“Where the Streets Have No Name” is the sun coming up over The Joshua Tree. It is growing light. It is a slow awakening. It is a song that allows each member of U2 to find his role, then join forces in a rhythmic charge that would set the stage for an epic album.

Except “Where the Streets Have No Name” nearly derailed that record entirely. The guys in U2 (and their collaborative production team) have described the track’s recording as one of the most frustrating and laborious creative experiences in the band’s career.

More than a year before U2 were fussing and fighting in the studio, frontman Bono was inspired to begin writing the song’s lyrics on a trip to Ethiopia. After U2’s involvement in Live Aid, Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson, traveled in 1985 to see the situation in person. He would become profoundly influenced by the experience, struggling to put his feeling into words.

“All this stuff about deserts and the parchedness of the earth... I wrote those things on Air India sick bags and scraps of paper, sitting in a little tent in a town called Ajibar in northern Ethiopia,” Bono told Rolling Stone in 2005. “It’s a sort of odd, unfinished lyric, and outside of the context of Africa, it doesn’t make any sense. But it contains a very powerful idea. In the desert, we meet God. In parched times, in fire and flood, we discover who we are.”

But “Where the Streets Have No Name” isn’t only rooted in Africa, but in U2’s uniquely Irish identity. The title, specifically, is rooted in Northern Ireland.

“An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they’re making,” Bono said in 1987. “Literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become.”

As Bono sings in the song, “I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside,” he sought to destroy barriers between human beings. The desert images of Africa connected to his ideas of America as a political desert, something that would be embodied in the album’s artwork and title.

During a break for U2’s sessions for The Joshua Tree, guitarist the Edge was working independently on a demo. Tinkering with guitar, bass, keyboards and a drum machine, Edge became fascinated by this sketch – a tune led by twinkling, arpeggiated guitar lines that shifted time signatures, twice. The first day that recording for the next album resumed, the guitarist gleefully introduced the demo cassette. To his dismay, his bandmates weren’t quite as thrilled.

Lyrics:
I want to run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside
I wanna reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name, ha, ha, ha
I wanna feel sunlight on my face
I see that dust cloud disappear without a trace
I wanna take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name, oh, oh
Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there, I go there with you
It's all I can do
The city's a flood
And our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Trampled in dust
I'll show you a place
High on the desert plain, yeah
Where the streets have no name, oh, oh
Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there, I go there with you
It's all I can do
Our love turns to rust
We're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh, and I see love
See our love turn to rust
Oh, we're beaten and blown by the wind
Blown by the wind
Oh, when I go there
I go there with you
It's all I can do