The Joshua Tree

Brian Eno nearly erased "Where The Streets Have No Name." The band had been working on the song for so long, revising it and tearing it apart and rebuilding it so many times, that Eno became convinced they had ruined it and announced he was going to stage an accident to wipe the tape. He couldn't go through with it. The song became one of the most recognizable openings in rock history.

The Joshua Tree was recorded across a Georgian mansion in Rathfarnham, Ireland and The Edge's newly purchased home on the coast of Dublin, with producers Eno and Daniel Lanois working in rotating shifts. The whole record was chasing a sound both men described as cinematic, something that felt like open American space translated into music made by Irish musicians who had fallen in love with a country that kept disappointing them up close. Bono had traveled through Central America, watched American military policy turn lives into rubble, and came back radicalized. The Edge had a prototype Infinite Guitar with a sustain pickup that could hold notes indefinitely, and the sound it made on "With or Without You" was discovered almost by accident in the control room. The band had been on the road since Live Aid, had grown from a cult act into an arena phenomenon, and now needed an album to match the size of the moment they found themselves in.

It became the fastest-selling album in British chart history at the time of release. It topped the charts in more than twenty countries and put U2 on the cover of Time magazine with the headline "Rock's Hottest Ticket." "With or Without You," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," and "Where The Streets Have No Name" arrived in the same calendar year as three consecutive number ones. This is the record that confirmed there was no ceiling.