"One Tree Hill" is a song by Irish rock band U2 and the ninth track on their 1987 album The Joshua Tree. In March 1988, it was released as the fourth single from the album in New Zealand and Australia, while "In God's Country" was released as the fourth single in North America. "One Tree Hill" charted at number one on the New Zealand Singles Chart and was the country's second-most-successful hit of 1988.
The track was written in memory of Greg Carroll, a New Zealander the band first met in Auckland during the Unforgettable Fire Tour in 1984. He became very close friends with lead singer Bono and later served as a roadie for the group. Carroll was killed in July 1986 in a motorcycle accident in Dublin. After Carroll's tangi (funeral) in New Zealand, Bono wrote the lyrics to "One Tree Hill" in his memory. 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. Musically, the song was developed in a jam session with producer Brian Eno. The vocals were recorded in a single take, as Bono felt incapable of singing them a second time.
"One Tree Hill" was received favourably by critics, who variously described it as "a soft, haunting benediction", "a remarkable musical centrepiece", and a celebration of life. U2 delayed performing the song on the Joshua Tree Tour in 1987 because of Bono's fears over his emotional state. After its live debut on the tour's third leg and an enthusiastic reaction from audiences, 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.
Inspiration, writing, and recording
U2 first visited Australia and New Zealand in 1984 to open The Unforgettable Fire Tour.de la Parra (2003), pp. 52–54 After a 24-hour flight into Auckland, lead singer Bono was unable to adjust to the time difference between New Zealand and Europe. He left his hotel room during the night and met some people who showed him around the city. Greg Carroll was part of that group: he had met U2's production manager Steve Iredale and been offered a job helping the band for their upcoming concert on account of Greg's experience with local rock bands. They ended up taking Bono up One Tree Hill (Maungakiekie), one of the highest – and more spiritually significant to Māori people – of Auckland's largest volcanoes.Stokes (2005), p. 74Kootnikoff (2010), p. 46 Greg worked as a stage hand gently stopping people getting on stage, and was described as "this very helpful fellah running around the place".McCormick (2006), p. 157 U2's manager Paul McGuinness thought Carroll was so helpful that he should accompany the band for the remainder of the tour.Stokes (2005), p. 75 The group helped him obtain a passport, and he subsequently joined them on the road in Australia and the United States as their assistant.McCormick (2006), p. 177 He became very close friends with Bono and his wife Ali Hewson, and following the conclusion of the tour, he worked for U2 in Dublin.
On 3 July 1986,de la Parra (2003), p. 78 just before the start of the recording sessions for The Joshua Tree, Carroll was killed in a motorcycle accident while on a courier run. A car had pulled in front of him, and unable to stop in the rain, Carroll struck the side of the car and was killed instantly. The event shocked the entire band; drummer Larry Mullen Jr. said, "his death really rocked us – it was the first time anyone in our working circle had been killed." Guitarist the Edge said, "Greg was like a member of the family, but the fact that he had come under our wing and had travelled so far from home to be in Dublin to work with us made it all the more difficult to deal with."McCormick (2006), p. 178 Bassist Adam Clayton described it as "a very sobering moment", saying, "it inspired the awareness that there are more important things than rock 'n' roll. That your family, your friends and indeed the other members of the band – you don't know how much time you've got left with them." Bono said, "it was a devastating blow. He was doing me a favour. He was taking my bike home." He later commented, "it brought gravitas to the recording of The Joshua Tree. We had to fill the hole in our heart with something very, very large indeed, we loved him so much." Accompanied by Bono, Ali, Mullen, and other members of the U2 organisation, Carroll's body was flown back to New Zealand and buried in the traditional Māori manner at Kai-iwi Marae near Whanganui, Carroll's hometown. Bono sang "Let It Be" and "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" for him at the funeral.
