U2’s Bono wrote the song “One Tree Hill” about grief and loss, inspired by losing his friend Greg Carroll.
In 1984, U2 had just arrived in Auckland, New Zealand from a long 24-hour flight for The Unforgettable Fire Tour. It was late, but Bono was restless and could not sleep due to jet lag. And so he went out into the city that night, meeting some locals, including a man named Greg Carroll, who had been hired as a stage hand by U2’s production manager. Carroll and the others took Bono up a volcano called One Tree Hill (Maungakiekie), which is spiritually significant to Māori people.
After the Auckland show, U2’s manager recognized that Carroll was very helpful at the show and ended up hiring him for the rest of the tour. Over time, Carroll became good friends with Bono and his wife.
Then in July 1986, Carroll was doing a favor for Bono by taking his motorcycle home when he was killed in an accident. The band was devastated by the loss of their friend, with some of them later noting the accident gave many of the young men their first real experience with death.
At the time of Carroll’s death, U2 was working on the songs that would become part of The Joshua Tree album. Later, Bono noted that Carroll’s death ” brought gravitas to the recording of The Joshua Tree. We had to fill the hole in our heart with something very, very large indeed, we loved him so much.”
One Tree Hill
Bono wrote the lyrics for the song “One Tree Hill,” which would eventually appear on side two of The Joshua Tree, about grieving the loss of his friend Carroll. He started writing the song after returning from Carroll’s funeral in New Zealand. The song references Bono’s first experience with Carroll on the volcano called One Tree Hill.
The band developed the music while jamming with Brian Eno. The lyrics reflect the grief one feels over a loss. In the song, Bono sings:
I’ll see you again, When the stars Fall from the sky; And the moon Has turned red, Over One Tree Hill. We run like a river Runs to the sea; We run like a river To the sea. And when it’s raining, Raining hard; That’s when the rain will Break my heart.
One verse of the song refers to Chilean political activist and folk singer Víctor Jara, who was tortured and killed during the 1973 Chilean coup d’état. “Jara sang his song,/A weapon/ In the hands of one;/Though his blood still cries/ From the ground.” U2’s bass player Adam Clayton has explained that with the reference to Jara, “One Tree Hill” forms a trilogy of songs with “Bullet the Blue Sky” and “Mothers of the Disappeared” that illustrate Bono’s anger at the involvement of the United States in the Chilean coup.
During The Joshua Tree Tour in 1987, the band did not initially perform the song because Bono did not think he could sing it due to his grief over Carroll’s death. But eventually the band played the song periodically, and they had even recorded a performance for the Rattle and Hum documentary, although the performance was not used in that film.
In the 2017 performance of “One Tree Hill” in Cleveland below, Bono gives a powerful performance following an introduction about the song’s meaning to the band. He talks about Carroll and explains how everyone faces similar losses.
He leads into the song by stating, “There’s no end to grief, that’s how we know there’s no end to love.”
One of the highlights on Bruce Springsteen’s “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” is the heartbreaking country ballad “Under a Big Sky.”
For many Bruce Springsteen fans, the release of Tracks II: The Lost Albums is a bit overwhelming. For someone who is used to taking time for new Springsteen albums with repeated plays while reading lyrics, the release of seven “albums” from different time periods all at once requires a more varied approach. So in that vein, instead of reviewing the whole set or even tackling the release one album at at time (done very nicely by N.J. Arts.Net and also with short early reviews of each album –and album covers — by Pete Chianca of Blogness on the Edge of Town), I’m right now focusing on single songs like “Under a Big Sky” here.
Below is “Under a Big Sky,” which appears on the “country” album, Somewhere North of Nashville. Springsteen recorded “Under a Big Sky” during the summer of 1995 when he was working on country songs during separate sessions at the same time he was creating The Ghost of Tom Joad. While he has explained that these alternative sessions were an avenue for an escape from the darker songs that ended up on The Ghost of Tom Joad, the song “Under a Big Sky” is pretty sad.
The singer in “Under a Big Sky” has left his home for reasons he does not fully explain, noting he cannot return (“I don’t know why”). But later in the song he recalls being asked why he left and thinking, “But I had it set in my head / Believed every word the newspaper said.” And so he ended up somewhere out West, maybe following a newspaper ad for work. He apparently works on a cattle ranch, riding the line and catching strays while missing the woman he left behind.
“Under a Big Sky” may be the most country song on the “country” lost album, which also features some more energetic songs, including three with “man” in their titles (“Delivery Man,” Repo Man,” “Detail Man”). So “Under a Big Sky” stands out for me on the Tracks II set, capturing a sound similar to Springsteen’s “Wreck on the Highway” from The River.
