Searching For U2′s Joshua Tree

I guess we could say “I found what I was looking for.”

Visiting Vegas with my patient wife Lisa for a series of professional workshops and job fair lasting several days, I sat down at the computer and started researching things to do there, in addition to gambling. Lisa had the idea to drive from Las Vegas to San Diego to attend a friend’s wedding in the days after the workshop and fly home from there. She suggested we could see the scenery and visit the Joshua Tree National Park. Cool, I thought.

So, my first search was “Joshua tree.” Since I’m a pretty sizeable fan of the Irish rock band U2, I noticed immediately the search responses relating to their hit album of the late 80s, The Joshua Tree. There were several of photographer Anton Corbijn’s black and white images shot for the album included in the search results.

I remembered that these photos captured my attention so much as a college pre-law student that I decided to put my aspirations of being a lawyer aside and change my major to photojournalism. I was already a senior, but that did not matter. I became passionate about photography and the emotional response certain images could create in a viewer. I wanted to make images like that. For U2 at the time, Corbijn showed seriousness at a time when the band was promoting its political conscience – a defining mood that still follows them today.

On the back of the album, a photo showed the band standing in the desert near a lone Joshua Tree. I wondered if I could find the tree today. Surely, someone knows where it is.

As the story goes, Corbijn and the band drove around the Mojave Desert in California on a bus shooting photos for three days in 1986. Driving along, Corbijn was reportedly looking for a single, lone standing Joshua Tree for the band’s photo. On a stretch of highway near Death Valley, not in the Joshua Tree National Park, Corbijn shouted “Stop the bus.” One of the band members related how he bolted from the bus and ran through the desert to the now iconic tree

“Hey, honey. What if we went and found U2’s Joshua tree instead of going through the national park?” Of course, she would say “yes.” She could tell I was getting excited about the adventure and one of her greatest gifts to me is to encourage my passions.

I became obsessed with it about a week before the trip. I became far less interested in Las Vegas and focused on finding this tree. If Corbijn could see it from the road, I could, too. It was just going to be a matter of knowing where to look

After refocusing my searches on the internet to U2’s Joshua Tree, I found bits and pieces of information all across the web on blogs, travel sites, and U2 fan sites. I began to put together a file of info that included maps, photos, even videos of others who had found the tree over the years. I contacted friends who lived in the area and even started looking at weather reports about the Mojave Desert. And, I found GPS coordinates. Lots of them. They had the tree placed in a dozen locations.

It seemed no one was willing to give the exact location for two reasons: First, to protect it from vandals and, secondly, to make anyone seeking it have their own adventure in finding it.

I was able to determine that the tree was now dead. Joshua trees can live hundreds of years in the harshest desert environments at certain altitudes, but this one had fallen after dying of natural causes around 2000.

It had also become an unofficial shrine to U2 fans willing to find it. There was a monument someone had placed in the ground nearby and a box kept at the site filled with U2 memorabilia. There was even a guestbook/notebook kept there for visitors to write their thoughts

If it was down, though, I would probably not be seeing it from the highway like Corbijn. I narrowed all the info down to where I was confident I knew where it was within half a mile. I studied the Corbijn photos looking at the mountain ranges behind the tree and then used Google Earth to take me there.

I had the location pinpointed by cross-referencing the mountains in the photos with the Google Earth 3-D images. I had some GPS coordinates that I felt good about, but I still wasn’t totally sure I was going to find it. The desert is big and things like time and distance get distorted out there.

We went to Las Vegas, lost some money, saw a Criss Angel show, visited a Titanic exhibit, even took a field trip to the Grand Canyon, but I was fixed on the adventure of finding this tree.

When the day arrived, we packed, got a jeep and headed to Death Valley. I hadn’t driven in mountains like these since … well, never. Following the GPS in the car, we swung by Zabriskie Point in the Death Valley National Park, another more widely known U2 fan spot where the actual cover of The Joshua Tree album was photographed with the band by Corbijn. It was beautiful. Ansel Adams made a famous shot there. Nice. Now, let’s go.

