JT demos

[nathan1977]

So with the release of the 20th anniversary of JT, the mystery of the Joshua Tree demos comes a little clearer...just a little bit.

As some of you might recall, 7 Joshua Tree demos surfaced about a decade ago. (There's a link to this somewhere in this site.) For years people have wondered about the legitimacy of these demos, rumored to be 30 seconds of full songs that an engineer "borrowed" (and subsequently tried to sell) while working on the MFSL remastered Joshua Tree. One of the demos on the JT bonus disc includes a full version of one of those demos ("Rise Up", which was originally labeled "In the Doorstep"). Several of the other demo snippets are versions of songs that would later be released -- "And You Didn't Make Any Enemy" features the guitar part that would later become "Still Haven't Found," "Move Up/Race Against Time" later became "Race Against Time," and "Present Tense" became "Walk to the Water." That leaves three demos that have yet to see the light of day officially -- "Dance With Me Baby" (which sounds like it would be more at home on Achtung Baby), "Tell Them the Story" (a bass-driven track which sounds like an early version of "Exit"), and "Diamond Store" (another bass-driven track).

Think we'll see those missing last few tracks ever?

 

[Utoo]

It'd be nice, but I'm not sure. They must have hundreds of songs/demos/bits & pieces in their vaults, and they can't or won't release all of them. I think some bits are just going to be locked up forever & labeled either "uninteresting" or "not worth it" for the band to release.

 

[CTU2fan]

I bet most of them were bits of jams like what's on the Hansa Ton/Axtung Beibi AB demo discs. You'll listen to them and hear bits of what would become stuff like Ultra Violet or Acrobat...I bet if we had full versions of the JT demos it would be the same (that sounds like Exit/that's the riff from ISHF/etc). I don't see U2 releasing stuff like that though.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

unless it would somehow leak online, i think the only way these demos would surface is if U2 ever decided to do an anthology type thing and included tons and tons of demos and outtakes. part of me thinks they might do this after they called it a day, part of me thinks they wouldn't.

that's not to say i wouldn't snatch it up the second such a box set were released, though.