had to match the tempos of the two tape recordings by hand and then, during playback, transfer the requested sections of each onto a half-inch tape recorder. He said it "was never all played at the same time; it was a real mish-mash of two things." Lanois said Lillywhite's final mix was much different from his and Eno's version, leaning more heavily on effects and overdubs: "I wouldn't have had as many effects on it, because we had a bit of a purist attitude toward some of these recordings, essentially that there was a sound that was captured in performance in a room, and we wanted to remain loyal to that space, to convey that sound. And he was not as sentimental to that idea, so he pulled out all the stops." During a spoken word passage of the song, Bono speaks of being approached by a man, "his face red like a rose on a thorn bush, like all the colours of a royal flush, and he's peeling off those dollar bills, slapping them down, 100, 200". Bono said the person he had in mind while writing the lyrics was then US President Ronald Reagan, whose administration backed the military regimes in Central and South America that Bono encountered on his earlier trip. The lyrics were partially inspired by Bono seeing a mural in El Salvador of Reagan in a chariot depicted as the Pharaoh, with Salvadorans as "the children of Israel running away". Live performances "Bullet the Blue Sky" was played at nearly every live concert from its first performance at the opening night of the Joshua Tree Tour on 2 April 1987 through the Vertigo Tour. Its live performances have traditionally been paired with "Running to Stand Still"; this took place on the Joshua Tree Tour, Lovetown Tour, Zoo TV Tour, and the first 46 concerts of the Vertigo Tour. On the PopMart Tour, "Bullet" instead led into "Please"; Elevation Tour performances were followed by "With or Without You" or a cover of "What's Going On" by Marvin Gaye; on the Vertigo Tour, "Miss Sarajevo" replaced "Running to Stand Still" for the last 85 concerts. and on the Innocence + Experience Tour, it segued into "Pride (In the Name of Love)" on the first leg and an abbreviated version of "Zooropa" starting on the second leg. During the Joshua Tree Tour, Bono would frequently grab a large