It’s been 20 years since U2 released their masterpiece. Joshua Tree was the band’s stunning fifth studio album, and it catapulted them out of Ireland and into the public conscious. To mark the 20th anniversary of The Joshua Tree, Universal Music will re-release the album this week in four formats. Fans can choose between a standard 
CD (remastered from the original analog tapes), a double vinyl set, a deluxe edition that includes a second CD packed with b-sides and demos, and a limited edition box set featuring the deluxe edition CDs plus a DVD with a 40-minute documentary, two music videos, and footage of a Paris concert from the Joshua Tree Tour in 1987.
U2 has never shied from bombast, but does this disc—however seminal—warrant such extravagance? Daniel Lanois, who co-produced the album with Brian Eno, believes it does. “I knew it would be a great record after just a week and a half of working on it,” says Lanois. “I did the pre-production, separately from Brian, who then came in and worked for a week and a half. We added up all the results, and listened to them, and I just knew there was something special going on. By then we had already recorded the infinite sustain guitar with the Edge for ‘With or Without You.’ I knew that was a new sound. There was a sort of driving, Germanic, robotic force in the underbelly of that. That sounded fresh to me, and I knew that Larry Mullen would be able to overdub a great drum part. Plus, there were a few other cornerstones that made me realize the band was very concentrated, and dedicated, and hungry.”
Upon its original release, The Joshua Tree topped album charts around the world, sold more than 20 million copies, and won the Grammy for Album of the Year. The chemistry between the band, Eno, and Lanois gave rise to a sound that was more minimalist than many people recall.
“Probably the greatest lesson I learned from Eno was to master just a few tools,” Lanois says. “It’s like, you’ve got your spade, your hammer, your spike, and your chisel. More conventional and less intelligent thinking would say, ‘Go to the music store, buy as much shit as you can, and don’t master any of it; just look for the available sundries and hang them around the room like a cheap decorator.’ That’s bad record production. Good record production is: master something, understand it, respect it, allow it to respect you, and then bring that to the table.”