U2 work the crowd on stage during the first Auckland show on their 360deg World Tour. Photo / File
U2 work the crowd on stage during the first Auckland show on their 360deg World Tour. Photo / File
This summer the Chronicle is bringing you another look at some of the best content of 2019. This story originally ran on May 31, 2019
U2's album The Joshua Tree is one of the world's top-selling albums, but what many of the band's global fans don't know is thatit holds a special significance to New Zealand.
When the album was released in March of 1987, it topped the charts in more than 20 countries and became the fastest-selling album in British history.
It took the Irish band from local heroes to superstars and won them a Grammy Award for album of the year and Best Rock performance by a Group in 1988.
It produced the hit singles With or Without You, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and Where The Streets Have No Name.
Cover of U2's album The Joshua Tree
But it's the song One Tree Hill which has special significance not just to New Zealand, but also to my home town of Whanganui.
Bono wrote the song about his personal assistant Greg Carroll who came from Whanganui but was sadly killed in a motorcycle accident in Dublin in 1986. He was just 26.
Bono met Greg Carroll on U2's first trip to New Zealand in 1984 for the Unforgettable Fire tour.
Bono wrote the song One Tree Hill about his personal assistant Greg Carroll who came from Whanganui. Photo / YouTube.
While they were in Auckland, Bono went out on the town with a group of locals who wanted to show them around Auckland.
One of the locals was Carroll, who had been hired by the band as a roadie for the tour.
They took Bono up One Tree Hill.
That midnight excursion up One Tree Hill left a lasting impression on the Irish singer and so when Bono received the tragic news of his close friend's death he penned the song One Tree Hill following the tangi in Whanganui on July 10, 1986, which Bono and other U2 band members attended.
If you check the liner notes on the back cover of the album it reads, To The Memory of Greg Carroll 1960-1986.
