Rocktrospectiva: The Soundscaping "The Unforgettable Fire" Turns 40

 

Released on 1 October 1984, "The Unforgettable Fire" was the fourth studio album by Irish rock band U2, produced by Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, the album spawned two singles "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" & "The Unforgettable Fire", the band decided to change their musical direction into a more experimental tendence with an ambient sound, the results was a dramatic style even in the title of the album the band took it from an art exhibition about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Recording began in May 1984 at Slane Castle, where the band lived, wrote, and recorded to find new inspiration. The album was completed in August 1984 at Windmill Lane Studios. It features atmospheric sounds and lyrics that lead vocalist Bono describes as "sketches" and other as lyrical tributes. Despite Eno was hesitant to work with a rock band and when contacted by U2, he told them he was considering retiring from music production to become a video artist. Reluctantly, Eno agreed to meet with the band in Dublin and brought along his engineer Daniel Lanois with the intention of recommending he work with them instead, Lanois had his own ambitions of producing a rock band. At the end, Eno was impressed by how they spoke, which was not in terms of music or playing, but in terms of their contributions to the identity of the band as a whole, also the band's discussion about pursuing different recording techniques and capturing the ambience of a recording space also piqued his interest.

The composition was indeed more atmospheric than its predeccesor album which marked one of the most dramatic changes in the band direction at the time, it has a rich and orchestrated sound and was the first U2 album with a cohesive sound. Under Lanois's direction, Mullen's drumming became looser, funkier and more subtle, and Clayton's bass became more subliminal, such that the rhythm section no longer intruded, but flowed in support of the songs. Eno's atmospheric production, along with more experimental song structures, lent the album an "art-rock sensibility" and "atmospheric rock" style that departed from U2's "hard-hitting post-punk roots".

You can noticed that effects in the opening track, "A Sort of Homecoming", immediately shows the change in U2's sound. Like much of the album, the hard-hitting martial drum sound of War was replaced with a subtler polyrhythmic shuffle, and the guitar was no longer as prominent in the mix, "The Unforgettable Fire", with a string arrangement by Noel Kelehan, has a rich, symphonic sound built from ambient guitar and driving rhythm, along with a lyrical "sketch" that is an "emotional travelogue" with a "heartfelt sense of yearning".

The album's lyrics are open to many interpretations, which alongside its atmospheric sounds, provides what the band often called a very visual feel.  Bono had recently been immersing himself in fiction, philosophy and poetry, and came to realise that his song writing mission

The melody and the chords to "Pride (In the Name of Love)" originally came out of a 1983 War Tour sound check in Hawaii. The song was originally intended to be about Ronald Reagan's pride in America's military power, but Bono was influenced by Stephen B. Oates's book about Martin Luther King Jr. titled Let The Trumpet Sound: A Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. "Pride" is the most conventional song on the album—Tony Fletcher of Jamming! magazine said at the time it was the most commercial song U2 had written—and it was chosen as the album's first single. 

On "Wire" Bono tried to convey his ambivalence to drugs. It is a fast-paced song built on a light funk drum groove.The ambient instrumental "4th of July" came about almost entirely through a moment of inspiration from Eno. At the end of a studio session. Bono tried to describe the rush and then come down of heroin use in the song "Bad".The sparse, dreamlike "MLK" was written as an elegy to King.

The critics praise the album and especially the new tandem by Eno-Lanois, due the panoramic soundscape and multiple textures, even tought the album is not full of hits, but at least it's a worth collection of ideas and themes. 

 

The Unfrogettable Fire Track List: 

 

1. A Sort Of Homecoming

2. Pride (In The Name Of Love)

3. Wire

4. The Unfrogettable Fire

5. Promenade

6. 4th. Of July

7. Bad

8. Indian Summer Sky

9. Elvis Presley And America 

10. MLK