Running To Stand Still
October 13, 2010
Here I am just messing around on one of the last Indian summer days in Chicago. Running To Stand Still is my favorite song from my favorite album “The Joshua Tree”. I actually recorded this with my guitar turned down a half step lower by accident. This song is normally done in standard tuning and I forgot to throw on my capo as some idiot was reving up his car when I was getting started.
“Running to Stand Still” is a song by rock band U2, and it is the fifth track from their 1987 album, The Joshua Tree. A slow ballad based on piano and guitar, it describes a heroin-addicted couple living in Dublin’s Ballymun flats; the towers have since become associated with the song. Though a lot of time was dedicated to the lyrics, the music was improvised with co-producer Daniel Lanois during a recording session for the album.
The group explored American music for The Joshua Tree, and as such, “Running to Stand Still” demonstrates folk rock and acoustic blues influences. The song was praised by critics, many of them calling it one of the record’s best tracks. It has since been included in the regular set lists of four U2 concert tours, in two different arrangements and with several possible thematic interpretations. Since the song’s release, the phrase “running to stand still” has become more widely used.
The song’s title phrase originated from Bono asking his brother how his struggling business was going, and the brother responding, “It’s like running to stand still.”[3] Bono had not heard the phrase before, and he thought it expressed what heroin addiction and the effects of the drug on the body were like;[3] a writer later described the title as a “perfect distillation of the dynamic of feeding on addiction.”[12] Bono had heard a real story about a pair of heroin addicts, a man and a woman, who lived in the Ballymun towers.[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][13] Bono felt the man was decent at heart but was constrained by his squalid living conditions, as well as poor choices, and Bono wanted to illustrate how these poor conditions affected their lives.[3][13] The resulting lyric does not describe any of this explicitly, but instead limns the emotional atmosphere that the couple live in. In doing so, the song is not judgmental and shows sympathy for the woman.[14] A character monologue from Wim Wenders’ 1984 film Paris, Texas, was also a significant influence on Bono’s writing of the song.[15]
Although the lyrics of “Running to Stand Still” were worked on a great deal, the musical composition was essentially improvised by the band during the recording process[16] at Dublin’s Windmill Lane Studios.[17] Guitarist The Edge began playing some chords during a session for another song. Producer Daniel Lanois joined in on guitar, and the rest of the group followed.[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.[18] 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.[16] The influence of Reed’s works can be felt throughout the song, as can Van Morrison to an extent.[14][19]
