U2 to Hit Houston and Dallas on Tour Celebrating 'The Joshua Tree'

HOUSTON, TX — On March 9, 1987, an album was released that changed music. It was U2’s "The Joshua Tree," a dense, soulful, intelligent and critical look at America through the band’s sensibilities. It was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the US Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry.

Now, 30 years on, the band is touring to commemorate the anniversary of the album, which has sold more than 25 million copies to date worldwide, and Bono, the Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen, Jr., have promised to play every song on the album at every gig on the tour, which hits Houston’s NRG Stadium on Wednesday, May 24.

Tickets for The Joshua Tree tour go on sale to the public on Monday, January 16 (presales begin on Wednesday, January 11), and the show — not to mention the tour — will be a sure sellout.

The album is U2’s most acclaimed, and gave them their most commercial success thus far. It includes “With or Without You” and “Where the Streets Have No Name,” but two of the great tracks on the work, which was produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois.

Guitarist The Edge spoke recently about the album, and the upcoming tour, with Rolling Stone:

“So we looked at American [music]. We looked at the blues. We looked at the New Journalism. I remember that myself and Bono were reading Flannery O'Connor, the Southern writers. It was a conscious effort to look across the Atlantic and to start to explore America. I mean, for someone from Ireland, it is a vast source of ideas and aspirations and inspirations and generations, America being the Promised Land. We're looking at it in that regard, but also at what America really was. I read about the Soledad Brothers. I read about the Black Panthers. We were exploring America from all kinds of angles. And this time was a Reagan moment where, in some ways, the vision of what America would be seemed under threat. The America of Thomas Jefferson, the America of John F. Kennedy, these were visionaries talking about the ideals of what America can be. We were grappling with those big ideas and now here we are again. It's crazy.”

This tour will also be crazy, but in a good way.

Here’s the full tour schedule:

May 12: Vancouver, BC Place Stadium

May 14: Seattle, CenturyLink Field

May 17: Santa Clara, Cal., Levi's Stadium

May 20: Los Angeles, Rose Bowl

May 24: Houston, NRG Stadium

May 26: Dallas, AT&T Stadium

June 3: Chicago, Soldier Field

June 7: Pittsburgh, Heinz Field

June 8-11: Manchester, Tenn. Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival, M

June 11: Miami, Hard Rock Stadium

June 14: Tampa, Raymond James Stadium

June 18: Philadelphia, Lincoln Financial Field

June 20: Washington, D.C., FedEx Field

June 23: Toronto, Rogers Centre

June 25: Boston, Gillette Stadium

June 28: East Rutherford, N.J. MetLife Stadium

July 1: Cleveland, First Energy Stadium