“As a student of non-violence I had a violent reaction to what I was witnessing,” he explains. “I used the language of the Scripture to describe the situation: ‘In the howling wind comes a stinging rain / See it driving nails /Into the souls in the tree of pain / From a firefly, a red orange glow / See the face of fear / Running scared on the valley below/ Bullet the blue sky.”Īs for the character Bono created that’s described in the lyrics as having a “face red like a rose in a thorn bush” and who’s “peeling off those dollar bills”? That was Ronald Reagan. He then went on to explain how the lyrics developed. “We strapped my feelings to the song ‘Bullets the Blue Sky,” he recounts. He spoke with Edge about what he’d been through in El Salvador, and with a “nod to Jimi Hendrix,” Edge put the “fear and loathing” into his guitar solo on the song. “And it upset me as a person who read the Scriptures, to think that Christians in America were supporting this kind of thing, this kind of proxy war because of these Communists.” Later he adds, “I was not a Communist, but I felt it was wrong.” And while he says he didn’t feel they were in danger at the time, he knew lives were being lost nearby. “I remember the ground shaking and I remember the smell I suppose of being near a war zone,” the singer recalls. The small group he was with went into the country’s hills. Bono says he visited with some Americans who were “offering solace to refugees in the war in El Salvador.” In the clip, Bono details his visit to El Salvador in 1986, which culminated in the band crafting “Bullet the Blue Sky.” At the time, Ronald Reagan was president and the U.S. Musically, myriad U2 songs also reflect their activism, including The Joshua Tree‘s “Bullet the Blue Sky.” In the new video above, Bono discusses the origins of the 1987 song. Among their many charitable works, they’ve been involved in the ONE campaign, which fights extreme poverty, and RED, which provides help for AIDS drugs in Africa. Then, I take solace in the knowledge that at least for a while, we shared the same sky.Throughout U2‘s career, they’ve been human rights activists, both through music and deed. When the day finally fades into inky darkness, I stop and think of you and the stories you once told me about them stars that come out just to twinkle. And every now and again, we're treated to a deliciously sweet sherbet swirled finale. I swear, the sight is enough to stun anyone into some sacred kinda silence. "The golden hour" hazily blankets us in warm molten copper that coats the hillside and houses overlooking the bluff. Around mid-day, the heavens become an electric blue expanse, dappled with white puffs jutting up against jagged evergreen horizons. Slowly, in the east, the sun rises in blazing auburn, orange, and crimson, spilling over dried grasses. Summer days stretch out long enough to make the night almost useless, since morning arrives smack dab in the dead of it. Spokane - the immemorial inhabitants tell me it means "Children of the sun," and Will, I mean to tell ya that name is as beautiful as it is apt. Those heathens are far too close to the crystalline river that flows right through this city. The constant churn of expansion and extraction kicks up endless dirt, grit and dust. Greedy desperate speculators trying to grab and gussy up land that ain't theirs and that's already gorgeous. Sure is nice to escape the noise and those causing it.
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