but not an international release. Then in nineteen eighty
they had the album Boy Yep, and then in nineteen
eighty one they had October. They hit Stuff that Fire
and Gloria.
Speaker 2: October is kind of known as their Christian album as
much as any U two album as a Christian album.
In the interim, as they're soaring up their fame ladder,
they start going to a charismatic church. The four of
them and three of them everybody except for Adam, are
enticed and become born again Christians. And this is a
huge moment in the life of the band because they
all become very strong in their faith. Adam is this
twenty one year old guy who wants to live the
rock star lifestyle, and so it's these things are at odds,
you know, obviously, and so he's wanting to use the
back of the bus for one reason, and they're wanting
to use it for a place to do a Bible study.
So it becomes very tricky and they almost broke up.
A lot of they're born again Christian friends were saying,
you can't lead a Christian lifestyle and be a rock
and roll band. You have to give this up. You
have to make the sacrifice. And it's a little scary,
especially for Adam who's just thinking, Wow, you know, we've
come all this way and suddenly these guys are just
going to leave me. And ultimately, one by one Bono decides, no, what,
I'm not listening to these guys. I'm not going to
give up my band. I can be a Christian and
a rock and roll star. And then Larry follows suit.
He's like, no, I'm not going to do that either.
And the Edge is the one that's holding out. And
I mean the Edge really is the sound and the band.
I mean it's that's a huge, huge thing. Yep. And
so at some point Bono says, hey, let's go for
a walk and the Edge says he fully expected Bono
to say, stay in the band, don't leave us, But
what Bono said instead was you have to follow your heart.
You have to do what is right for you, and
whatever you do, I will support you in it. And
that was what caused him to stay with the band.
Speaker 1: That's a great story. And you know, the idea that
you cannot be a Christian and being a rock band,
I think has been somewhat dispelled because of the amount
of good that this band has done internationally.
Speaker 2: Say what you will about And I remember hearing the
joke way back when of you know, the guy dies
and goes to rock and roll Heaven and he's like,
oh look there's Elvis. He really was dead. And oh
look there's Jim Morrison. He really was dead. And he's like,
wait a minute, is that Bono. I didn't even know
Bono was dead. And the other guy goes, oh, no,
that's God. He just thinks he's Bono. But but for
a guy who has done the philanthropic work, yeah he
has done. I mean he's he is a guy who
backs up what he says with what he does. When
they finished with Live Aid, everybody else went back home,
or went and had a party, or went on tour,
and he and his wife went to Ethiopia to work
with the starving people.
Speaker 1: And that's right, that's yeah, freak and awesome.
Speaker 2: So October was their quote unquote Christian album, and they
weren't preaching, They weren't telling people how to live. They
were talking about what their faith meant to them. And
I think because of that, it was an album that
everybody could welcome. They didn't see it as hypocritical or
anything like that. It was an album that increased their fame,
increased their popularity instead of taking away from it.
Speaker 1: Okay, after October in nineteen eighty one, they come out
with the album called War in nineteen eighty three.
Speaker 2: Right, which has a picture again of that little boy
that was on Boy and he looks a little angrier
and a little bit more beat.
Speaker 1: Up on War, That's right. Songs off this one that
you may know New Year's Day, definitely Sunday, Bloody Sunday.
Speaker 2: That was the first time I remember hearing you two
was we're seeing that video on MTV of Sunday Bloody Sunday,
huge hit.
Speaker 1: There was an album released at the end of nineteen
eighty three. It's a live album. It's called Under a
Blood Red Sky. Yeah, but really The Unforgettable Fire in
nineteen eighty four was what really made them rock heroes.
Hits off this album, Pride in the Name of Love
one of their signature songs. They have a song called
The Unforgettable Fire and then the song Bad that. If
you've ever seen their performance of Bad at Live AID
in nineteen eighty five, which again I'm getting ahead of
myself a little bit, it is.
