One Tree Hill (song)

One Tree Hill (song)

The song was written in memory of Greg Carroll, a New Zealander the band first met in Auckland during the Unforgettable Fire Tour in 1984. Carroll was killed in July 1986 in a motorcycle accident in Dublin. The lyrics reflect Bono’s thoughts at the tangi and during his first night in New Zealand when Carroll took him up Auckland’s One Tree Hill. They also pay homage to Chilean singer-songwriter and activist Víctor Jara.

About One Tree Hill (song) in brief

Summary One Tree Hill (song)The song was written in memory of Greg Carroll, a New Zealander the band first met in Auckland during the Unforgettable Fire Tour in 1984. Carroll was killed in July 1986 in a motorcycle accident in Dublin. The lyrics reflect Bono’s thoughts at the tangi and during his first night in New Zealand when Carroll took him up Auckland’s One Tree Hill. They also pay homage to Chilean singer-songwriter and activist Víctor Jara. The vocals were recorded in a single take, as Bono felt incapable of singing them a second time. In March 1988, it was released as the fourth single from The Joshua Tree. The release charted at number one on the New Zealand Singles Chart, ending 1988 as the country’s second-most-successful hit. U2 delayed performing the song on the Joshua Tree Tour in 1987 because of Bono’s fears over his emotional state. The song was played occasionally for the rest of the tour and semi-regularly during the Lovetown Tour of 1989–1990. It has appeared only sporadically since then, and most renditions were performed in New Zealand. Performances in November 2010 on the U2 360° Tour were dedicated to the miners who died in the Pike River Mine disaster. During the Joshua tree Tours 2017 and 2019 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the album, \”One Tree Hill\” was performed at each show. The song has been described as a’soft, haunting benediction’ and a ‘celebration of life’ by some critics.

It is the ninth track on their 1987 album TheJoshua Tree. It was released in Australia and New Zealand in March 1988 and in North America in March 1989. The single was the third single from the album in Australia, and the fourth in the U.S. and North America. The track was also released in the United States and Canada in April and May 1988, and it was the fifth single in the UK in May and June 1988. It became the band’s second most-successful single in both countries, after ‘In God’s Country’ in 1987. The band has released three albums since the release of ‘The Joshua Tree’ in 1986, including ‘The Last Waltz’ and ‘The Other Side of the Sun’ in 1989 and ‘A Man Walks On A Mountain’ in 1990. The group have also released a second album, ‘The Second Half of a Dream’, in which they pay tribute to their late roadie, Greg Carroll. They have also recorded two more albums, ‘Climb’ and ‘The Other Half of the Dream’ in 2000 and ‘Sealed in Blood’ in 2002. The third album, The Second Half Of A Dream, was released on September 25, 2002. It features the song ‘The First Day of the Second Half’ and the track ‘The Third Day of The Second Part of the Third Part of The Third Part Of The Second Parts Of The Third Parts of The First Part Of the Second Part.