The U2 song Bono thought was too hard to sing: “The notes I couldn’t reach”
Any musician will want some sort of challenge every time they go into the studio. It’s no use trying to rehash everything that you’ve done before, so sometimes it’s best to take something that’s slightly out of your comfort zone and see what comes out of it. Although Bono was willing to work every time he worked with U2, he admitted that one tune from The Joshua Tree was nearly too hard to pull off convincingly.
Then again, it’s hard to think of any vocal performance Bono has ever given that hasn’t sounded from the heart. He has had the inability to sound anything less than genuine whenever he plays, and even when U2 crammed their entire sound through a boatload of MIDI synthesisers on Pop, it was easy to pick out the frontman shouting from deep within the group on every single track.
By the time they reached the end of the 1980s, it was clear the band had reached a bit of an impasse regarding their political material. There was a lot of ground covered on tunes like ‘New Year’s Day’ and ‘Pride’, but there was only so far one could take that before they became a more pretentious version of The Clash. So when the time came to work on The Joshua Tree, that meant stripping things back to their essentials.
Going through the entire track list, the band took the basics of pop music and transformed them into music that sounded like the future. ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ may have sounded like going through a time tunnel, but compared to all the ballads on the record, ‘Red Hill Mining Town’ is in a different league.
While ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ is a far more acrobatic performance, all things considered, hearing Bono shout his way through this tune is a hard task for anyone to pull off. Whereas other tunes have peaks and valleys when singing, no other forces the singer to be on ten at the top of their range for this long, especially towards the end of the chorus when he hits the line ‘I’m still waiting’.
Although Bono delivered the tune as best he could on the final tape, he says that no one should expect him to sing it in concert the same way, saying, “I used to write songs that I couldn’t sing. And sometimes that was OK because the strains of the notes I couldn’t reach was part of the drama, but occasionally they would really just wreck the next show. So I just left ‘Red Hill Mining Town’ off. But since then, I sing a bit better – or at least I’ve learned how to sing.”
Some U2 fans might be disappointed, but let’s look at what Bono has to deal with for a second. A concert is always about preserving the voice for as long as you can, and if ‘Red Hill Mining Town’ is in the middle of the setlist, there was no way that anyone could sing that song and then be expected to make their way through tunes like ‘One’ or ‘Mysterious Ways’ directly afterwards.
So, in that respect, ‘Red Hill Mining Town’ not making its way into the setlist over the years is more than a snub for fans. It’s a medical precaution to ensure Bono can produce a note again when the song is over. Because while people love to hear him sing, this could be the one tune that silences him forever if he’s not careful.