Speaker 2: Amazing. Right. Yeah, you mentioned Pride. I got a bit
of a story on that one. So they have played
Pride more often than they've played any other song. And
it's a song about Martin Luther King, right, yep. And
so when they were on tour with Joshua Tree right,
the album that we're discussing today, when they were on
tour with that, they had been campaigning for Martin Luther
King Day as a holiday in Arizona. Just a quick
bit of history there. Ronald Reagan had made Martin Luther
King Junior Day a day to be honored, people get
off work. It was a national holiday, and Arizona's governor
had followed suit and said, yes, this is going to
be Martin Luther King Junior Day. But then another governor
got elected and he changed the day from a Monday
to a Sunday, so that nobody was getting off of
work it was this time, and so there was this
big petition in Arizona to say, hey, no, this needs
to be on the Monday that we said it was
going to be on. And it was a pretty heated thing.
So when they come through on their Joshua Tree tour,
they're getting death threats from some people in Arizona because
they've campaigned for the Martin Luther King Day. And the
FBI comes to them and says, hey, you know, I
don't want We're not going to tell you guys not
to do the show, but we would really encourage you
not to do Pride in the Name of Love because
there have been people who said you will be assassinated
if you do this song. And so Bono said, okay, well,
we're not going to be intimidated by that. We will
do it, and if it happens, it happens. And so
in the middle of the you know, in the middle
of the set, they're going to do that song, and
they start singing the song and there's this line where
very explicitly, you know, April four talking about the bullets
ringing out at Memphis, and he knows, Hey, if I
was gonna assassinate me, I would do it when I'm
singing this these lyrics. So at this point he kneels down,
you know, in almost like a execution style pose, ready
for whatever is about to come. And just as he's
doing that, he sings the lyrics. Nothing seems to happen.
He looks up and Adam is standing in front of him,
chest out, chin out, ready to take whatever bullets are
gonna come Bono's way.
Speaker 1: That is awesome.
Speaker 2: You've got to love that. You've got to love that.
That is amazing.
Speaker 1: A couple of things I want to mention T and
D before we move on from Unforgettable Fire. Prior to this,
in nineteen eighty three, YouTube performed at.
Speaker 2: The festival, of course, because as every band we talk
about performs at the S Festival.
Speaker 1: Isn't that a crazy coincidence?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: It's crazy in excess the police.
Speaker 2: Not only can Steve Wozniak make some dang good computers,
he can pick some dang good bands to be in
his show. I'll tell you Van Halen, You two, Motley.
Speaker 1: Cruze, Motley Crue I mean, what kind of awesome concert
would that have been?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Okay, there's something I want to talk about, in particular
regarding the Unforgettable Fire.
Speaker 2: Okay, go for it, Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: On July thirteenth, nineteen eighty five, you two was involved
in the Live Aid concert at Wembley Stadium. Okay, ye,
Live Aid if you don't remember, that was to support
and help with the Ethiopian famine, which was this huge
thing in the eighties. And while they were there, You
Two's on stage. They're kind of the up and coming
band right right, not the big boys quite yet. They're
singing the song bad off the Unforgettable Fire album, and
Bono notices in the front road there's a girl who's
getting crushed and he starts to gesture to the ushers
and they don't understand what he's saying. And I think
it's really cool. It's in the middle of this song
and his bandmates just continue to play.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He stops singing. He's gesturing to this girl. She's hurt,
she's getting crushed. He jumps like fifteen feet down from
the stage, goes over pulls her out of the crowd
and is like hugging her and like almost like a
slow dance with her. She was there to see Wham,
which I thought was kind of interesting. Right, she may
not even know who these guys are. He pulls her
out of the crowd, slow dances with her, and sort
of saves her. Years later, she comes out and says, listen,
if he hadn't have pulled me out, I'd have been
crushed to death. And that performance of that song, if
you can watch it on YouTube, it'll blow you away.
And that performance resonated with people, and they saw how
Bono connected with audiences, and a week later, all of
their albums are in the charts.
