The Joshua Tree and the Road That Made My Father Feel Free
June 08, 2025
My dad played U2’s *The Joshua Tree* on repeat while driving through America with my mum. It wasn’t just an album—it was a glimpse into the version of him that still believed in love, freedom, and meaning.
Some albums aren’t just music.
They become mythology—especially when you play them on loop while driving across America, beside the woman you love, with the windows down and the future still unwritten.
For my dad, that album was U2’s The Joshua Tree.
He didn’t just like it.
He played it repeatedly while driving with my mum across the States—young, in love, maybe even a little idealistic.
And I don’t think it was just about the music.
I think it was about who he got to be while it played.
🌄 A Soundtrack of Hope, Before It All Fell Apart
This was a time before the silence, the shutdown, the complicated layers of family life.
When love still felt like freedom, not a trap.
When the horizon still felt open.
And when he put The Joshua Tree on repeat, maybe he wasn’t trying to relive the music.
Maybe he was trying to relive himself—
that younger version, still full of promise, still unburdened by disappointment.
🙏 A Man Searching for Meaning
“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…”
That lyric isn’t about aimless longing.
It’s about spiritual hunger.
The whole album breathes with that ache.
It’s soulful, searching, soaked in both beauty and brokenness.
And maybe that’s why it landed so deeply with my dad—
because he was a man who felt deeply, but never quite knew what to do with that feeling.
The music gave his ache a place to live.
It didn’t fix anything. But it gave him language, even if only in private.
🚗 Why the Driving Mattered
There’s something symbolic about the fact that he played it while moving.
Driving.
Crossing a vast landscape.
Beside the woman who would later become part of both his passion and his pain.
That movement might have felt like therapy.
Or escape.
Or maybe the closest he ever got to feeling truly free.
The open road was the church.
The music was the sermon.
The car was the confessional.
And in that moving moment, he wasn’t a husband under pressure.
He wasn’t a man who’d one day grow silent.
He was just a person—searching, alive, and temporarily unburdened.
🧠 What That Album Says About Him
- He was longing for something greater
- He carried depth he couldn’t always express
- He felt more alive when the world was wide, not small
- He never really stopped searching, even when life asked him to settle
🪞 What That Leaves in Me
I grew up with echoes of that music.
Not just in sound—but in spirit.
And I think a part of me inherited that ache.
That drive to find something real.
That craving for freedom and meaning, even when the road ahead feels foggy.
I don’t just want to repeat his mistakes.
I want to understand his longing,
so I can walk my own road—
with the windows down, but my eyes wide open.
🎶 Listen to the Full Album
He may never have said these things aloud.
But he played them.
And maybe—just maybe—that was his way of telling me everything.