Much has been made of the fact that it was inspired by the power and vastness of America, with songs that show this Promised Land can also be a place of emptiness and disillusion. In a way, it attempted to be the aural equivalent of the Great American Novel. Unlike many self-consciously 'indie' albums of the time, The Joshua Tree aimed big. Ireland was in a very depressed state then and here were a bunch of people achieving huge things. 'Sure they had their critics - and a lot of Dublin bands at the time seemed very jealous of their success - but I thought it was great that a local band was putting the country on the map. 'I was proud of the fact that an Irish band had become the biggest in the world,' Tom Dunne says. Time magazine, referring to Bono et al as Rock's Hottest Ticket, put them on the cover. The album seemed to capture the mood of the times and U2 - who had become a major Irish export with 1983's War, that Live Aid performance two years later and Rolling Stone's pronouncement in a 1985 cover story that they were the 'band of the 80s' - would become arguably the world's biggest band. It's one of those rare moments when you hear an album and straightaway you know that you have heard something that would be talked about for years.' The sound was so big and vast the production flawless. 'U2 were getting better with every album and there was a real sense with The Joshua Tree that they had made something very special that was going to make them even bigger than they already were. Today FM presenter Tom Dunne was making waves of his own in 1987 as the frontman of Something Happens and felt The Joshua Tree came like a bolt from the blue. It's likely to cement its position in the rock canon.

Now, 20 years on and in time for the Christmas market, The Joshua Tree has been remastered and re-released with a 14-track bonus album featuring B-sides and unreleased material from the sessions. And the three anthemic songs have been staples in U2's live sets ever since. The opening three songs alone, Where the Streets Have No Name, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and With Or Without You were all big-selling singles, songs whose ubiquity in 1987 ensured that The Joshua Tree would become U2's biggest-selling album, with 20 million copies sold to date.

'The Joshua Tree is U2's most varied, subtle and accessible album, although it doesn't contain any sure-fire smash hits.' That was Rolling Stone's assessment of U2's fifth album when it delivered in March 1987, and Steve Pond, who penned the review, may still be haunted by it.įew rock albums of the 1980s have had so many sure-fire smash hits.

Genius bullet the blue sky