Speaker 2: Even when they were doing small shows, he had this
vision of breaking through the fourth wall. Like he never
wanted to be a distant player from his audience. He
wanted to end up in his audience's lap, which is
why he was you know, he was stage diving back
in the early eighties and climbing the rafters and jumping
into the crowd because he wanted to develop a deeper,
closer connection with the audience members. Right, So you're talking
about you know this girl who was there for Wham
who he saves and slow dances with and consoles her
through this process. You two did a Joshua Tree concert
three years ago. It was thirty years you know. Thirty
years later they redo the Joshua Tree tour, right right,
she comes to the show.
Speaker 1: That is how you know you've made an impact on
somebody's life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you talk about how that was a pivotal moment.
By eighty six, they are headlining the Amnesty International Conspiracy
of Hope Tour. They have been named by Rolling Stone
as the band of the eighties. I mean they've gone
from up and coming to the band of the eighties.
And so in nineteen eighty six they headline this tour.
The last show of the tour is at Giant Stadium,
and for that show, it's being broadcast live on MTV.
And who should come in for a reunion after not
having played together for three years the band we talked
about as the band the Police come in and do
this is their last show of the eighties until they
get together, I mean twenty something years later, their last
show for a long, long time flash show. As far
as anybody can tell, they do this reunion set. When
they get done with their set, You Two comes on stage,
they hand their instrument a passing of the torch to say,
we were the band of the decade, and now you
are the band of the decade. That is an amazing story.
So that leads us to nineteen eighty seven and the
release of Joshua Tree. Joshua Tree comes about because in
their touring of The Unforgettable Fire, they tour America, right
and so they're on a tour bus moving through the
US and they see the parched desert as it comes
up later on in the lyrics of the US, and
they have this idea of the mythical America. You know,
there's the idealistic America that we maybe even don't appreciate
as much since we're from here. But it's this kind
of notion of land of the free, home of the brave,
this genuine idealistic idea, and that is the inspiration for
what will become the Joshua Tree. So that's why on
the cover of the album they have themselves standing in
front of a large desert and why the album is
named after Joshua Tree, which is a desert park in California.
Speaker 1: I'd love to go there sometime I think that's really.
Speaker 2: I've been there, have you. Yeah, I've climbed rocks and
Joshua Tree. It's it's it was a long, a long
time ago, long more than half a life ago. But
is that when you sell movies for the first time,
not that long ago? No, no, yeah, it was. It
was more like first experiences with drugs as opposed to boobies.
But yeah, I was nice and I went out there
finding myself. Still haven't found what I'm looking for. So
they've got this idea of the mythic America and they
start talking to guys. They start meeting with musicians who
have this rock and roll history. You know, I talked
before about how they have come from a post punk
or punk rock history, and that was kind of their sound.
And with The Unforgettable Fire, they kind of moved in
this sort of experimental, ambient music type of thing. And
once they started meeting with guys like Bob Dylan and
Keith Richards and some of these other guys, they realized
that all of these guys had listened to traditional American music,
and that they had been because of their punk history,
had been kind of apathy for any kind of tradition.
And so they start studying these old bands, and they
start to become interested in this folk tradition. They start
listening to blues, they start listening to country and honky talk.
They become huge fans of Johnny Cash, which you'll see them.
It's a pretty famous photograph of them for the Rattling
Hum movie that came out, where they've got a picture
of Johnny Cash up. But they they start adopting this
kind of American traditional sound, but then also blending that
with the Irish music, that kind of the indigenous Irish music,
and so it gives them this I mean, they are
they're already unique, they already have their own sound, but
it really gives them a framework to build upon. And
the Edge was kind of against it initially, but he
started listening to guys like Robert Johnson, who's an old
blues guy. He one of the main historical references in
Crossroads with Ralph Montiel Nice. Okay, I bought the I
bought the Robert Johnson tape. After seeing that movie. I
was not as impressed as the Edge was. But you
know that's probably because I was stupid. That's that's not
any reflection on Robert Johnson. But he listens to Robert Johnson,
Howland Wolf, Hank Williams, Senior, Lefty Frizelle, all of these
guys that are getting played on public radio stations, and
he becomes inspired by this. And so these guys they're
always against kind of whatever is popular at the time.
