Tongues at One Tree Hill, 12/26/89: Normal Church

"Joy in our group comes out of vowels, words with very few consonants, words that form when you're singing."

-- Bono, 2002

Finally found audio of one of the most amazing performances
of one of the most amazing U2 songs: One Tree Hill, 12/26/89.

The video below is a remix of a concert a few years later (the song was rarely down live, as it was so personal, about the death of a friend), but the accompanying audio is the classic 1989 version. And it's a great example of Bono's peculiar passionate glossolalia/Bongolese...

actually it feels like Edge (3:10ff) plays in tongues (like some other God-haunted glossoguitarristas) before Bono (3:56ff) prays in tongues.
(In a similar way, after Bono preached his sermon in the Rattle n Hum version of "Silver and Gold," he hands the mantle/pulpit over to the Edge with "OK, Edge..play the blues!" Ellis Reed always said the ensuing guitar solo was unlike any blues he had ever heard, but also Edge's wordless version of the same sermon ..We could use more wordless sermons in our day and age!)

But back to the clip of "One Tree Hill" you are about to hear.
Beth once commented:

Probably the best performance of that song ever, and it closes with about 20 seconds of glossolalia (mixed with some English I think) in very impassioned, public, declaratory mode. (One half-expects Edge to offer the interpretation.)

-"U2 debates: How long must we sing this song?"
link

Maybe Edge DID give the interp; he just gave it beforehand.

Sounds like normal church to me.