By 1986, U2 had already started working with co-producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno on their third album Unforgettable Fire from 1984 and both continued with the band during the recording of The Joshua Tree. Set up at a Georgian Mansion in Rathfarnham, Ireland, the band soon began budding heads with Eno while fleshing out their opening opus “Where the Streets Have No Name.”
At one point, Eno became so frustrated with the song that he wanted the track erased so they could start it from scratch.
Though Bono initially wrote “Where the Streets Have No Name” on his way to Ethiopia, it evolved into another anthemic charge, one also inspired by a practice in Belfast, Northern Ireland, which determined a person’s income and religion by the street they lived on.
“‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ is more like the U2 of old than any of the other songs on the LP, because it’s a sketch,” said Bono in 1987. “I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling. I often feel very claustrophobic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don’t hold you down.”
Bono added, “An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they’re making—literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name.”
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