"Bullet the Blue Sky" first originated as a
demo that U2 recorded during a
jam session at STS Studios in
Dublin with producer Paul Barrett, prior to the proper
Joshua Tree recording sessions. While listening to a song by English
rock band
the Fall, U2 guitarist
the Edge tried to emulate its guitar
riff, but instead came up with his own part that was, in his approximation, "uptempo, like real hard-hitting". It eventually became the chorus for "Bullet the Blue Sky". Bassist
Adam Clayton and drummer
Larry Mullen Jr. then joined in playing at
half-time. Lead vocalist
Bono recalled that Clayton was also playing in a different
key from the Edge, who became irritated and considered stopping the jam. Still, the song was discarded for some time until producer
Brian Eno, who described it as a "homeless riff", convinced the band it was worth working on. In July 1986, Bono and his wife
Ali Hewson travelled to
Nicaragua and
El Salvador, where they saw firsthand the distress of peasants bullied by political conflicts and United States military intervention. The trip angered Bono and formed the basis of the song's lyrics. He said, "I remember the ground shaking, and I remember the smell, I suppose, of being near a war zone. I don't think we were in danger, but I knew there were lives in danger or being lost close to us, and I felt for them. It upset me as a person who read the Scriptures, to think that Christians in America were supporting this kind of thing, this kind of proxy war because of these Communists." In August, after reconvening with his bandmates in Dublin to resume work on
The Joshua Tree, Bono instructed the Edge to "put El Salvador through an
amplifier", resulting in the song's
feedback-based guitar part. The Edge said that his guitar playing was also informed by Bono's lyrics. According to Lanois, the song's performance came from a 20-minute jam that he dedicated an extensive amount of time to editing into a final
arrangement, "for a song that was never a song, that was only ever a jam." He said, "It was one of those songs that was born partially by surgery – the editing of the structure was a really big part of it." Recording
engineer Dave Meegan helped develop the song with a
mix that he made at Melbeach. Wanting it to sound like
Led Zeppelin, Meegan adjusted a
monitor mix to make it "really heavy sounding." Lanois was inspired by what he heard, as the song up to that point was being treated softly. Lanois called it a "really elaborate kind of rock and roll chamber". was asked by the Edge "to fly over from one version to another version". Lillywhite had to match the tempos of the two tape recordings by hand and then, during playback, transfer the requested sections of each onto a half-inch tape recorder. He said it "was never all played at the same time; it was a real mish-mash of two things." Lanois said Lillywhite's final mix was much different from his and Eno's version, leaning more heavily on effects and
overdubs: "I wouldn't have had as many effects on it, because we had a bit of a purist attitude toward some of these recordings, essentially that there was a sound that was captured in performance in a room, and we wanted to remain loyal to that space, to convey that sound. And he was not as sentimental to that idea, so he pulled out all the stops." During a spoken word passage of the song, Bono speaks of being approached by a man, "his face red like a rose on a thorn bush, like all the colours of a royal flush, and he's peeling off those dollar bills, slapping them down, 100, 200". Bono said the person he had in mind while writing the lyrics was then US President
Ronald Reagan, whose administration backed the military regimes in Central and South America that Bono encountered on his earlier trip. The lyrics were partially inspired by Bono seeing a mural in El Salvador of Reagan in a chariot depicted as the
Pharaoh, with Salvadorans as "the children of Israel running away". ==Live performances==