U2 have celebrated the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree with a headline performance at US music festival Bonnaroo.
The Irish rockers performed a two-hour set on Friday night at the Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee, as part of their world tour celebrating the Grammy-winning album.
They led the tens of thousands of music fans in a singalong to the album as Bono joked the festival had been named after him.
They kicked off the Joshua Tree tour last month in Canada and will travel through Central America and the UK and Europe before its completion in October.
Prior to their set, guitarist The Edge received the Les Paul Spirit Award in a presentation from the Les Paul Foundation on the festival grounds.
The Edge, real name David Evans, called Paul an inventor and innovator who pioneered advances in electric guitars and recording.
“I owe him a great debt of gratitude not only for the contributions he made to music, but in terms of his contributions to the technology,” he said.
The political nature of the album, which was inspired by the band’s fascination with the US, was reflected on the giant screens behind them with images of female activists, the American desert and poems from US writers.
As he ended the performance with One, Bono called it “a night we will never forget”.
