Still Unforgettable. Still Fire.
Friday is fun, it’s about music — so there’s playlists, and links. Today, it’s the 40th birthday of U2’s finest album.
Earlier this week, The Unforgettable Fire, turned 40. It is U2’s fourth album, and their first truly great one, and for me it is their best, their finest, their greatest. And it always was. And it always will be.
It is the album where the band decided they didn’t just want to be a rock group. It is the album that gave them the licence to go ahead and make The Joshua Tree, which, whatever you think about it, is the album that truly launched the band to a next level. It is the album that created the working relationship between Bono, The Edge, Larry, Adam, and Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. Eno was about to ditch pop music altogether; thinking about a career in video art.
After being convinced to work with U2, he arrived with Lanois in tow — his engineer, essentially. There is a really great re-telling of this, and the special blend of egos and attitudes that re-floated the group’s musical ideas, setting them off on a new direction, in Bono’s mostly excellent memoir.
It is also the first U2 album that truly captured me, made me a fan when I was young. For many years they were my favourite band. And then, even when they weren’t my favourite band, this was always one of my favourite albums.
I played far too many U2 songs in a covers band at university, and it killed my enthusiasm for a few of their songs, but it also made me really like a few of their tunes too, I probably wouldn’t have cared much about Staring At The Sun unless I had played it so often. But Pride (In The Name of Love) was ruined for me. A slight shame, since it is one of the key tracks on Unforgettable Fire.
For the album’s 40th, I reconnected with it on CD — and even found much love for Pride, by focussing on Larry’s extraordinary drum part. He is so often the glue for U2, the best and most important member. I also love The Edge’s guitar lines on this album, probably because Daniel Lanois might have helped him to colour a little outside of the lines.
It’s good timing in my journey as U2 fan once again. And several things have helped me on my way there.
There I was just minding my business, being an angry Ex-U2 fan, whilst also attending middle-of-the-road animated kids films one summer.
The Boxing Day Morning Movie and Other Summer Holiday Cinema Excursions
And I did not expect Bono being a guest-voice in the average sequel Sing 2 (the original’s a stone classic) to cut into me the way it did. But, fuck me, I went home and listened to Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of like it suddenly really mattered, and not just like I was stuck in a a moment I couldn’t’ get out of…
It was obviously the season. That same week I reminisced about the one time I saw U2:
It Was The Best Gig Ever # 24: U2, Auckland 1993
That gig, now is over 30 years back. And it got me thinking about my U2 fandom in general:
Finally, I read Bono’s memoir, and thought it was pretty great really. With, as mentioned, some really good stories around the making of this album, and what it was like to work with Eno up close:
So that is the potted history of my way to being a U2 fan. But even when I wasn’t, I loved Unforgettable Fire (and Zooropa). And if you don’t believe me read this:
I also was able, for a while there, to just listen to Fire as an Eno album, such is my Eno fandom I guess. But it makes sense — U2 basically wanted him to help them negotiate their move away from being a rock band. The first three albums are good, at least in parts. They’re a nervous, angsty, hopeful, trace-around post-punk band. Others were doing it better, but they were giving it a go. And not without some resonance. Unforgettable Fire is the true start of their sound. I also like thinking about Fire and Zooropa together as the albums that bookend their superstar-stadium era, or the first full wave of it at least. And just as Fire predicts Joshua Tree, I like how Zooropa all but rejects Achtung Baby; much in the same way that Radiohead did with Amnesiac following Kid A, or even in the way Kid A ‘rejects’ Ok Computer.
I played Unforgettable Fire a few times this week. I’m still blown away by the title track — to me it’s the best thing they ever did. But I can see how for other U2 listeners a song like Bad might be the ‘best’. And now I can hear why Pride became ubiquitous. I also love Elvis Presley And America and Indian Summer Sky. Every song on this — including (and sometimes especially) the Eno creations like 4th of July — is good to me. And so many of them are just great. In that sense, it feels like the perfect album-creation, a warm wrap-around hug where the ‘big’ songs do some heavy lifting, and huddle in deep with the slight, and intriguing album-cuts.
But I started listening to this album in a new just this week. And it was also pretty cool. Playing the whole album backwards, so that Pride appears right near the end. Then, you see, I’m used to it, and waiting, allowing myself to get ready. So, I’ll include a pre-built ‘backwards’ version of the album for you here too.
Happy 40th Unforgettable Fire. The U2 album I’ve heard the most, loved forever, and still find new moments inside of it to fixate on. Currently I’m hearing Indian Summer Sky in a way I never have. The whip of guitar really cracking the side of the song.
But if you’re one of those bores that really can’t stand anything by U2 at all, then you might like this week’s playlist. It’s kinda post-punk adjacent, and yet features no U2 whatsoever:
