Irish rock group U2 kicked off the European leg of The Joshua Tree tour on Saturday by returning to the album that tackled their love-hate relationship with the US and propelled them to superstardom when it was released 30 years ago.

The band, led by 57-year-old singer Bono, is playing the entire record to 2.4 million fans on their 2017 tour, including hits With or Without You and I Still Haven’t Found What I’m looking For.

But they started the London show with early songs Sunday Bloody Sunday, New Year’s Day, Bad, and the Martin Luther King Jr-inspired Pride (In the Name of Love), which Bono dedicated to the “Rainbow people of London” who took part in the annual Pride LGBT march in the city earlier on Saturday.

A new resonance today

The Joshua Tree was played in sequence against a backdrop of video of US landscapes such as Death Valley and Americans standing in front of the Stars and the Stripes, shot by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn who created the imagery on the original record.

The group’s bestselling album was released in 1987 when Ronald Reagan was US president and his ideological soul mate Margaret Thatcher was in power in Britain.

Lead guitarist The Edge said in an interview with Rolling Stone in January that politically “things have kind of come full circle”.

“It just felt like, ‘Wow, these songs have a new meaning and a new resonance today that they didn’t have three years ago, four years ago’,” he told the magazine.

The Joshua Tree, which sold more than 25 million copies, marked the pinnacle of the band tackling social and political issues through rock music.