I also found some thematic similarities to my favorite track on Springsteen’s 2019 album Western Stars, “Chasin’ Wild Horses.” In fact, the narrator in both songs might even be the same character, filling in more details of the narrator’s biography. Both narrators are doing hard work out West, missing a love left behind like a cowboy in an old Western movie. Heartbreaking but beautiful. Check it out.
What are some of your favorite tracks on the Tracks II: Lost Albums release? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On Tom Jones’s show in 1970, he joined Aretha Franklin on her song “See Saw.”
In the 1970s we had some TV shows hosted by cool singers like Tom Jones. As we’ve mentioned before, having Jones host a TV show led to some great duets.
In the clip below from 1970, Aretha Franklin starts at the piano singing Jone’s hit “It’s Not Unusual,” as Jones looks on with admiration, And then the two bust out into Franklin’s song “See Saw.” Check it out.
The famous Stanley Brothers song “Rank Strangers to Me” has a mysterious meaning that inspired Bruce Springsteen writing about the alienation of modern politics.
I wandered again, To my home in the mountains, Where in youth’s early dawn, I was happy and free. I look for my friends, But I never could find ’em. I found they were all Rank strangers to me.
According to Ralph Stanley’s autobiography, in the 1950s the Stanley Brothers were on their way to a performance, driving on a Sunday through Bristol, Virginia. Listening to the radio, they heard the song, “Rank Stranger to Me.” The song, performed by the Willow Branch Quartet, immediately grabbed Ralph and his brother Carter Stanley.
In “Rank Strangers to Me” (sometimes referred to as “Rank Stranger”) the singer recounts visiting their old hometown. But as they go through the town, they do not recognize anyone and all of the people are complete (“rank”) strangers.
“The song was all about feeling a stranger in this world, even with your own family and friends and neighbors, and how the next world would make all that right,” explained Stanley. The brothers soon added the song to their act, shortening their recorded version of the song to fit on a 45 rpm record.
Initially released as a single, the song then appeared on the Stanley Brothers album Sacred Songs of the Hills. Ralph later noted that “it became the most popular song the Stanley Brothers ever sung.”
The Willow Branch Quartet was based in Bristol and included Wilda Dillon singing lead and her mother, Ettie Dillon, singing alto. As others have noted, Wilda’s soprano lead singing gave the group a unique sound along with the harmonies of a family singing together.
According to Wilda’s son Gary Combs, the group had found the song in the Stamps-Baxter gospel songbook.
Albert E. Brumley, who lived in Missouri and wrote “I’ll Fly Away” and other songs, wrote “Rank Strangers to Me” in 1942. After the Stanley Brothers recorded their version of “Rank Strangers to Me,” a number of artists continued to cover the song, including Porter Wagoner, Freakwater, Doc Watson, Ricky Skaggs, and Crooked Still. Bob Dylan included the song on his 1988 album Down in the Groove.
Brumley, who was born in 1905 and passed away on November 15, 1977, lived to see many of his songs, including “Rank Strangers to Me,” become classics.
One may wonder too whether “Rank Strangers to Me” may have inspired a similarly themed song written by Percy Mayfield, “Stranger in My Hometown.” That song reflects the flip side of “Rank Strangers to Me,” with the singer feeling like the stranger back in their hometown. Elvis Presley recorded “Stranger in My Hometown” in 1969, releasing it on Elvis Back in Memphis.
The Meaning of Rank Strangers
“Rank Strangers to Me,” like a good episode of The Twilight Zone, can haunt you. The idea of returning to a place where you should feel at home but discovering that everyone is a stranger has a supernatural element to it. One may wonder what meaning Brumley was trying to convey with the song.
Because Brumley wrote the song as a hymn, there is a good reason to assume that Ralph Stanley’s initial impression of the song is correct, that it has a religious connotation. We are all strangers in the earthly world, only to find our true place when we go to heaven.
But what makes “Rank Strangers to Me” a great song is that it never explicitly lays out the religious meaning, leaving the song open to interpretation. Similar to other religious songs like “The Great Speckled Bird,” the spirituality of the song dwells in the mystery it presents, allowing our imagination and own interpretations to guide our feelings.
In the Stanley Brothers recording, they highlighted the mystery of the song with their arrangement. Unlike their other recordings, the song alternates between Carter’s voice on the verses and Ralph’s loud wail on the chorus. Ralph later explained, “We wanted it to be like somebody surprising you from behind. Like somebody waking you up and everything seems different and you don’t know if you’re awake or still dreaming.”