We pressed on through Death Valley, I got out and shot pictures here and there, but a sense of urgency was creeping up on us as the sun was creeping toward the horizon. The GPS said 84 miles to the tree. Up mountains and down mountains, long flat roads where a mile seemed to take 10 minutes to cross.

The sun was beginning to touch mountaintops, but we were getting close. Lisa and I counted down five miles, four miles, 3, 2, 1. Stop. I said to her that this is where we need to park, checking my map printouts, looking at 3-D images of the mountain range in front of us.

Wide open desert. I took the GPS and headed out in constant fear of the deadly Western Rattlesnake coming out to enjoy the coolness of the evening. My contacts were dry from the desert air and sand, so binoculars were useless. Lisa said, we’ll stay at a motel nearby and comeback tomorrow in the daylight. I walked for what seemed like 20 minutes, maybe it was, until I was confident I could see the tree resting on the ground about a hundred yards away.  I waved to Lisa. I had found it, but I knew pressing on would leave me out there in the dark very quickly, so I turned and headed back to the jeep.

Lisa found a motel in Lone Pine, Calif., a small town, a few miles across, beneath Mount Whitney. The biggest industry is tourism. What? It seems the area was a hotspot for filming westerns decades ago. Scenes from the more recent movies Iron Man, Gladiator and Star Trek: The Next Generation were filmed there. There’s even an annual film festival which draws old, western movie stars. On the walls of our motel were signed photos of dozens of cowboy movie stars like Gene Autry, The Lone Ranger, and Roy Rogers. We ate dinner at a nearby café and turned in for the night.

The next day, we arrived back at the location and it was raining … in the freaking desert. So, what? I unloaded the camera gear and headed along the footprints I had left the day before. We never did see a snake. In fact, I didn’t see anything living, not even an insect. This place was harsh.

We could look in every direction and there was no one. The only sound was the swishing sand under our feet. Quiet and alone we soon found ourselves standing beside a dead, rock music icon. It was kind of like standing by the grave of some forgotten hero, except that it wasn’t forgotten

Visitors over the years had taken nearby rocks and fashioned them into symbols and messages relating to the band. Stones were placed to spell “U2” and “Pride” among other song titles. There was the gorgeous metal-engraved monument that asked the question, “Have you found what you’re looking for?” derived from the name of one of the band’s most popular songs on the Joshua Tree album.

We signed the guestbook. I thanked the band, Corbijn and the tree for inspiring me to embark on my career of 20-plus years, and I left a momento in the box with the other items left by previous visitors, a small book of photos Corbijn had taken of the band and the tree. The guestbook showed a small but steady stream of visitors to the site, only a few every month or two, but hundreds of entries written over the years.

After being dead for a decade, the tree itself still mostly held the shape of the silhouette shown in Corbijn’s photos. It showed no signs of being ripped apart by souvenir hunters or for auction on the internet. It was crumbling in places in a natural process.

I photographed it in every way I could for nearly an hour, more time than Corbijn had spent there shooting the band. The rain had stopped.

I said to Lisa, “You know, it’s kind of sad. This tree was once so majestic, and now it’s fading away. It will only deteriorate from here. If we ever come here again, it won’t be the same.”

“It’s like life. That’s the way life is,” she said.

We walked back to the jeep and drove on to San Diego. We passed hundreds of Joshua trees along the way, stopping to photograph a few. I thought of the settlers that passed the same trees as they headed west.

Mostly, I thought of how many lives that one single tree during that one single photo shoot had affected, especially mine. My camera brought me to meet Lisa, who was also a photographer at the time. U2 and Corbijn were already on track for their success, but there is little speculation that the album made the band superstars, selling over 25 million copies.

Very rarely does an image match the spirit of its purpose as well as those of the tree. It just happened in the moment, as they say.

–David Bundy

A previous version of this article already appeared athttp://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/article/20101121/LIFESTYLE/11210335/-I-found-what-I-was-looking-for-

All photos by David Bundy. Please visit http://davebundy.com