Back in 1987 U2 set off on their Joshua Tree tour, and the album of the same name has come to be their defining piece of work.

It was partly inspired by the last years of the Reagan presidency, which with the benefit of hindsight doesn’t seem all that torrid, although he was very unpopular towards the end.

Now they’re set to tour the album again, thanks to a certain sentient naartijie, and the Daily Beast have taken notice:

Flash forward to 2017, a different millennium, a vastly different world, and by few means or measures a better one. U2 decide to back-burner the album they’re working on, because Donald Trump’s ascension to the presidency has made them rethink what they should be talking about in their music.

They weren’t sure their new material appropriately addressed the menacing genie newly released from his bottle, or that a tour in support of that material this summer wouldn’t dissolve into irrelevance in these surreal mists.

At this point they remembered this was the 30th anniversary of their masterpiece. Why not tour that? Having never played the entirety of a record on tour before would be a unique selling point, and, well—here one might be guessing—they didn’t have anything better right now. That 33-date world tour begins tonight, Friday, in Vancouver.

Now you can bet the tour will come with all the frills and fuss – remember their shows here in SA pulled out all the stops – but is there really merit to touring the album again?

Not everyone thinks so:

Reagan was ideological, and I think often in misguided, retarding ways; but he was honest. And he was transparent with his social agenda (and, cough, cough, his personal finances).

The Joshua Tree symbolically became a brave reclaimer of the true American spirit, a sonic boom announcing a renewal of our vows to freedom and personal growth. It perfectly fit the times. Eventually Reagan’s America, the actual and the illusory, dissolved into myth, most of it exaggerated, and Reagan became another part of the uneven fabric that this great and still-young country is tailored from. Imperfectly, the country evolved. As it always has…

Trump, as a person, is repugnant on so many levels (I know him, by the way, so I’ve witnessed his repugnance), and as a public servant he’s a fraud who has open contempt for the institution of democracy, which he sees as a vast inconvenience to his insanely megalomaniacal view of himself. He talks so much nonsense, is so incontinent with delusional gibberish, that soon we may actually start to feel sorry for him…

U2 is still a good enough band to give us new, original songs to reflect these shameful, empty-spirited times. They should do that.

Trump might be repugnant, but he gets two scoops of vanilla ice-cream when everyone else gets one so who’s laughing now?

I’m sure U2 fans don’t give a hoot about the comparison between Reagan and Trump, so the new tour will suit them just fine.

The show will go on – with or without you.

[source:dailybeast]