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Review: The Joshua Tree |
113www.jrfm.eu
2018, 4/1, 111â116
KUMBAYA?
As we might imagine, the @U2 fansite (https://www.atu2.com/) has given ex-
tensive coverage to the tour, itemising the songs played, the celebrities who
attended the shows and comments about what took place. On 5 November
2017 the site published âFinal Thoughts on The Joshua Tree Tour 2017â from @U2
staff. Many were complimentary, but Sherry Lawrence, a longstanding fan and
contributor to the site, offered this sharp critique:
U2 had the ability to make a more compelling statement about the state of
world affairs, and they chose not to. Instead, their inclusive âmessage of loveâ
did little to change hearts and minds. This is why The Joshua Tree 2017 Tour will
rank below PopMart for me. The band played it safe and did not take a risk. As I
said on a recent podcast, this tour felt like a speed bump to Songs of Experience,
and I hope the band regains its desire to be the proven risk takers they have
been for decades. âKumbayaâ this tour was, and I expected more from them.4
Personally, I have some sympathy with Lawrenceâs view and it articulates my
own fear ahead of the show I attended. In an interview before the tour, U2 bass-
ist Adam Clayton was quoted as saying, âThe Joshua Tree seemed to in some
ways mirror the changes that were happening in the world during the Thatcher/
Reagan period. It seems like weâve kind of come full circle and weâre back there
with a different cast of characters.â5 Would this show be anything more than a
rendition of Kumbaya?
âEXITâ
For me the track which best achieved that aim of holding up a mirror from the
1980s was âExitâ, the penultimate song on The Joshua Tree album. The Twick-
enham performance was an apocalyptic reclamation of a song that had been
mothballed, for it had not been played since 1989.6 It is interesting to view that
performance alongside its live-TV debut in 1987, when Bono introduced it as âa
song about a religious man, a fanatic, who gets into his head the idea he calls
âthe hands of loveââ.7
On the Wikipedia page for âExitâ, David Werther compares it to a track
from U2âs follow-up studio album Achtung Baby (1991). âUntil the End of the
Worldâ places listeners in the position of Judas Iscariot, and Werther notes:
ââExitâ evokes feelings of fear, fear of losing control, giving into oneâs dark side,
4 @U2 Staff 2017.
5 Mojo Staff 2017.
6 See the performance of âExitâ at Twickenham, 9 July 2017, at https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=NB1E9OJ8JRo.
7 See the first broadcast of âExitâ in 1987 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kI9uSNoXZg [ac-
cessed 21 November 2017].
JRFM
Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 04/01
- Title
- JRFM
- Subtitle
- Journal Religion Film Media
- Volume
- 04/01
- Authors
- Christian Wessely
- Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati
- Editor
- Uni-Graz
- Publisher
- SchĂźren Verlag GmbH
- Location
- Graz
- Date
- 2018
- Language
- English
- License
- CC BY-NC 4.0
- Size
- 14.8 x 21.0 cm
- Pages
- 129
- Categories
- Zeitschriften JRFM