I recently read (it might have been one of the 'did you know' facts at the bottom of U2Start, actually) that U2 considered making The Joshua Tree a double album, but ultimately scrapped the idea and used some of the recorded tracks as b-sides. I had a long car ride today and during that I got to thinking: what if The Joshua Treehad been a double album?
How would U2 releasing a double album in 1987 changed the tour that year, and in years after? Which songs would have been played, played and dropped, become tired warhorses, or left us anxiously awaiting their live debuts? Would the album have had more/different singles? How would our pantheon of 'classic' U2 songs be different today?
To keep this a little more simple and unified, we'll say that the songs on the double album are:
- the 11 tracks that made the one-disc The Joshua Tree in our universe
- Luminous Times (Hold On To Love)
- Walk To the Water
- Spanish Eyes
- Deep In the Heart
- Silver and Gold
- Sweetest Thing
- Race Against Time
- Beautiful Ghost/Introduction To Songs of Experience
- Wave of Sorrow (Birdland)
- Rise Up
- Drunk Chicken/America ...For a total of 22 songs.
Note: I didn't include Desert of Our Love because it really isn't a finished song, and eventually became I Still Haven't Found; I also didn't include Lucille, Womanfish, etc., because we don't have any studio versions of them and don't really know much about these songs.
So, if you're interested, it's 1987, but it's a different 1987... I wanna go there with you...
The Joshua Tree Tracklisting
Disc 01
01 Where the Streets Have No Name
02 I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
03 Trip Through Your Wires
04 Spanish Eyes
05 Red Hill Mining Town
06 Deep In the Heart
07 Sweetest Thing
08 Race Against Time
09 Bullet the Blue Sky
10 Running To Stand Still
11 Exit
Disc 02
01 Beautiful Ghost/Introduction To Songs of Experience
02 Luminous Times (Hold On To Love)
03 Walk To the Water
04 In God's Country
05 With or Without You
06 Rise Up
07 Silver and Gold
08 Wave of Sorrow (Birdland)
09 Drunk Chicken/America
10 One Tree Hill
11 Mothers of the Disappeared
Singles
- I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
- With or Without You
- Spanish Eyes
- Where the Streets Have No Name
- Bullet the Blue Sky
- Sweetest Thing
- One Tree Hill (New Zealand/Australia only)
- Silver and Gold (North America only)
- Luminous Times (Hold On To Love) (Continental Europe only)
- Wave of Sorrow (Birdland)
I imagine the release of The Joshua Tree as a double album pushed the release of Rattle and Hum to 1989.
