My first memory of this era of U2 is of Pride on the jukebox in The Little Rose on one of our first visits there, October 1984. I can't remember any comment being passed, but if I said anything, it was probably just to mutter "overblown". I was still trying to live down my error of judgement.
I certainly didn't buy the album back then. I applied the Eno-purchase-decision-tree mentioned at the end of yesterday's entry, which ruled it out for Bono content. I was deeply suspicious of Bono then, and 25 years later I've come full circle. But in between I almost became a fan. Almost. Let me try and explain.
The first step was probably this moment in Live Aid. I only watched U2's set to gather evidence against them. But despite myself I ended up being strongly moved by Bonko's descent from the multi-tiered stage to make a single simple human connection. Well, OK, two or three. And all with pretty young white girls, coincidentally.
Watching it again for the first time since 13 July 1985, a couple of things strike me. One: poor old The Edge, eh? In these twelve minutes of footage, we don't come close to seeing his face once. There he is vamping along like a trooper while Bonzo hogs the camera, running his hand through that lacquered mane-of-mullet just 15 times too many. Two: the whole conceit that this was an improvised seize-the-moment gesture that robbed U2 of one of the songs on the set they had planned… well that's clearly bollocks. The whole Dance With Me schtick only takes two minutes end to end — not long enough to fit in another song — and Bongo has a whole string of 'ad-libbed' extra lyrics from the Stones and Lou Reed (nice brand positioning) ready to trot out.
Nevertheless I realised I liked the song Bad. I vaguely considered buying Wide Awake in America, but discretion got the better of me. No, it wasn't until many years later, after U2's One Truly Good Album that — as well as going forward to Zooropa — I felt I should go back and see what had led up to it. I overlooked the overripe hamminess of Joshua Tree, of course, and arrived at The Unforgettable Fire.
The first bit of it is overblown. Too much heavy breathing, grunting and choreographed sweating. But it's the textured, layered and sometimes quite short sketches in the second half of the album that I was after. As well as the OTGA, these prefigure some of the atmospheric pieces on The Passengers' album. As with that album, The Unforgettable Fire includes one of Bondo's many paeans to Elvis.
Anyway, I'm feeling on shaky ground criticising Bono's demagoguery having seen one of my all-time heroes indulging in same at the end of his Glastonbury set. Even worse, we saw him at Hyde Park on Saturday and he invited Macca on stage to join him: celeb mates are the very lowest form of stagecraft.
MusicBrainz entry for this album
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