meeting under the cherry tree

In case you don't know (however unlikely), U2's latest album, Songs of Innocence (09/09/14) is a retrospective trek through early memories in Dublin, and so is Bono's accompanying write-up. I am not going to quote something that has permissions on it, but safely paraphrase that Bono mentions the neighbourhood family the Rowens at No. 5 Cedarwood Road, who had a magnificent cherry tree in their yard he considered "the most luxurious thing in the world". So it's official that the cherry tree is a personal memory that connotes home in a deep way, making "Salomé" what you'd expect, a lyrical mash-up of sorts between the Biblical and the personal.

In the same write-up he then goes on to say that the Rowen family were like an Old Testament tribe, his resource that raised him in scriptural depth; -that the "busload of faith" he was on in life was in fact full of Rowens. He then goes on to record the experience of the Dublin bombing and Andy Rowen's experience of the same, (which is the basis for the song "Raised by Wolves"), referencing in addition the fallout that terrible event had on Andy's life, and how the band wrote "BAD" for him. (And yes, it was the same Andy she met in Chapter 22, -a meeting that took place in Chapter 20 when Bono received her book. It was the last chapter she'd written anything into (apart from the last one). Apart from the final chapter and very brief summaries, the writing actually terminated at the meeting with Andy.)