Where the Streets Have No Name...

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I think I remember reading somewhere about it having to do with Ethiopia, but I am not sure!

Maybe I dreamed it or something...does anybody else have an idea?

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Katherine@U2mail.org
http://Bonochick.tripod.com
 
Hey Bonochick, you're right...Bono and Ali took a trip in the mid-late 80's to Ethiopia. It was a missionary trip. Bono said that when they arrived and stayed in Ethiopia they didn't experience culture shock. It was when he and Ali came back that it set in!

Keep in mind, the song was inspired by that trip. Its not actually about Ethiopia. They went to Ethiopia and saw the struggle to survive day by day, meal to meal. then they came back to Ireland and saw people taking advantage of one another, greed setting in all over the place, and materialistic acts. That would surely bring culture shock to me!

I figure I'll give my interpretation of the song while i'm here....

Bono says "I want to run, I want to hide...want to tear down the walls that hold me inside." We all have walls in our lives. Not literally walls, but things that block us from doing things. Whether it be where you're from, your boss, your wife...

Keeping in mind Bono talks about longing for heaven or some sort of higher place where he can escape the problems of the world....he sings "I want to feel, sunlight on my face, See that dust cloud disappear without a trace, I want to take shelter from the poison rain, Where the streets have no name" In that verse he thinks everything will work out when he reaches that place where the streets have no name.

Throughout the song Bono sings about a bad thing or two, and then a positive thing which will happen when he reaches that place he desires so much. Take a look at your CD insert.

If that's not enough, look at the songs played/transitioned into Streets. Running to Stand Still, Please, Bad. All songs that deal with a struggle, a longing for revival and peace. I especially like Streets on Popmart when Bono says "I'll show you a place, its hiiiiigh hiiiiiiigh" and motions upward with his hand and looks at Edge...throughtout the song the white lights are flashing and at the end the angels and doves appear on the big screen. Truly a masterpiece and a song describing U2's music.
 
Zoomeranger... wonderful what you posted. We talked about those lyrics in an English class a couple days after I read this, and I forgot to come back and post what I thought. I told the story about the trip and what he was thinking when they came back, and the class looked at me like... are you crazy? It wasn't until half the class went on to a missionary trip to Mexico that they knew what Bono was talking about.



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En bl? ?gat pojke tr?ffar en brun ?gad flicka... det vackraste som finns.
"On to the crusades of being a U2 fan... demolish the evils of society with a little bit of rattle 'n' hum!!"
 
In the song Running to Stand Still, it mentions the 7 towers, which is a reference to back in Dublin, the 7 towers there. They explain it in books, and on the U2 dvd.

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Youth is wasted on the young.....well then....
Life is wasted on the living!
Joey Joe Joe Junior Schoobaloob
 
From u2.com:

"Where the Streets Have No Name is more like the U2 of old than any of the other songs on the LP, because it?s a sketch - I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling. I often feel very claustrophic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don?t hold you down.

"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 - literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. You can almost tell what the people are earning by the name of the street they live on and what side ot that street they live on. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name...."

Bono, speaking to Propaganda 5, 1987
 
Originally posted by Giant Lemon:
From u2.com:

"Where the Streets Have No Name is more like the U2 of old than any of the other songs on the LP, because it?s a sketch - I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling. I often feel very claustrophic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don?t hold you down.

"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 - literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. You can almost tell what the people are earning by the name of the street they live on and what side ot that street they live on. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name...."

Bono, speaking to Propaganda 5, 1987


So I was almost right...he say's in the song:
"still building, then burning down love".. I seem to recall that meaning something about knocking down old communities, re-housing people away from friends & families.

something along those sort of lines anyway.

"Beaten & blown by the wind (tower blocks), trampled in dust (rubble)"
 
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