The Rank Strangers In Bruce Springsteen’s “Long Walk Home”
Bruce Springsteen has used the mysteriousness of “Rank Strangers To Me” to reference that song’s title phrase in a more political context. On his 2007 album Magic, the Stanley Brothers hymn (with perhaps a dash of Elvis’s recording of Percy Mayfield’s “Stranger in My Hometown”) provided inspiration for Springsteen’s song “Long Walk Home.”
It’s gonna be a long walk home; Hey pretty darling, don’t wait up for me; Gonna be a long walk home, A long walk home.
In town I pass Sal’s grocery; Barber shop on South Street; I looked in their faces, They’re all rank strangers to me.
Springsteen’s song “Long Walk Home” begins with it’s own mystery. The singer recounts that the night before he was on his former lover’s doorstep wondering what went wrong. She slipped an unnamed item into his hand and then “was gone.” The singer sees his hometown in the distance and realizes it is going to be a long walk home.
The singer recognizes places in his home town, but as quoted above, like in “Rank Strangers to Me,” does not recognize the faces: “They’re all rank strangers to me.”
Like the Stanely brothers song, Springsteen’s song is elevated by the mysteries. What went wrong with the relationship? Why can’t the singer recognize the faces in his hometown? Who is the “pretty darling” he is asking not to wait up for him (if the night before he was going through a breakup)?
But the deeper meaning of the song is revealed by the context of the writing and the timing of the release of the song. Many of the songs on the album Magic reflect Springsteen’s frustration with American society at the time, following the reelection of President George W. Bush after the unnecessary Iraq War. Indeed, Springsteen has explained “Long Walk Home” as about a singer realizing that those “he thought he knew, whose ideals he had something in common with, are like strangers.”
The meaning of the song resonates in present day for Springsteen and many others. More recently, on November 6, 2024, following the second election of Donald J. Trump the night before, Springsteen opened his show in Toronto with “Long Walk Home” and its reference to the struggle to understand one’s fellow citizens. The song, which along with “Land of Hope and Dreams,” Springsteen called “a fighting prayer for my country,” reflected the frustration of many Americans wondering how their fellow citizens could have voted for such a man.
One may struggle with the question of how your friends could support the choices made by this president. In the year leading up to the second election of Donald Trump, I saw many posts on social media by friends and family complaining about things that Pres. Biden had allegedly done or failed to do and how Trump would do them better: fix the economy immediately, stop the Russian invasion of Ukraine, help North Carolina better recover from a disaster, protect kids, “drain the swamp,” etc. But in the months after Trump’s election, when he has done the opposite of many of those things, I have seen the same people defend Trump no matter what he does. These include defenses of cutting aid to disaster relief , taking actions that may lead to the suffering and deaths of others, random acts upsetting the economy, more corruption, etc.
Why are so many still supporting these choices they would not have supported from another president? Who are these people I thought I knew? Why did they seem to care about something one minute and then defend the opposite the next? Why are they allowing people to suffer? Of course, I’m sure that many people on the other side of the political spectrum similarly struggle to understand the “strangers” with different views than them.
I suspect this feeling of alienation is why Springsteen continues to include “Long Walk Home” in current performances. He is asking the question many of us are asking about people we once thought we knew.
And that is why, whether you agree with the politics or not, the alienating feeling of not understanding your friends and family remains with us so many years after the Stanley Brothers first heard the haunting sound of “Rank Strangers to Me” on the car radio.
Kasey Chambers released “We’re All Gonna Die Someday” on her 1999 album “The Captain” in a more joyous take on the phrase recently used by Sen. Joni Ernst.
Recently, during a town hall event in Iowa, Sen. Joni Ernst was confronted about a Republican bill that would cut Medicaid. A voter argued that people would die as a result of the bill. Sen. Ernst replied, ““Well, we all are going to die.”
Following some outrage, Sen. Ernst subsequently doubled down on the adequacy of her response, seemingly mocking critics with a video of herself taken in a cemetery.
Sen. Ernst’s now infamous statement reminded me of a kinder use of the phrase in a song by Australian singer-songwriter Kasey Chambers. In “We’re All Gonna Die,” Chambers has a more joyous take on the reminder of death. She uses the phrase as a sing-a-long that ultimately reminds us mortals to enjoy life because we are all gonna die.
Well, it hurts down here on Earth, Lord; It hurts down here on Earth; It hurts down here ’cause we’re runnin’ out of beer; But we’re all gonna die someday.
“We’re All Gonna Die” appears on her outstanding 1999 album,The Captain.