You know, Duran Durant is popular at the time, but
they're doing stuff with synthesizers. They've got very modern clothes,
and you Tube was trying to go the other direction
from that, which is why you've got almost no synthesizers
at all. I mean, it's it's really like a spice
in their songs as opposed to a major facet like
Duran Durant or like Prince in Side of the Time times. Right. Sure,
So they start their recording, they were they did almost
all of their recording in two different houses. They thought,
we want to feel like we're a family, like we're
living together, and so they decided to go to a house,
huh to record their music, and they you know, they
set up the drums in the dining room and then
I don't think they even called it the sound room.
They just had a different name for everything, was the
living room. But it was really created.
Speaker 1: Room was called the Lyrics Room.
Speaker 2: Yes, there you go, thank you.
Speaker 1: They called it the Milbeach House and the Danesmote House
danes Mote yep. But they rented it from this guy,
and I mean it's just kind of out in the
middle of nowhere and they're like.
Speaker 2: Hey, we're a rock band.
Speaker 1: We want to rent your house.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, go for it. Thank you, come again. Bono
is changing the way that he's writing music now. He said,
I used to think I think that writing words was
old fashioned. So I sketched, I wrote words on the
microphone for the Joshua Tree. I felt the time had
come to write words that meant something out of my experience.
And I have to think that his meeting with Bob
Dylan and some of those other guys that we talked
about before it had to have had a huge impact
on that. He describes his talk with Bob Dylan in
a biblical way. He refers to it as almost a
bestowing of a blessing, sort of like the laying on
of hands like Abraham did to Isaac. When he met
with Bob Dylan, it was like so moving to meet
with someone who he had idolized and then adopt and
learn from his techniques.
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan sort of another spiritual Christian rock star, sort
of a brother in that same spiritual area.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so before we move into the album,
one quick story to kind of be the flip side
of that whole Christian thing. So in these houses, in
these houses that they were living in, they had wild
magic mushrooms growing out in like the field. And the
Edge said that one night he goes to this party
at the place that Adam is staying at, and these
guys at the party offer him some magic mushrooms and
he's like, well, I've never really done that before, but okay,
it'll be kind of like a you know, a mind
expansion experiment. Let's give it a shot, you know, right,
So he takes a dose of magic mushrooms and then,
you know, after forty minutes, he doesn't feel anything. So
he does the rule one wrong thing to do. He
doesn't wait, he takes more. He doubles down on the
magic streussrooms, and then when he doesn't feel something immediately
he triples down. He triples down on the magic mushrooms,
and he said, and then I broke Rule number two
which is, don't be in the dark. I went home
and I went to bed, and then all of a sudden,
I'm laying in bed in pitch black, but I'm watching
a fireworks show that isn't actually happening. And he says,
after quite some time of doing this, I start to
ask the big questions of life, you know, asking what
the you know, the secrets, the deep secrets of life are,
and he says, and I figured it out. I figured
out what the secrets of the universe were. And I
thought to myself, oh my gosh, I'm not going to
remember this in the morning. I've got to I've got
I've got to get these down on tape. And so
he goes to get his tape recorder, which is across
the room, and it only takes him about twenty five
minutes to crawl there, and he gets it back to
his bed and he turns it on, and he says,
and then I was captivated by that little red light
for about another twenty five minutes. And so then I
start describing all of the secrets of the universe, and
then you know, I wake up the next morning. It's
not until probably eight at night the next day that
I went, oh, wait a minute, I recorded all the
secrets to the universe, and he says, So I go back,
and you know, the tape has it still has record down,
So the batteries are completely dead. I go find replacement batteries.
I put those in, I push play, and all I
can hear is and so like whatever it was he
had said, he talked into the battery and of the
recorder instead of the microphone. So all the secrets of
the universe were lost.
Speaker 1: Oh tragic, tragic. If only we could have had those recordings,
how much further ahead would be in society.
Speaker 2: All right, with that, I say we jump into the album.
Speaker 1: Let's jump into the.
Speaker 2: Album next week. It's a cliffinger. Sorry to be continued.
Let's talk about next week real quick. Yeah, next week,
tune in and we will have the full track by
track analysis of Joshua Tree, followed by our final judgment.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2: All right, good night,