U2 - The Unforgettable Fire
Listen to full episode:
On this episode, we take a look at the extremely popular album, The Unforgettable Fire, by U2. An album that was an unexpected change of artistic direction for the band, yet one that set them on course to becoming one of the biggest bands of the 1980s.
U2 had already experienced tremendous success with their third album, War, and they had made a huge splash on MTV (the music medium of the 80s) with their live concert video U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky. With each album, they expanded their sound, but no one, not even the members of U2 themselves, could expect the leap they made with The Unforgettable Fire.
Splitting from their original producer, Steve Lillywhite, the band sought the reluctant services of famed producer and self-proclaimed "non-musician", Brian Eno, who brought along his new-found protégé, Daniel Lanois, to record and mix the album. While the label was originally skeptical of this collaboration, the results speak for themselves. Atmospheric, moody, even experimental at times, the album ruminates on subjects are broad and Martin Luther King, Elvis Presley, and the sorrows of drug abuse. The Unforgettable Fire is a remarkable collection of songs by a band with limited technical ability, but a restless desire to create music that no one else was making in popular music at this time.
THINGS WE DISCUSSED ON THIS EPISODE
The band’s first television appearance was on March 2, 1978 on the show Youngline. At the time, they were going by the name the Hype.
By the time the band won the Limerick Civic Week Pop ‘78 Competition on March 17, two weeks after their first Television appearance as the Hype, they had already changed their name to U2. Here is a newpaper article announcing U2 as the winners of the contest.
The band’s first TV appearance as U2.
Watch U2 perform “40” from the U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky. The song was the show closer on the 1983 War tour, when this concert was filmed, but the band continued to utilized it that way for several tours thereafter.
Brian Eno (co-producer of The Unforgettable Fire) live on stage with Roxy Music.
Contrary to what we state on the podcast, the castle photographed on the cover of The Unforgettable Fire is not Slane Castle, where they began recording the LP.
It is in fact the ruin of Moydrum Castle in West Meath, which was destroyed by fire in 1921.
Here’s the “upbeat” Daniel Lanois remix of “A Sort of Homecoming” with Peter Gabriel’s background vocals much more prominent in the mix.
This painting by Kichisuke Yoshimura was part of the "The Unforgettable Fire" exhibit at Chicago's Peace Museum. This exhibit was a collection of images created by survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. U2 saw this exhibit while on tour in Chicago which inspired the name of both the album title and the title tack.
Watch U2 perform their epic version of “Bad” during Live Aid.
Here’s a clip from the U2’s concert film Rattle and Hum, featuring U2 and BB King rehearsing during a stop in Fort Worth, Texas on The Joshua Tree Tour in 1987. Your very humble co-host Tony actually attended this very concert.
