Right about now in 1987, I was in Halifax, buying a new stereo, a champagne coloured Luxman powering a set of German speakers that came just shy of blowing the roof off my one bedroom apartment. The gear included a turntable, not a CD player, on which the needle would land on the album that came out today that year.
'A lot of the songs were ones that were recorded in Larry's spare bedroom or Adam's living room. When the red light's on we often don't respond to it. When we're just left to be, left to make music our own way, well some of the tracks are almost like demos. We had to fight to make them work and there were a lot of songs left over. It could have gone off in a number of different directions. We wanted the idea of a one-piece record, not a side-one, side-two thing.
Bono, March 1987
From the moment 'Where the Streets Have No Name' played, you just knew U2 had delivered the record that would make them the biggest band of the 2nd half of the 80's, and beyond.
The Joshua Tree would in fact become the first U2 album reach #1 in North America.
For me, the songs that sound the best from the album today, are the one's we've heard the least on the radio, including the one I've included below.
For more on The Joshua Tree, I invite you to go directly to U2's website by clicking HERE.