Joshua Tree 25

Until the release of Joshua Tree my favorite song was Bad. Let it go .. uh huh and so fade away.. walk away. Exactly what I did. I walked away from an abusive, unfaithful husband. The excitement surrounding the release of U2's new cassette was such a bright spot for me at this time. Back then we got our music at Music Stores! There was a hippie music store in Old Town Auburn that I would get lost in for hours. Remember when you would put on the head phones to sample an album?

When I got off work that Monday night, March 9, 1987, I went straight to the shop where the displays were so awesome! When I bought my tape I also bought a Joshua Tree Patch. The patch was big enough to plaster all over the back of a jacket. So I went straight to Daughtrey's Department Store and bought a black denim jacket especially for my patch. The jacket was snug because I was six months pregnant with my son. I still wear this 25 years later. The One pin was just added last year.

I played this tape in the car every day for my hour commute down to Sacramento to work. I would bring it in the house and play it on my boom box. It even brought it to the American river the whole summer while my sister in law Connie and I grew bigger and bigger with our boys in our bellies! They were due 8 days apart. Her's was called Jimmy and mine was to be Joshua Sean.

Because I grew up in Joshua Tree country in the Mojave Desert I was fascinated that this Irish band was so enchanted by our trees. The first single was 'With our Without You'. This song completely encapsulated my life and my relationship with my hubby. And 'Bullet the Blue Sky' was so pertinent to the Iran-Contra affair and times as I watched the whole trial with Oliver North that summer.

MLK was little Patrick's lullaby, I felt the tenderness of Bono's voice.

Hanging a Trabant in Dublin

Zoo TV was a show that I missed.  This was U2's next concert after the earth shattering Joshua Tree exploded into the world. At the Oakland show in November 1987 I promised myself that I would never miss a show. When the opened the tour in Florida they played only two dates in the whole state, Lakeland and Miami. I was living on a barrier Island in NW Florida and couldn't go to them 6 hours away. I was newly divorced and raising two babies while owning and running my own boat maintenance business. On both those dates in Feb/Mar I did play the Achtung Baby CD and drank loads of Jameson's. And I cried. Why couldn't they play in Pensacola. That was only an hour and a half?!

I was in the West of Ireland in the fall of 2005. My friend Steve called me from Dublin to invite me on a unique opportunity. Steve worked for Derek Behan Towing and Garage as a tow truck driver. They had been hired to pick up a crated Trabant from the ZooTV tour at the port and deliver to the newly opened Hard Rock Cafe. This particular car had been sitting in storage in Amsterdam for many years. Hard Rock paid 20,000 British pounds to display it in their Dublin location.

Of course Steve knew that I would want to be a part of the pick up so he told me to hope a train first thing in the morning. After a 5 hour train ride I arrived in Heuston Station where Steve picked me up. He had already picked up the Trabbie, so we headed to the Temple Bar district to the Hard Rock. We got there in the early evening and parked right beside the doors of the front entrance on the little single lane. We were then told to stand by as the Cafe must be closed to customers before we could bring the car inside. So we waited until 10:00 pm.

The Trabbie was in a wooden crate on it's side but the slats were sparse so you could see the pink car. I could see the little paintings and the ZooTV licence plate. This was cool! How lucky was I? The crate had these little wheels on it so you could just roll it along once it was set off the bed of the truck.It's surprising how tiny it is. The motor had been removed so it was super light.  It was a nice night with decent weather. The light drizzle had stopped and loads of people were pub crawling.  Several folks began to surround the truck and ask questions about the little car. So Steve and I sat on the edge of the bed and chatted with all the tourists about the car and the tour and U2 in general. One guy was so drunk that he started yelling, " Bono, Bono come down from there and have a pint with me!"

The Hard Rock had to hire a contractor to hang the car up on the ceiling just in the entrance. This posed a big  problem as there is a stairway going down to the restaurant so there is not floor under the ceiling where they wanted the car. Bob, the contractor explained that he would remove the glass and brass surrounding the stairs and then build a false floor to stand on. Then they would install a pulley into the roof rafters to hoist the car up and into position. Bob had five guys to help him.

I stayed out of the way, wandering about the cafe taking pictures of Bono's blue Bvlgari glasses. I was disappointed they didn't have more Irish born musician items. What about Van Morrison or Bob Geldolf, Sinead O'Connor and Sharon Corr? Maybe it was just too new and they were working on this? I can't stand cookie cutter chain conglomerates with little local flare.

