u/VNE47

Re-post from earlier, since it is nearly the 40th anniversary.

November 1983 (estimate): Tracking of "Excellent Birds" over a two-day session with Laurie Anderson at The Lobby in New York City, with the music video shot the next day for Good Morning, Mr Orwell... Premiered New Year's day in 1984. Laurie released her version on Mister Heartbreak (1984) while Peter's was yet to come...

Summer 1984: Peter goes on various trips to Brazil and Senegal to find new rhythms... The Forro percussion on "Mercy Street" was recorded during this time, performed by Djalma Correia at Polygram Studios in Rio de Janeiro.

February 1985: Recording officially starts on So at Peter's Ashcombe House studio, with Daniel Lanois co-producing and Dave Bascombe engineering. Peter worked on mostly new material, revisiting older ideas for "Milgram's 37" (Melt era) and "Don't Give Up" (PG4 era)... The tracks were mostly demoed as keyboards and guitars to a Linn 9000 drum machine, with Peter, Dan and David Rhodes playing together to get the feel of the songs down on tape, with a rough early structure in place.

April 1985: By then, bass and drums are being added to the tracks... Tony Levin and Manu Katche were involved for around 2-3 weeks each... Drummer Jerry Marotta, however, did sessions for four days, as he was busy working with Paul McCartney. Stewart Copeland also came down for a week at Ashcombe to lay down drums on the songs.

For the most part, each musician overdubbed their parts, with "Sledgehammer" being the only song recorded live as a full band in 2-3 takes with Manu... All three drummers did takes on all the songs that were there at the time, with the parts with the desired feel being selected & combined... "Red Rain" wound up having Stewart Copeland on the hi-hat while the rest of the drums were Jerry, for instance. The Up album marked another time that Peter used multiple drummers on any given song.

Late May 1985: Engineer Kevin Killen joins the project, taking over from Dave Bascombe who left due to disagreements with Lanois... By then, the backing tracks had been recorded but mostly in long, extended form, which would be edited down and arranged.

Summer 1985: Peter continues working on the tracks like usual - overdubbing parts, changing sections, coming up with new song ideas... Occasionally, he would invite Manu and Tony back to re-do the rhythm parts (plus David Rhodes etc.) as the songs kept evolving. And later, it would be a case of compiling the performances down... In August, Peter acquired a 32-track digital tape machine for creating a master recording from numerous tape reels after experiencing synchronisation issues between the 24-track tape recorders he had, long story short.

Early-mid September 1985: Peter Gabriel and Dan Lanois fly to New York for additional recordings at the Power Station over 5 days... This mostly included backing vocals, horns and acoustic piano by Richard Tee. Engineer Bruce Lampcov also recalls feeding the snare on "Sledgehammer" into a 4-story stairwell at the Power Station as an echo chamber, a trick used by Bob Clearmountain on records he mixed there.

October 1985: Peter starts focusing more on the vocals and lyrics, which is normally a slow process for him... He would do five to six vocal passes and compile them, but if a lyric was changed, he would go back and re-sing that line and the vocal was compiled again... PP Arnold and Dee Lewis add vocals to some of the tracks.

November 1985: Kate Bush records her vocals for "Don't Give Up"... The song "Excellent Birds" is pulled off the shelf and updated from the original 1983 recording with Laurie Anderson's approval.

January/February 1986: Finishing touches laid down on the So tracks. Larry Klein also comes in to record bass parts for "In Your Eyes" and "Mercy Street".

mid-February: album is officially finished and mastered at The Townhouse

19th May: So is officially released.

Thought I'd share this condensed version of the making of Joshua Tree, according to interviews the band did at the time...

late December 1985: U2 officially begin writing & rehearsing songs at Adam's recently-purchased Danesmoate House shortly before Christmas according to Larry in the TV GAGA interview... This marked the end of a six-month break following the Unforgettable Fire tour.

30 January 1986: U2 perform "Womanfish", "Trip Through Your Wires" (in its early incarnation) and the Bob Dylan cover "Knocking on Heaven's Door"... As Larry and Edge discussed, they had not settled on a direction for the album yet and were still in the rehearsal stages.

February 1986 (estimate): Demos were cut at STS Studios in Dublin with Paul Barrett, which included early versions of "Red Hill Mining Town", "With Or Without You", "Bullet The Blue Sky" & the experimental track "Beautiful Ghost/Songs of Experience".

February - May 1986: Recording starts in Danesmoate, with a 24-track makeshift studio installed there... The main focus at that point was to record the band's jams and improvisations on tape, and capture moments/ideas that they could turn into final backing tracks, or even building on the existing ideas they already had.

Brian Eno was there at the start with engineer Dave Meegan, with Dan Lanois later joining around March alongside engineer Kevin Killen, having just finished Peter Gabriel's So album... Killen recorded the song "Heartland" and further jam sessions, but left due to commitments to Howard Jones' album, thus engineer Flood took his place and became part of the core team.

The recording was done in an intermittent fashion, with Lanois, Eno & Flood coming in for short periods (2-3 weeks at a time) to Danesmoate. The rest of the time was spent on writing & developing songs, listening through jams or re-writing earlier ideas to re-do the next time... They had at least half the final album down in some form by the end - "With Or Without You", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" (when it was "Weather Girls"), "Trip Through Your Wires" and "Red Hill Mining Town".

June - July 1986: U2 take a break from recording to fulfil commitments for the Conspiracy of Hope tour... Roadie Gregg Carrol tragically passed away on 3 July in an accident, ultimately inspiring "One Tree Hill". Bono and Ali visit El Salvador in late July.

August - December 1986: Recording continues at Edge's Melbeach home, with occasional sessions at Windmill Lane. This was the point when the direction and recording of the album was coming into focus, and more ideas came to being like "In God's Country", "Exit", "Mothers of the Disappeared", "One Tree Hill" and others... "Bullet The Blue Sky" was also salvaged and re-purposed into its final form. Robbie Robertson would also visit them in late August to record "Sweet Fire Of Love" and "Testimony" for his album.

Lanois continued to encourage the band to record the songs as "live" as possible in the studio without relying too much on overdubs. The whole album would be done that way except "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "Mothers Of The Disappeared", which were built piece-by-piece on drum tracks lifted from "Weather Girls" and "One Tree Hill", respectively. By November, they had around 22 songs recorded to choose from for the final album.

14-16 December 1986: U2 do the photoshoot for the album in a desert

late December 1986 - 15 January 1987: Former producer Steve Lillywhite was brought on to help complete and mix the album in time for the deadline. He would be working out of Windmill Lane Studio 1 with engineer Mark Wallis... Meanwhile, Lanois & engineers Dave Meegan and Pat McCarthy mixed at Melbeach. Bono and Edge would still be doing last-minute guitar and vocal overdubs on some of the songs...

For "When The Streets Had No Name", Edge had an idea for a backing vocal part just as they were due to master the album, so Edge laid down the vocal and Lillywhite mixed & edited the track in London to create the single version.