"Devil's in the House Tonight" (1986)
Demo Song
Background Information
“Devil’s In the House Tonight” was a song developed while recording The Joshua Tree.
Bono is part of the group of musicians that Bill Flanagan interviews for his book, “Written in My Soul: Conversations with Rock’s Great Songwriters”. During that conversation Bono reveals a couple of titles to songs that he has worked on which have never appeared as finished songs.
Speaking about the Sun City recordings he mentions, “When I got back to my hotel I got a guitar, and put up two titles, “This I’ve Got to Stop” and “Silver and Gold.” “Silver and Gold” seemed to fit this country blues thing.” and later he talks about the band working on songs for a new album, “Now I’ve got a real problem. We’re writing songs for the next U2 record, but meanwhile I’ve bought these Robert Johnson albums and I’m writing all these songs which I don’t know where they’re coming from! They’re not song U2 could do — they have titles like “Wake Up, Dead Man” and “Devil’s in the House Tonight.” It’s very odd!” The book was published in 1986, suggesting “Wake Up, Dead Man” was a title at least 10 years before it was released on Pop.