U2start.com | old JT CD cover?

Irrelevant burning question that's always been on my mind:

Who the hell decided to take Corbijn's beautiful, off-center photo from the Vinyl cover and stretch it vertically to create that UGLY UGLY original Joshua Tree CD album cover?

That combined with the incorrectly indexed transition between of One Tree Hill and Exit make the original JT CD the largest-scale U2 fuck up of all time, worse than PopMart Leg 1.

The landmark album went diamond in the US quite literally in spite of its packaging.

Thank God they used original photo-scaling for the remaster.

BelgianBono

16 years

Bono discovers printing-program Part 1

U2Nick

16 years

It was 1987, it's not like they could have just used Photoshop lol.

And POPMart any leg was awesome sauce.

anstratdubh1979

16 years

The idea was to have a slightly different cover image for each format.

The vinyl LP being a gatefold cover looked a bit more panoramic. The Cassette similar but looking more cropped in the cassette case and then the CD, a still fairly new format in March 1987, having the photo image that it carried for initial copies of The Joshua Tree.

Original CD image:
http://www.u2wanderer.org/disco/view.shtml?images/alb006-01.jpg

Original LP and later reissue cover:
http://www.u2wanderer.org/disco/view.shtml?images/alb006-07.jpg

Cassette cover image:
http://www.u2wanderer.org/disco/view.shtml?images/alb006-11.jpg

But over the years, U2 and Principle Mgt heard lots of complaints. In 1999 the album was reissue - not remastered - but with the editing correct between One Tree Hill and Exit. That UK/European re-release came with the LP style photo.

They followed this with the remaster/reissues in 2007.

Keep in mind, that this was not a new practice, as U2 did similar with the two formats available when The Unforgettable Fire was released:

Digital Cassette (which came out much later) carried similar artwork to that of the original cassette. (Although the Canadian was similar to the LP/CD version)
http://www.u2wanderer.org/disco/view.shtml?images/alb005-01.jpg

CD's followed tlater and went with the LP cover.
http://www.u2wanderer.org/disco/view.shtml?images/alb005-13.jpg

u2met86

16 years

@anstratdubh1979,

thank you, i appreciate your encyclopedic insight,

---

Originally posted by U2Nick:It was 1987, it's not like they could have just used Photoshop lol.

And POPMart any leg was awesome sauce.

@U2Nick, good point about Photoshop.

PS: I agree with you on PopMart, the initial post was meant to reflect "consensus" opinion towards the relatively unrehearsed Vegas performances.

gwiz

16 years

I dig the character of the cd version. It could go either way, depending on my mood.

Guenther

16 years

Originally posted by anstratdubh1979:

But over the years, U2 and Principle Mgt heard lots of complaints. In 1999 the album was reissue - not remastered - but with the editing correct between One Tree Hill and Exit.

I bought Joshua Tree on CD in 1997 and it has the editing correct between OTR and Exit.

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