"Where the Streets Have No Name"

There’s something special about the song “Where the Streets Have No Name.”  It’s a tune that The Edge sat down and crafted with the thought in mind, “If I were a U2 fan, what kind of song would I want to hear at a concert.”  And so he came up with the dramatic slow wash of the opening chords which gradually give way to his chiming guitar which in turn launches the hard driving rhythm of the entire band in full force.

In his just released memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, Bono says this about the song:

“We must have played it a thousand times, and no matter how shite a show, how off form the band or, more likely, the singer, to this day when we play ‘Streets,’ it’s as if God walks through the room.”

Bono drew the lyrics of the song from words and phrases that came to him while visiting Ethiopia at the height of the famine there.  He found it bizarre that “fifteen years later a car company offered us $23 million to use ‘Streets’ in a commercial.  I won’t say we didn’t agonize.  But not for that long.  It was a preposterous amount of money to turn down, especially as we could have given it away.  But turn it down we did based on one comment out of the side of the mouth of a great friend and champion, [record producer] Jimmy Iovine.

“‘You can take the deal,’ he said. “But you just have to prepare for that moment when [the audience stops thinking] “God walks through the room” [and starts thinking] “Oh, they’re playing that car ad.”’”

. . . .

It’s a great story.  One that I’d love to tell when we play this song a week from tonight at the Joliet Area Historical Museum (on February 17th).  But I’ve got an even better story to tell you then.