Song Analysis: “Red Hill Mining Town”*

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HelloAngel

ONE love, blood, life
Joined
Sep 22, 2001
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Location
new york city
By Carrie Alison
Chief Editor
2004.09



You can almost see the sun rise over Red Hill Town as Edge’s opening guitar chords signify a new day. You can see men with 5 o’clock shadows sleepily getting into their trucks, coffee thermos in hand, lunch box on the passenger seat as they make their way through town for another day at the coal factory. This is a town that has seen more than its share of Great Depressions–the layoffs, the payoffs, the protests, the unbearable winters, the factory closings, the vacant Main Street, the spring carnival that has to go on because the town folk really need it to go on.

In his book, “Into the Heart: The Stories Behind Every U2 Song,” author Niall Stokes reports that the origins of “Red Hill Mining Town,” an album track off of “The Joshua Tree,” can be traced to Bono’s empathy for a small town engulfed by the drama of a miners’ strike, and the heartbreak that lost wages and protests can wreak on families just trying to keep it together. The lyrical nugget of the song itself was created for Bono in light of a mid-‘80s miner's strike in Britain and after forming a friendship with Bob Dylan and the famously blue-collar storyteller Bruce Springsteen. It was through these friendships that Bono learned of the great tradition of labor songs.

The opening couplet of “Red Hill” begins:
From father to son
The blood runs thin
See faces frozen still
Against the wind


The imagery is stark, you can feel the veritable chill in the air. Perhaps the father in the song is on a local board that is making decisions on whether or not to close the last remaining coal mine in Red Hill Town. If the factory closes, the son might be out of work, leaving his family destitute ahead of a long winter. The “faces frozen still” evoke a scene of protestors standing outside the board’s building, waiting for a decision to come down to let them know if they all will have jobs come Monday.

The seam is split
The coal face cracked
The lines are long
There's no going back
Through hands of steel
And heart of stone
Our labor day
Has come and gone


Despite an impending decision, and what that means for the coal miners and their families, the show must go on, the workers arrive for duty. You can see the miners hard at work, deep in a cave, hat lights shining, swinging their pick axes, silently grinding their teeth at the fact that despite how hard they toil, despite the dangers they face down in the caves–nothing will stop the corruption of the local board’s decision to close the coal mine in favor of making profit on the land.

Hanging on
You're all that's left to hold on to
I'm still waiting
I'm hanging on
You're all that's left to hold on to


The glass is cut
The bottle run dry
Our love runs cold
In the caverns of the night
We're wounded by fear
Injured in doubt
I can lose myself
You I can't live without


Here, Bono seems to split the scene. On one side, possibly exploring the complicated relationship between father and son, and on the other side, a wife waiting at home, hoping against hope that the factory won’t close, that her husband is safe down in the dark caves, and that the family, and town, has nothing to fear. Tensions are high, money worries are paramount, and the nights are colder and colder as winter approaches Red Hill Town.

The husband arrives home, exhausted, face black from coal, not knowing if this was his last day of work. He reaches for the bottle of whiskey in the cupboard, and empties it into his tarry throat. The bottle crashes to the floor as he weeps into his hands and beckons his wife to hold him close. Whispering platitudes, but secretly knowing to expect the worst, she tells her husband that the family will stick together no matter what happens with the coalmines and his corrupt father.

We'll scorch the earth
Set fire to the sky
We stoop so low to reach so high


Perhaps one of the most beloved phrasings in U2’s lyrical canon, this is Bono comparing the “scorched-earth policy” of the board, (destroying everything everyone has worked for in the town) and what must be their modus operandi for turning the coal miners’ sorrows into money for the town, even if jobs are lost and lives are ruined. Is it that the town must crawl before it walks, or is it that the town has to hit bottom before it sees an economic boom again?

A link is lost
The chain undone
We wait all day
For night to come
And it comes
Like a hunter child

Love...slowly stripped away
Love...has seen its better day

Hanging on
The lights go out on Red Hill
The lights go down on Red Hill


Economic and emotional tensions wreak havoc on the family, ruining the father/son dynamic forever. The family waits as the town waits for the board’s decision. Days run into nights, hours tick by as snow begins to fall on Red Hill Town. Families huddle by fireplaces to receive warmth as they speak of holiday plans and hold on – love for each other is all they have left to hold onto.

This is but one interpretation of the events and relationships depicted in “Red Hill Mining Town.” Sadly, U2 fans will never have a visual representation of this powerful story as the band decided against releasing the Neil Jordan-directed clip for the song, claiming they were unhappy with the video said to have featured the band dressed as coal miners. For all of Bono’s passion for the plight of the coalminer, and his heartfelt performance of the song on record, U2 have never visited “Red Hill Mining Town” in concert. Perhaps in the future U2 will dig out this poignant gem so that we can all find out how the story ends.
 
Hey Carrie, I just came across your story for Red Hill. Excellent work! Have you done such stories around other U2 songs? How about one for Running To Stand Still (or other JT songs & JT b-sides)?
 
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