Running to Stand Still
"Running to Stand Still" was written by U2 in the context of the heroin addiction epidemic in Dublin of the 1980s, much like "Bad" (and to some extent "Wire") had been from their 1984 album The Unforgettable Fire.
[2] Paul Hewson (later known as U2's lead vocalist Bono) had grown up on Cedarwood Road in the adjacent Glasnevin neighborhood,[6] in a house across fields behind the towers, near his friends and future artists Fionán Hanvey (later known as Gavin Friday) and Derek Rowan (later known as Guggi).
[3] Over time, poor maintenance, lack of facilities for children, transient tenancies, and other factors caused social conditions and communal ties to break down in the flats.
[4] Bono may have used Ballymun as the inspiration (without any explicit lyrical references to it) for the 1980 U2 song "Shadows and Tall Trees",[4][5] and later likened living in the area to some of the scenes portrayed in the 1992 Mike Newell film Into the West.
[3][13] Out of money and unable to pay the rent due to their habit, the man became a heroin smuggler, operating between Dublin and Amsterdam and taking enormous risks for a big payday.
[3] This initial improvised version incorporated all the elements of the final song structure,[3] and the sound and feel of the group playing in a room together without overdubs contributed to the track's effectiveness.
[17] Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" and Elton John's "Candle in the Wind", both of which had served as end snippets for "Bad" on the Unforgettable Fire Tour, were loose inspirations.
[23] In the song, the woman's addiction and misdirected desire for transcendence[29] are reflected in lines such as "She runs through the streets / With her eyes painted red" and "She will suffer the needle chill".
[30] In the liner notes to the 20th anniversary reissue of The Joshua Tree, writer Bill Flanagan stated, "'Running to Stand Still' is for anyone who feels trapped in an impossible circumstance by overwhelming responsibility.
"[31] Uncut magazine writer Andrew Mueller noted that the theme was effective in depicting "the drug as another bogus escape, another fraudulent promise that there's ever any evading the truth.
"[1] In Time magazine's 1987 cover story on the band, Jay Cocks wrote that "A U2 tune like 'Running to Stand Still', with a trancelike melody that slips over the transom of consciousness, insinuates itself into your dreams.
[8][9][14][16] It has been considered by pop music writer Brent Mann as one of the more powerful songs written about drug addiction, joining the likes of Jefferson Airplane's 1967 "White Rabbit", Neil Young's 1972 "The Needle and the Damage Done", Martika's 1989 "Toy Soldiers", and Third Eye Blind's 1997 "Semi-Charmed Life".
[33] Irish music writer Niall Stokes considers "Running to Stand Still" to be one of the most important songs on The Joshua Tree, not only on its own merits as a "mature and compelling... haunting, challenging piece of pop poetry", but also because its moral ambiguity and lack of condemnation of its characters presaged the chaotic direction the band would take a few years later with Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV Tour.
Bono mimed the actions of a heroin addict, rolling up his sleeves and then pretending to spike his arm during the final lyric, after which he would sing "Hallelujah" over and over while reaching up into a pillar of white light.
"[29] At the culmination of the "Bullet the Blue Sky" to "Running to Stand Still" sequence, red and yellow smoke flares ignited at either end of the stage (an idea of U2's security chief, who was a U.S. Vietnam veteran),[36] as the coda segued into "Where the Streets Have No Name".
During the 19 June 2005 show on Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's birthday, "Running to Stand Still" included snippets of "Walk On", a song originally written for her.
[38] Author Steve Stockman felt that in this tour's uses, "Running to Stand Still" was one of the band's songs from the 1980s that had lost its original meaning and was no longer about drug-dealing in the Ballymun towers.
[39] Rather, it was now being used to develop the show's theme that a belief in faith and in human potential could overcome the bleakest and most desperate situations; in this, it fit within the Vertigo Tour's emphasis on coexistence and the ONE Campaign.
[39] This assessment agreed to by an eFestivals review,[40] and author John Jobling has called the new interpretation an "anti-persecution paean" that was used to remove the sting of "Bullet the Blue Sky" being used to criticize American behavior during the Iraq War.
[41] In contrast, USA Today's veteran rock writer Edna Gundersen found the song's performance still established a "devastating" mood[42] and the New York Daily News said that the group "thinned 'Running To Stand Still' to give it a new mourning".
[44][45] One tour performance of "Running to Stand Still" was included on the Vertigo 2005: Live from Chicago DVD, during which Bono dedicated the Hallelujah coda to members of the American and British militaries fighting overseas.
"[54] She further noted that some websites erroneously state that Bono grew up in Ballymun itself, and said, "Perhaps it gave him a sort of street-cred to associate himself with the estate he could see from his bedroom window in nice, safe, respectable Cedarwood Road in Glasnevin.
