U2 shows the power of ‘Joshua Tree’ persists
PASADENA, CALIF. Thirty years can’t dull searing music, hopeful lyrics or the captivating Irish band behind them. U2 — lead singer Bono, guitarist and keyboardist The Edge, bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. — proved that Saturday with a powerful two-hour show at a packed Rose Bowl, a celebration of 1987’s
The Joshua Tree, the band’s biggest-selling album.
Like the hardy plant that gives the album its name, the Dublin quartet persists. They’re older, not immune to the sands of time, but they can still put on a show, as they showed in this stop on the North American leg of the tour.
The album’s songs, written during the Reagan era, comment on such issues as militarism and greed ( Bullet the Blue Sky) and the power of women ( Mothers of the Disappeared).
The 11-track masterwork, serving as a centerpiece for a 22-song effort bracketed by other hits, represents the band’s tribute to enduring values of justice and human rights symbolized, if not always achieved, by America.
A five-song opening effort, which featured band members walking individually to a front stage shaped like a Joshua tree, got fans in the mood with 1983’s
Sunday Bloody Sunday, a plaintive yet combative comment on political violence in their homeland.
After moving to the main stage to begin the Joshua Tree, the band performed in front of a massive, 200-foot-wide screen featuring stunning video of America’s deserts, mountains and diverse population. The Edge’s instantly identifiable guitar opening of Where the Streets Have No Name, a rhythmic buildup of energy that explodes into Bono’s defiant lyrics, transfixed concertgoers.
That led into I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, with Bono’s yearning vocals conveying a never-ending search for meaning, and then another huge hit, With or Without You. Bono dedicated Running to
Stand Still to Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, who died last week: “For the lion that was Chris Cornell, we send a prayer.”
Red Hill Mining Town, played in concert for the first time on this tour, was inspired by a 1980s miners’ strike in England, but Bono finds its message of worker persistence amid hardship resonant in contemporary America.
“Sometimes, songs become themselves years later,” he told the crowd.
Encore songs made clear that the band’s creative energy didn’t dissipate after Joshua Tree. Two from 2000 — Beautiful Day and
Elevation — would have brought concertgoers to their feet if they weren’t already there. Ultraviolet (Light My Way) honored women, earning applause. One featured a fierce, aching Bono vocal, leading to an endorsement of political organizing and social movements.
Miss Sarajevo was accompanied by a film featuring a teenage Syrian refugee hoping to come to an America of civility and opportunity — a place where a fabled tree can sustain even under the harshest of conditions.