U2 continued their humanitarian stand by appearing on the "Artists against Apartheid" album "Sun City" with their single "Silver and Gold" in August 1985. Other artists included Steve Van Zandt, Clarence Clemens, David Ruffin, Eddie Kendricks, Jimmy Cliff, Lou Reed, Joey Ramone and Bobby Womack.

  On the subject of the song Bono commented - "It's a song about sanctions and it takes the idea originally going to South Africa for the silver and gold. A lot of world crises are economic issues. They are disguised by religious or policitical fronts, but the root of them is often economic, and the song is getting at that, really."

  U2 then continue to do more live performances, including "Self Aid" with Van Morrison, Clannad, Elvis Costello, The Pogues and others. The objective of the concert was to help improve youth unemployment, where the money was spent on creating job creation schemes and employers could use the event to enable to phone in for interviews after the concert. However, the benefit was a failure in the end, since it failed to tackle the real problem, that the Irish government needed to create policies to increase employment. U2 even questioned their actions at the end - Edge - " It was a gestural thing that was all about hopes and aspirations and very little about real answers ... did anyone really benefit in a job sense?"

  However, U2 made up for their mistake by performing in the "Conspiracy of Hope" tour with Sting, Bryan Adams, Bob Geldof and Dave Stewart,, Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Jackson Browne, Lou Reed, Joan Baez and The Neville Brothers. The aim of the tour was to give a greater awareness of Amnesty International's function as a organisational unit in encouraging political organisations in promoting or disclosing the truth. Bono - I really like that phrase " a conspiracy of hope" and I really hope it could be applied to U2 and its organisation. It applies to the way we do our work, it's whatever you do if you can just do it with a bit of dignity".