Why did Brian Eno want to erase the U2 album ‘The Joshua Tree’?
When Brian Eno worked on U2’s fourth studio album, The Unforgettable Fire, released in 1984, it proved to be one of U2’s best full-length efforts, bringing The Edge’s guitar sound to the fore in a way that only a master of ambient production could do. The album was so well-received that Eno was invited to take charge of the band’s next studio release, The Joshua Tree, which would go on to become the band’s most widely-admired record.
One of the best songs on The Joshua Tree, and certainly one of the greatest efforts from across the U2 catalogue, is ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’, which is one of the three worldwide-released singles that open the 1987 album. However, the song proved rather demanding to record, leading to frustrations from within the production camp.
After moving from Danesmoate House to Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin, the band began to press forward with recording ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’. The song had started as a demo that The Edge had put together on his own. However, the complex time signatures of the tune, coupled with the ever-shifted chord progressions, were not taken up with great ease by the rest of the band. Brian Eno explained that the track required a great deal of “screwdriver work” to get ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ into something resembling a workable format.
In fact, according to the Classic Albums film about The Joshua Tree, Eno suggested that as much as 40 per cent of the time spent recording the whole album was spent on that track alone. Co-producer Daniel Lanois had even pulled out an old-school blackboard and wrote in chalk the moment at which the band had to switch time signature or chord.
The whole ordeal led to frustration in Eno, so much so that he wanted to start the entire recording process from scratch. However, he had a task on his hands in convincing the band to begin again. When vocal suggestions proved fruitless, Eno devised a plan to “stage an accident” whereby the master tapes for the recordings to that point would be erased.
According to producer Flood, an engineer by the name of Pat McCarthy had to hold Eno back from performing any such action, and the “mistake” deletion of the tapes never happened. And thank God they didn’t because eventually, the band got to grips with the song and made it into one of their best-ever efforts.
Check it out once again below.
