The Joshua Tree, 1987

Sometime in late 1987, I can remember exactly where I was, in the Fort Henry Mall in Kingsport. I was on a break from my warehouse job at Brendles, and, for some reason, I found myself in Record Bar checking out the latest releases. It is weird to think about it, but there were still racks of LP’s available for sale. (CD’s were expensive and reserved in a special section near the front of the store.) It was in the very back that I came across an album just washed out and existential enough to catch my attention. The album was entitled, The Joshua Tree. I thought, “What kind of music is this?”

Wes and I had been trading music back and forth for several years. He and I were mutually supportive hedonists of the senses. We would get together and write, discuss, draw, lampoon and generally spur one another on toward all things creative. The liberal arts were our playground. (Really, it was the meaning and mystery of being which fascinated us and brought us together, but we didn’t know this directly, though we were never indirectly unaware of it.) Wes was the first person I knew to own a CD player, and he would regale me at school with his listening experiences and share them on evenings spent just hanging out in his room. I remember, for example, his telling me about listening to the entire length of Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazade (now a personal favorite). Somehow or another, Wes purchased a copy of The Joshua Tree on CD. He made me a cassette copy of the same on a lovely 90-minute Capsule Maxell (the Rolls of commercial blank cassettes) and we listened to The Joshua Tree every day for the next four years.

Around this same time, two other important things happened in my musical world. First, I decided to invest in an expensive car stereo system. I owned a hatchback 1979 Toyota Celica, and my friends and I spent a lot of time in it going from place to place and generally staying “out there” rather than at home. The entire city had, overnight, become our living rooms, and we enjoyed trying out the furniture. All this time was usually spent listening to music, which was okay until the factory sound system chewed itself to bits one afternoon. Wes and I spent a weekend upside down pulling that deck out, but eventually, looking all the world like a surgeon, electronics, knobs, rubber wheels and bits of metal spilling out all over his kitchen table, Wes pronounced it hopeless. I had to agree. I decided to set aside some of my paycheck for a few months and buy a really good sound system. We knew a guy who could install it, and we had plenty of questions over the next few months for the tech guys at audio sound places all over town. In the end, I put a $1,000 Alpine system into that car. I had a cabinet built for the speakers, to which were also attached two Bazooka subwoofers. Mmmmm, that was great! I remember telling my Dad during a “is this fiscally responsible?” discussion: “Dad, of course this isn’t the smartest thing to do! However, I am never going to be able to throw this much money away again ever in my life -- I may as well do it now on something I will enjoy.” My Maxell copy of The Joshua Tree was the first thing I played on the Alpine. I can’t tell you what it felt like to feel the opening chords of “Where the Streets Have No Name” slowly boil up from the bottom of the seats in a rolling crescendo of frenetic wonder. It was like the Kingdom of God! There was no comparing the sound of the cardboard factory install of before, to the calibrated, Alpine clarity of the now. Overnight my tastes began to change. Metal proved too crude, too unwashed next to the singular balance of those speakers. You could hear everything. Every layer of sound was available, and seemed to lie effortlessly, beautifully together. Heavy Metal was like a stone against stained glass. I started listening to a lot of classical music. The Joshua Tree, however, didn’t just sound good in the new system, it became a well of musical secrets and apocalyptic meaning. It expanded out into a world, and left most everything else behind it. Looking back, you could say that I purchased that Alpine system to please my friends or myself, to ease the pain from losing my first girlfriend, or to exercise my new sense of economic power and independence. You could say all of these: but I wonder if it wasn’t just to listen to The Joshua Tree.

The second thing: Wes and I decided to form a band.