U2 celebrates ‘The Joshua Tree’ in a stripped-down epic at the Rose Bowl on Saturday

Thirty years ago “The Joshua Tree” was that one album any group dreams of making: a clear-eyed statement of sweeping sounds and bold visions, the kind of record that in an instant takes a great group, which these four Irishmen already were by 1987, and elevates it to the ranks of legends.

The album and its signature songs — numbers that include “Where the Streets Have No Name,” “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” and “With or Without You” — remain among the band’s best-loved works. And while U2 has released eight studio albums since “The Joshua Tree” arrived, at times it seemed like the music got smaller even as the surrounding tours got bigger.

All of which made the show that U2 delivered at the Rose Bowl on Saturday, in which they celebrated the 30th anniversary of the record by playing it in full, that much more special for fans who snagged tickets to the first of two nights at the stadium in Pasadena.

On this tour U2 dispenses with most of the flash and spectacle of recent tours in favor of a stripped-down simplicity reminiscent of the California desert that inspired “The Joshua Tree,” letting the music they wrote for the record, as well as songs from before and after, shine in stark relief against that beautifully desolate environment.

The night started with subtlety, drummer Larry Mullen Jr. walking down a ramp to a remote stage before many fans even realized he was in the stadium, and there launching into the martial drum patterns of “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” as one by one, singer Bono, guitarist the Edge and bassist Adam Clayton walked out, singing and playing, to join him.

A quartet of opening songs drawn from “War” and “The Unforgettable Fire,” the two albums that preceded the one in the spotlight this night, included such fan favorites as “New Year’s Day” and “Pride (In the Name of Love),” big anthems that pulled the crowd to its feet to sing along with the band.

The remote stage was shaped like the desert tree the album was named for, and as the band played there surrounded by fans, the massive video screens behind the main stage remained dark. For a moment it was almost as if U2 were playing a club gig, just four musicians and their music, in the center of a stadium.

At the end of “Pride,” the band moved to the main stage, where again, just the four of them and their gear were all that filled the broad expanse before a high-def LED screen that, at 245 feet wide and 45 feet high, towered over them.

“The Joshua Tree” opens with those three well-known songs mentioned above, and from the opening swell of music that leads into the shimmering guitar riffs of “Where the Streets Have No Names” you could practically feel the emotions of the crowd rising up.

That song and the two that followed are, of course, huge hits that often get played in any U2 show. But starting with “Bullet the Blue Sky,” the fourth track on the album, things got a little more varied, a bit more special. That song, which opens with grinding guitar and heavy drums, kicked things into a harder rock feel, and also — eight songs into the show — introduced video of Bono, the Edge, Clayton and Mullen into the film footage shot for the this tour by Anton Corbijn, whose dramatic black-and-white shots of the band in the desert are also part of what made “The Joshua Tree” album so striking.

Other highlights of the album set included “Running to Stand Still,” which Bono dedicated to the late Chris Cornell, the singer from Soundgarden who died Wednesday, an apparent suicide, and “Red Hill Mining Town,” which until this tour kicked off in Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 12 had never been performed live by the band.

“Welcome to side two,” Bono said at its conclusion. “We’ve been blowing a little fluff off the needle the last few days and wondering why we never played that song before.

“The next one is about the landscape of this country,” he continued by way of introducing “In God’s Country.” “Not just physical. Psychological. Spiritual.”

Highlights over the course of side two included “One Tree Hill,” which featured some of the Edge’s best guitar work of the night, and “Exit,” which saw Bono dancing manically down the ramp to the remote stage before the gentle elegy of “Mothers of the Disappeared” closed out the record and the main set.

For the encore, U2 featured songs primarily from after “The Joshua Tree,” more upbeat and pop than the sometimes somber sounds that came earlier. “Beautiful Day” kicked off the final run of seven songs, Bono slipping in a few lines from “City of Stars” from the movie “La La Land” in tribute to Los Angeles.

For “Ultraviolet (Light My Way)” the band dedicated the song to women and women’s movements past and present, using the screens to flash images of female figures of note. (Photos of Michelle Obama, the Russian punk band Pussy Riot and Hillary Clinton drew the biggest cheers from the crowd.)

Clayton joined Bono on the remote stage for the bass-heavy “One” before “Miss Sarajevo” — retooled here as “Miss Syria (Sarajevo)” — followed with a video that emphasized the suffering of today’s refugees and the need to reach out and help them.

As that last song started, the full band now on the small stage surrounded by fans on the stadium floor, some in the seats started filtering out. So far on tour, U2 had typically followed up with a final song, the new and yet-unreleased “The Little Things That Give You Away.”

At the Rose Bowl, though, they wrapped up with “Bad,” seemed to say their final farewells, and then seemed to almost spontaneously decide to play one more, the wonderful “I Will Follow” from the band’s 1980 debut, “Boy.”

Maybe some of you got to your cars and out of the mess that is parking at the Rose Bowl early, but the rest of us got to hear and see U2 singing as they had as teenagers, just starting out on the journey that brought them to this place nearly four decades later.

U2

Where: The Rose Bowl, Pasadena

When: May 20

Main set: Sunday Bloody Sunday / New Year’s Day / A Sort Of Homecoming / Pride (In The Name Of Love) / Where The Streets Have No Name / I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For / With Or Without You / Bullet The Blue Sky / Running To Stand Still / Red Hill Mining Town / In God’s Country / Trip Through Your Wires / One Tree Hill / Exit / Mothers Of The Disappeared

Encore: Beautiful Day / Elevation / Ultraviolet (Light My Way) / One / Miss Sarajevo / Bad / I Will Follow