The Making Of U2"s "The Joshua Tree": The Havoc Known As Heroin
U2's classic "The Joshua Tree" had a tender little song tucked right behind the soaring Jimi Hendrix-style "Bullet the Blue Sky".
It was "Running to Stand Still", a song about the destruction that heroin can cause.
Obviously it wasn't the first song written on the subject.
Many songs come to mind, such as The Clash's "Hateful" ("It's hateful, and I'm so grateful to be nowhere) and Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done" ("Every junkie's like a setting sun.
").
Yet I personally can't remember a song with this gentle a tone to it.
The song grew out of Bono's personal experience.
No, he hadn't used heroin but he grew up next to the infamous Ballymun flats.
These were seven high-rise residential towers built in the 1960's when Bono was very young.
He had even played in the towers foundations when they were being built and used their elevators.
Alas, the towers ended up becoming the local "Hell's Kitchen", a dilapidated haven for drug users that reeked of urine and vomit.
The title itself actually originated elsewhere.
One day Bono asked his brother how business was going and his brother, who was struggling, replied, "It's like running to stand still" (maybe his brother was thinking of the classic line from Alice in Wonderland "It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place").
Bono had never heard this saying and, in thinking about it later, realized that it beautifully described what heroin could do to people.
This is what helped give rise to the lyric, "You got to cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice.
" But the real subjects of the song were the victims of a heroin epidemic that was sweeping Dublin in the 1980s.
One couple in particular that Bono had heard about left a lasting impression.
It seems there was a couple who lived in the Ballymun flats, both addicts, who were so destitute that just to survive the man actually began smuggling heroin as well as using it.
Rather than condemn the couple Bono felt moved to simply paint a softer, more humane picture of the dead-end that heroin leads to.
Thus the powerful line, "I see seven towers but I only see one way out.
" As we all know the only "way out" is to find a way to stop using the drug.
If only it were as simple as that.
Regardless of whatever reason an addict begins using heroin they'll usually continue to use, not so much because they desire the high but to avoid the frightening plethora of symptoms of withdrawal.
It was "Running to Stand Still", a song about the destruction that heroin can cause.
Obviously it wasn't the first song written on the subject.
Many songs come to mind, such as The Clash's "Hateful" ("It's hateful, and I'm so grateful to be nowhere) and Neil Young's "The Needle and the Damage Done" ("Every junkie's like a setting sun.
").
Yet I personally can't remember a song with this gentle a tone to it.
The song grew out of Bono's personal experience.
No, he hadn't used heroin but he grew up next to the infamous Ballymun flats.
These were seven high-rise residential towers built in the 1960's when Bono was very young.
He had even played in the towers foundations when they were being built and used their elevators.
Alas, the towers ended up becoming the local "Hell's Kitchen", a dilapidated haven for drug users that reeked of urine and vomit.
The title itself actually originated elsewhere.
One day Bono asked his brother how business was going and his brother, who was struggling, replied, "It's like running to stand still" (maybe his brother was thinking of the classic line from Alice in Wonderland "It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place").
Bono had never heard this saying and, in thinking about it later, realized that it beautifully described what heroin could do to people.
This is what helped give rise to the lyric, "You got to cry without weeping, talk without speaking, scream without raising your voice.
" But the real subjects of the song were the victims of a heroin epidemic that was sweeping Dublin in the 1980s.
One couple in particular that Bono had heard about left a lasting impression.
It seems there was a couple who lived in the Ballymun flats, both addicts, who were so destitute that just to survive the man actually began smuggling heroin as well as using it.
Rather than condemn the couple Bono felt moved to simply paint a softer, more humane picture of the dead-end that heroin leads to.
Thus the powerful line, "I see seven towers but I only see one way out.
" As we all know the only "way out" is to find a way to stop using the drug.
If only it were as simple as that.
Regardless of whatever reason an addict begins using heroin they'll usually continue to use, not so much because they desire the high but to avoid the frightening plethora of symptoms of withdrawal.
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