U2 WILL RETURN to Croke Park this summer as part of the Joshua Tree 30th anniversary tour, the band announced this morning.
The gig will take place on 22 July, according to the group’s website. Tickets go on sale next Monday, and there will be a ‘presale’ offer for subscribers to the website from this Wednesday.
The Dublin gig forms part of a North American and Europe tour to celebrate the release of their 1987 album - which saw the Dublin band elevated to superstar status, 11 years after their formation.
“Recently I listened back to The Joshua Tree for the first time in nearly 30 years… it’s quite an opera,” Bono said, in this morning’s press release.
A lot of emotions which feel strangely current, love, loss, broken dreams, seeking oblivion, polarisation… all the greats… I’ve sung some of these songs a lot… but never all of them.
I’m up for it, if our audience is as excited as we are, it’s gonna be a great night. Especially when we play at home. Croke Park – it’s where the album was born, 30 years ago.
The Edge said the band seemed to have come “full circle” from when songs like ‘Exit’, ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ and ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ were written “with global upheaval, extreme right wing politics and some fundamental human rights at risk”.
To celebrate the album – as these songs seem so relevant and prescient of these times too – we decided to do these shows, it feels right for now. We’re looking forward to it.
Album
Released to near-universal acclaim on 9 March 1987, The Joshua Tree also features U2 classics like ‘With Or Without You’, ‘I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For’ and ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’.
It went to number one in Ireland and around the world, selling in excess of 25 million albums, and catapulting Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr “… from heroes to superstars” in the words of Rolling Stone magazine.
The following 12 months would see U2 claim a Brit Award and two Grammys including album of the year, before playing shows in Dublin, Belfast and Cork.
The band’s fifth album, it was produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, and featured iconic artwork from photographer and director Anton Corbijn.
U2 shows
The group last played their home town for the Innocence & Experience tour in 2015, when they performed a string of dates in the 3Arena.
Asked whether they’d be playing their classic album in its entirety on their upcoming tour, bassist Clayton told RTÉ’s Ryan Tubridy:
The big part of this was making the decision to do it.
The concept behind it is definitely we want to play every track on the album. Until we actually get into rehearsal I can’t really be clear about how that will happen – whether it will be sequential or whether there’ll be a suite of songs or whatever.
We really need to get down there with our show directors and our ideas and figure it out.
Songs from their Innocence & Experience tour would also appear in the show, Clayton said – as the original running time for The Joshua Tree was only 45 minutes.
He also hinted that they’d be debuting some new material that would “herald the future” for U2.
- With reporting from Daragh Brophy
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