The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, and where one tree withers, another may grow. Exciting news for rocking dendrophiles has emerged from California, with two significant rock trees making headlines.
First, the tree memorialised on the cover of U2’s The Joshua Tree has been vandalised. Consequence of Sound uncovered a poster on a U2 forum reporting the news: “This past Sunday, I made my proverbial yearly hike out to the Tree with my dog to reminisce only to find that some hack and I do mean hack, decided it was a bright idea to take a hacksaw to one of the Tree’s limbs – evidently to remove an inch thick cross section as a souvenir. Are you kidding me? I won’t even elaborate as to how pathetic this is. Let’s just say It was a good thing I didn’t happen upon this ignorant low-life degenerate in his course of action.”
Like Jim Morrison’s grave at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the tree in he Mojave desert, California, has become a site of pilgrimage, with all the consequent problems. Another poster on the forum noted that the habit of visitors leaving souvenirs and trinkets at the tree had turned it into “a trash heap”.
However, in another part of California, rock’s most ironic dead tree has been replaced. Last year, a pine tree planted in memory of George Harrison in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, died – killed by a beetle infestation.
Now, however, a new tree has been planted to replace the Canary Island pine that died. This time it is to be a yew pine, which is much less susceptible to insect infestation. The tree was planted on 25 February, which would have been Harrison’s 72nd birthday.
