One Tree Hill (song) - Inspiration, Writing, and Recording

Inspiration, Writing, and Recording

"They took me up to the top of a place called One Tree Hill, where a single tree stands at the top of the mount, like some stark Japanese painting, and we looked around at this city that's made by craters of volcanoes. I remember it so vividly, I think, because it meant something to me about my own freedom."

U2 first visited Australia and New Zealand in 1984 to open The Unforgettable Fire Tour. After a 24-hour flight into Auckland, lead singer Bono was unable to adjust to the time difference between New Zealand and Europe. During the night, he left his hotel room and met some people at a bar who showed him around the city. One of the locations they visited was One Tree Hill, one of Auckland's largest volcanoes. The following day, U2 were preparing for their concert when Bono noticed a local stage manager, a Māori named Greg Carroll, who he described as "this very helpful fellah running around the place". U2's manager Paul McGuinness thought Carroll was so helpful that he should accompany the band for the remainder of the tour. The group helped him obtain a passport, and he subsequently joined them on the road in Australia and the United States as their assistant. 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, 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." 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. 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 . 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. 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" they developed called Raads to record a piece created for the song. Dick Armin said, " 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.

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 Victor Jara, who become a symbol of the resistance against the Augusto Pinochet government 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 dictatorial Chilean government because his artwork criticised the Pinochet-led regime that had seized power in 1973 during the coup. 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 (English: A Truncated 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 Eno and Lanois.