[www.forbes.com]



When U2 released The Joshua Tree in 1987, Reagan-era America seemed like a divided, angry country. Of course, thirty years later, in Trump’s America, 1987 America now feels like a rainbow coalition of puppies and magical unicorns and ice cream falling from the sky as we all sing in joyful unison like a 1970s Coke commercial.

Looking back on 1987 when U2 released The Joshua Tree it now seems like such a more innocent time, in so many respects, including for U2. This was the album that took the four lads from Ireland from the cusp of rock stardom to the biggest band in the world, a title they have held unchallenged now for more than two decades.

So, as the band is celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the Grammy-winning Album Of The Year that has sold more than 25,000,000 copies worldwide on a global trek, it is, of course, an exercise in nostalgia for simpler times for music, the world and for the vast majority of the fans who recall a day when there was no “adulting.”

As an exercise in nostalgia, the tour, which rolled into Los Angeles’ Rose Bowl for two nights to play for more than 180,000 fans, is almost unmatchable. Filled with songs such as “Where The Streets Have No Name” and “With Or Without You” that defined their era, the album is practically a time capsule by itself.

To U2’s credit though, they have no interest in being their own tribute band. This is not an act that wants to take victory laps and bask in past triumphs. If The Joshua Tree didn’t feel relevant, both globally and musically, in 2017, this tour doesn’t happen. If America didn’t need the wake-up call that Bono delivered so powerfully and movingly in the night’s highlight, a stirring rendition of 1984’s “Bad,” they would not have been on the Rose Bowl stage that night.

How do we know this? Two things: they ended the show with a freaking new song! The second is Bono said so, saying at one point during the stunning “Miss Sarajevo,” they will not leave the country as they found it.

It’s a bold statement, one that U2 have been making for decades. And that is why they do rub some people the wrong way. I have met Bono, I have met almost every rock star on the planet, from Mick Jagger and Neil Young to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. There isn’t another rock star like Bono, he carries himself with the gravitas of a politician. But one thing about him, he believes as deeply in the things he says and the causes he champions as anyone can. So when he says, “The government should fear it’s citizens, not the other way around,” he feels that 100 percent. When he dedicates “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” to “The great women we know,” he is not saying this for posturing, it is because he believes women should be celebrated. When he dedicates arguably The Joshua Tree’s best song, the impassioned, soaring “One Tree Hill” to late Soundgarden and Audioslave singer Chris Cornell, who Bono described as “Brilliant and beautiful,” you can hear the same anguish in his tone every music fan has been struggling with for the last week.