Shortly after returning to Dublin, Bono wrote lyrics for a song about the funeral that he titled "One Tree Hill" after the hill he remembered from his visit to Auckland in 1984. The music was developed early in the recording sessions for The Joshua Tree. The Edge said, "We were jamming with Brian [Eno]. He was playing keyboards ... we just got this groove going, and this part began to come through. It's almost highlife, although it's not African at all ... the sound was for me at that time a very elaborate one. I would never have dreamt of using a sound like that before then, but it just felt right, and I went with it." Bono recorded his vocals in a single take, as he felt that he could not sing the lyrics a second time. The Edge used a Bond Electraglide guitar to play a solo with a "heavy fuzz" sound at the end of the song. Three musicians from Toronto—Dick, Paul and Adele Armin—recorded string pieces for the song in Grant Avenue Studio in Hamilton, Ontario. In a six-hour phone call with the Edge, and under the supervision of producer Daniel Lanois, the Armins used "sophisticated 'electro-acoustic' string instrument[s]" they developed called Raads to record a piece created for the song. Dick Armin said, "[U2] were interested in using strings, but not in the conventional style of sweetening. They didn't want a 19th-century group playing behind them." Bono found the song so emotional, he was unable to listen to it after it had been recorded.Kootnikoff (2010), pp. 60–61
In the song, Bono included the lyric: "Jara sang, his song a weapon in the hands of love / You know his blood still cries from the ground". This refers to the Chilean political activist and folk singer Víctor Jara, who became a symbol of the resistance against the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship after he was tortured and killed during the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. Bono learned of Jara after meeting René Castro, a Chilean mural artist, while on Amnesty International's A Conspiracy of Hope tour. Castro had been tortured and held in a concentration camp for two years by the military because his artwork criticised the Pinochet-led regime that had seized power in 1973 during the coup.de la Parra (2003), p. 76 While purchasing a silkscreen of Martin Luther King Jr. that Castro had created, Bono noticed a print of Jara. He became more familiar with him after reading Una Canción Truncada (An Unfinished Song), written by Jara's widow Joan Turner.
"One Tree Hill" and The Joshua Tree are dedicated to Carroll's memory. The track was recorded by Flood and Pat McCarthy, mixed by Dave Meegan, and produced by Lanois and Eno.
Composition and theme
"One Tree Hill" runs for 5 minutes, 23 seconds. It is played in common time at a tempo of 120 beats per minute.Chipkin (1999), pp. 69–77 The song begins with a highlife-influenced riff by the Edge on guitar, which repeats in the background throughout the song. Percussion from drummer Larry Mullen Jr. enters after two seconds. At 0:07, a second guitar enters. At 0:15, Clayton's bass and Mullen's drums enter, and at 0:31, the verse chord progression of C–F–B–F–C is introduced. The first verse begins at 0:47. At 1:32, the song moves to the chorus, switching to a C–B–F–C chord progression. The second verse then begins at 1:49, and after the second chorus, a brief musical interlude begins at 2:36, in which the Edge's guitar is replaced by the Raad strings. The third verse begins at 3:07, and the Edge's guitar resumes at 3:38 in the chorus. A guitar solo begins at 4:16 and is played until the instrumentation comes to a close at 4:36. After two seconds of silence, the Raad strings fade in and Bono proceeds to sing the coda. The final lyric and strings fade out over the final six seconds.
Clayton called it part of a trilogy of songs on the album, along with "Bullet the Blue Sky" and "Mothers of the Disappeared", that decry the involvement of the United States in the Chilean coup. McGuinness stated that the imagery in the song described the sense of tragedy felt by the band over Carroll's death. Colm O'Hare of Hot Press believed the Edge's guitar riff personified the lyric "run like a river runs to the sea". Thom Duffy of the Orlando Sentinel felt the song reflected the seduction of a lover. Richard Harrington of The Washington Post acknowledged the tribute to Carroll, adding that it demonstrated U2's belief that music could spur change.
Like many other U2 songs, "One Tree Hill" can be interpreted in a religious manner. Hot Press editor Niall Stokes called it "a spiritual tour de force", saying "it is a hymn of praise and celebration which described the traditional Māori burial of their friend on One Tree Hill and links it poetically with themes of renewal and redemption." Beth Maynard, a Church rector from Fairhaven, Massachusetts, felt the song "vows faith in the face of loss, combining elegiac lines about a friend ... and the martyred Chilean activist and folk singer Victor Jara, with a subtle evocation of end-time redemption and a wrenching wail to God to send the pentecostal Latter Rain."Whiteley (2003), p. 170 Matt Soper, Senior Minister of the West Houston Church of Christ, believed the lyrics were an attempt by Bono to understand God's place in the world.Soper (2010), p. 72 Steve Stockman, a chaplain at Queen's University Belfast, felt that the song alluded to "transcendent places beyond the space and time of earth".Stockman (2005), p. 68 Music journalist Bill Graham noted "the lyrics, with their reference to traditional Māori burial ceremonies on One Tree Hill, indicated that the band's faith didn't exclude an empathy with others' beliefs and rituals. Their Christianity wouldn't plaster over the universal archetypes of mourning."
Release and reception