I can still remember heading over to the my neighborhood Peer Records after school to pick up a cassette copy on its release day. I had been a fan since 1983 when a buddy had played the band's War LP for me one day after junior high. I had bought their breakthrough multi-platinum release The Unforgettable Fire the following year with my allowance money (also on cassette), playing it incessantly on my Walkman to the near point of disintegration.
I hurried home that sunny March afternoon three decades ago today, closed my bedroom door, tore off the cellophane wrapper, placed my purchase in my Emerson turntable/cassette player, pressed PLAY, leaned back on my roomy double bed and embarked on an incredible 50-minute, 11-song musical journey that to this day still ranks as one of my favorites of all time.
There had been no advance singles (radio stations had been allowed to play "With Or Without You" just five days prior to the album's release) so nobody really knew what to expect upon that first listening.
The album opens with the crescendo-building, toe-tapping anthem "Where The Streets Have No Name," glides into the reflective, hand-clap-inducing "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," then segues into the haunting "With Or Without You." Talk about an opening trifecta. Those three songs, in that order, may just be the closest thing to a religious awakening I have ever experienced. I don't think I knew the album had eight more tracks until sometime around May or June.
But more great songs did indeed follow: "Bullet The Blue Sky," "Running To Stand Still," "In God's Country," "One Tree Hill" and "Exit" to name a few. In point of fact, each one of the 11 songs is a great listen, so much so the collection was named Album of the Year at the Grammys the following March.
The Joshua Tree became a cultural phenomenon, selling more than 25 million copies worldwide and elevating the four childhood friends from Ireland to rock-god status. To this day, the album is universally considered not just one of the best of the decade, but of all time.
For me, it will always take me back to that transition year of 1987, when my taste in music would evolve from pop to more thought-provoking alternative fare.
Albums like R.E.M.'s Document, The Alarm's Eye of The Hurricane, The Smiths' Strangeways Here We Come and The Joshua Tree would become my new records of choice as I shed the gumball sweetness of my early adolescence and began walking the formative path to adulthood. Ah, to be 16 again.
