When was unforgettable fire released

It features atmospheric sounds and lyrics that lead vocalist Bono describes as "sketches". Two songs feature lyrical tributes to Martin Luther King Jr.

The Unforgettable Fire received generally favourable reviews from critics and produced the band's biggest hit at the time, " Pride In the Name of Love ", as well as the live favourite " Bad ", a song about heroin addiction.

A 25th Anniversary edition of the album was released in October The title is a reference to "The Unforgettable Fire"—an art exhibit about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The band saw the exhibit in November in Japan while on the War Tour.

U2 feared that following the overt rock of their War album and War Tour , they were in danger of becoming another "shrill", "sloganeering arena-rock band". In the 10th issue of U2 magazine , issued in February , Bono hinted at radical changes on the next album saying that he couldn't "sleep at night with the thought of it all" and that they were "undertaking a real departure".

The band had recorded their first three albums with producer Steve Lillywhite , and rather than create the "son of War ", they sought experimentation.

However, they found their early musical ideas for the album to be too "European" for an American producer. Guitarist The Edge had a long appreciation of musician Brian Eno 's work, [7] and admired his ambient and "weird works". Having never worked with music such as U2's, Eno was also initially reluctant.

Eno's earlier doubts were resolved by Bono's power of persuasion and his increasing perception of what he called "U2's lyrical soul in abundance", traits which had become less evident on the War album.

Eno commented that the band were "constantly struggling against it as if they were frightened of being overpowered by some softness". Eno explained that he focused on the ideas and conceptual aspects, while Lanois handled the production aspects. The first phase of recording took place in Slane Castle. Randy Ezratty's company Effanel Music, who recorded U2 in Boston and Red Rocks the previous year, was hired with his then unique portable track recording system.

His equipment was set up in the castle's library with cables run into the adjacent ballroom where the band played. According to the Edge, Eno was more interested in the more unconventional material and did not take much interest in "Pride In the Name of Love " or "The Unforgettable Fire". However, Lanois would "cover for him" such that the two balanced each other out. A far more atmospheric album than the previous War , The Unforgettable Fire was at the time the band's most dramatic change in direction.

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 is replaced with a subtler polyrhythmic shuffle , and the guitar is no longer as prominent in the mix. The exhibition, which the band attended in Chicago, commemorated the victims of the bombing of Hiroshima.

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 felt songs like "Bad" and "Pride In the Name of Love " were best left as incomplete "sketches", [11] and he said that " The Unforgettable Fire was a beautifully out-of-focus record, blurred like an impressionist painting, very unlike a billboard or an advertising slogan.

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. 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, Eno overheard Clayton improvising a simple bass figure and recorded it "ad hoc" as it was being played.

The Edge happened to join in, improvising a few guitar ideas over the top of Clayton's bass; neither knew they were being recorded. Eno added some treatments and then transferred the piece straight to two-track master tape — and that was the song finished, with no possibility of further overdubs.

Bono tried to describe the rush and then come down of heroin use in the song " Bad ". Another song, "Indian Summer Sky", was a social commentary on the prison-like atmosphere of city living in a world of natural forces. The sparse, dreamlike " MLK " was written as an elegy to King. Moydrum Castle , the site depicted on the album cover. The Unforgettable Fire was released on 1 October And then there's the title-track, possibly the album's shining achievement.

The visceral string arrangement scored by Noel Kelehan is superb, as is Bono's vocal, including a perfectly integrated falsetto, replete with melodic passages of genuine beauty. The Unforgettable Fire brings the band into a different dimension in terms of dynamics, texture and atmosphere. If U2 tended on occasion towards stridency in the past, that fault has been eradicated here.

I'm still wrestling with the strange 'Elvis Presley And America', in which at one point Bono's treated voice sounds uncannily like Lou Reed and thus far, only '4th Of July', an instrumental that's akin to a slow-motion fireworks display, leaves me cold. Part elegy, part lullaby, it closes U2's warmest album yet on an appropriately direct and moving note. This then, is the beginning of the new chapter of U2. With an album as rich and rewarding as The Unforgettable Fire as a introduction, the possibilities for the future seem limitless.

Instead, the band challenged itself to find something beyond the prickly rawness that was already making U2 an international phenomenon. So, they turned to ambient music pioneer Brian Eno and his budding protege Daniel Lanois, sparking an unlikely collaboration that would ultimately stretch over six albums. It could be argued that The Unforgettable Fire , released on Oct. A group that always seemed to record as if playing live onstage, with few embellishments, was suddenly traversing a much more expansive soundscape.

They clearly enjoyed the new vista. Bono 's always impressionistic lyrics were sharper and more resonant, highlighted by lines like " faces ploughed like fields that once gave no resistance " and, in his final requiem for Martin Luther King Jr. Put simply, they'd never sounded like this before, and they'd never sound the same again. The Unforgettable Fire began a run of nine straight albums that would go at least platinum.