This project went on and on into the night. The pubs closed up for the night and the pedestrians stopped crawling. The lights were turned off up and down Fleet Street. I talked with the guys while they worked and even helped removing the fiberglass panels and brass rails. The manager kept my diet coke class full for me and Steve was outside freight train smoking. The little pink car was held up by all of us until Bob secured it in place. What a perfect home for this world wide traveler. The electrical was plugged in and we all stood back to see if we had lift off ... and on came the headlights! I missed the tour but I had the pleasure to met their baby pink Trabbie!

There are other Trabant's about the world. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has several:

Me at the Hall of Fame in Cleveland, my birthplace, (another story) 2009:

Hard Rock Cafe Berlin has this one:

The pictures I took from this night are in storage at Steve's in Dublin. We will dig them out this summer and post here. I would love your feedback!

Bono designed a T-shirt for the Hard Rock, signature series 25, adding 'Fish can Fly' made by Edun available here:
http://www.hardrock.com/promo/sig25/

Under a Blood Red Sky

It was in the spring of 1984 that I first laid eyes on Bono.  MTV was on in my house in Lancaster, California. From the kitchen I heard this drum beat and wild guitar that I hadn't heard before.  I ran into the living room to see who this band was playing this wicked rock. There was Edge and Bono under a blood red sky in the cool mist of an outdoor pavilion with flames all around. My heart was beating fast as I got down on my knees right up under the TV. What was he lamenting about? How long? This is amazing and I must know what he is singing about. The marching and skipping around.  He was so foxy, pushing that mullet hair away from his face had me hooked.  Then out comes the flag of surrender. Whatever he was dying for I wanted in.  I wanted in the sound. The VJ (can't rermember which one) said that was 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' by an Irish band called U2!

MTV was on in my house 24/7. My uncle Wally was a manager for the local cable company.  He had us over to his house to check out the cable channels in 1980 just after I graduated from high school. Then in July of '81 he called me to come over to see the new music channel premier on August 1, 1981. Wally knew I was a music fanatic, since I ran away from home to see my first concert in LA at the Forum when I was 16 years old. Bad Company-Desolation Angels. This show blew my mind with the lights and sound! Video Killed the Radio Star was the first video they played.  Music now had a new dimension. It used to be that you would imagine the song direction and what the artist was sharing with you. Now you could see the artist's vision or the band playing.  You could see their faces and instruments. I remember we were hypnotized by the videos.
My mom was a rocker so music was always on in our house growing up. I have an old picture of my sister and brother that I took when I first started taking an interest in photography. They are sitting by the stereo and between Rachelle and John is the eye of David Essex looking out from the hole in the album jacket sleeve. David Essex sang 'Rock On' which must have been spinning at the time.  Up on the wall are album covers pinned up as pictures. There is Deep Purple, Iron Butterfly, Janis Joplin and a few others. I need to find the picture to post here.

Once I heard that U2 was Irish I had to buy the record. War was my first U2 record. I had a big interest in everything Irish. After all it was only a few years earlier that I learned  my dad was really my step-dad. My mom told me that my real dad was Thomas Murphy. I was Irish, not Italian.  So all my studies turned from Italy to Ireland. I wanted to move to Ireland and marry an Irish farmer so we could have lots of dogs and horses.

What a funny name U2 was to me.  Growing up in the mojave desert I was around the aircraft industry all the time.  Most of my friends worked for Lockheed or Rockwell.  Nasa was just 30 miles away. So I new about and saw planes test flying overhead all the time. There would be sonic booms. This is where the sound barrier would be broken and you would hear a big bang. I couldn't figure out why these Irish guys would name there band after the U2 spy plane?

MTV played Sunday Bloody Sunday in heavy rotation so I got to see the video a few times a day. I was 21 and dating my crush from high school, Tim Murphy. Bono made me want to go to Ireland and join the cause. I wanted to be involved in any way that I could. I went to the library and read any book that I could find on the 'Troubles' and the IRA. That song changed my life. I became aware of a world outside of the mojave desert and the joshua trees and tumble weeds.



Here is a fabulous article on the history of the song. http://consequenceofsound.net/2009/11/rock-history-101-u2s-sunday-bloody-sunday/