1984 album in review: U2 -- The Unforgettable Fire

It was all because of a girl I met...

That's how I became a U2 fan. To be clear, that's how I learned about the very existence of U2.

In the summer of 1985, almost a full year after The Unforgettable Fire's release, I attended a summer camp at Olivet College. This camp was patterned after Boys or Girls State, but was sort of a low-rent version of that. We were supposed to learn about how the legislative and executive branches of government ran by participating in mock campaigns and elections--or at least I think. I really don't remember much of anything we did at this camp, but I do remember this particular girl. She liked me, I liked her (probably because she liked me) and the most memorable parts of this summer camp were the evening dances in the Olivet cafeteria, hanging out with this girl (I'll call her "Janine"--not her real name), and her telling me about this band called U2 that her college-age brother hipped her to.

When the camp ended--which had to have been late June--Julie and I maintained contact by writing letters. We must have exchanged letters every week throughout the rest of that summer. Knowing that she liked U2, I bought her some U2 badges that I found at the oft-frequented Camelot Music at Saginaw's Fashion Square Mall. I gave them to her when we met up again in the late summer, and she seemed quite appreciative.

It was likely the autumn of 1985 that I finally decided to investigate U2 myself. I bought Under a Blood Red Sky and a little while later, The Unforgettable Fire. Meanwhile, as all teenage summer romances go, it slowly fizzled out between Janine and I. Distance and senior year of high school took their toll, but the gift of U2 that Janine gave me grew and blossomed.

As I mentioned, Under a Blood Sky, the live EP released in 1983, was my first U2 experience. It's hard to believe now, but at that time U2 seemed mysterious and incredibly foreign to me. A band from Ireland? That seemed so exotic! It's important for me to mention that I didn't have MTV at this point, so I wouldn't have seen U2 there. I also don't recall ever seeing any U2 videos anywhere else, and of course their music was not on the radio in Michigan's Thumb region--certainly not on any radio stations I listened to. The Thumb was a radio desert in the 1980s. There were no college stations nor alternative stations. In fact, I don't think "alternative radio" as a concept was even invented until the 1990s.

To indicate how sheltered I was from a musical standpoint in 1985, Under a Blood Red Sky was probably the rawest record I'd ever heard. Even though nobody would ever classify U2 as punk, it was what I imagined punk to sound like. It was aggressive, political, and unadorned. 

So imagine my surprise when I got my hands on The Unforgettable Fire. Outside of "Pride (In the Name of Love)," which is probably the most conventionally structured and produced song on the album, the album is muted and murky. It sounds like it could have been recorded in the ghostly castle pictured on the record sleeve, and then transmitted via a shaky telephone connection to Island Records headquarters, where it was re-recorded on a few Edison cylinders. To call The Unforgettable Fire "atmospheric" is an understatement.

But it was for those reasons--and the ghostly cover that appeared to have been captured with a daguerreotype or at best an 1890s Kodak brownie camera--that I was quickly obsessed with the album. The opening track, "A Sort of Homecoming," brought the murk in right away and conjured images of a long journey undertaken in a grey, overcast, wintery landscape. 

If I am in a particularly vulnerable state of mind, as I have been quite often recently, "Pride (In the Name of Love)"'s heartfelt salute to Martin Luther King, Jr., with its opening guitar riff that sounds like a clarion call, can still move me to tears--as it did last week when I listened to it one dark morning on the way to work.

The jittery "Wire" is a song I've always liked, but is not one that seems to get much attention. The lyrics might be a bit tossed off, but it's musically propulsive.

The Unforgettable Fire is, of course, not above criticism. There are several songs that are underbaked, like "Promenade" and "Elvis Presley and America" (which couldn't possibly sound any farther removed from the Hillbilly Cat or the United States). These songs coast by on mood, murk, and atmospherics.

The title track ("The Unforgettable Fire") and "Bad" are the two other songs that I still adore to this day. I spent hours trying to transcribe the lyrics to "Bad" (in the days before one could simply look up lyrics online).

Listen, I know that shitting on U2 is particular popular these days, and has probably been popular since the '80s, but I still love this band and don't give a goddamned what anybody else thinks. The Unforgettable Fire, as a moody if flawed listening experience, moves me as much now as it did in 1985.