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Four decades ago this month, U2 released an album that marked a turning point for their sound as well as their creative approach. Compared to the band's first three post-punk-leaning records (Boy, October, and War), The Unforgettable Fire shakes things up in almost every way.
This adventurous album saw U2 collaborate with co-producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, record in an 18th-century Irish castle, experiment with their music like never before, and endure a frantic push to get the record done at the 11th hour—all while being filmed by a documentary crew.
The story begins in late 1983, after the final dates of the War tour, when the band convened at Bono’s seaside home (a converted Martello tower on the Irish coast) to write new material and brainstorm ways to change up their sound. As Bono put it, “All we had to do was to keep doing what we were doing and we would become the biggest band since Led Zeppelin, without a doubt. But something just didn't feel right.” In bassist Adam Clayton’s words, "We were looking for something that was a bit more serious, more arty."
After recording their first three albums at Windmill Lane Studios in Dublin with producer Steve Lillywhite, the members of U2 decided they would need to make some big changes to shake off their creative block and re-inspire their music. Possibly inspired by the writing sessions in Bono’s seaside fortress and Led Zeppelin's work at Headley Grange, they began to consider the possibilities of recording in a more unique, inspiring space than the dark, cramped confines of a traditional studio. But before any real planning could happen, they would need to find a new producer.
In the early stages of pre-production, U2 vetted producers such as Conny Plank (Kraftwerk, Can), Rhett Davies (Roxy Music), and Jimmy Iovine (who had recently produced U2’s live album Under a Blood Red Sky). After a series of fruitless meetings, vocalist Bono and guitarist The Edge floated the idea of bringing in experimental musician and art-rock luminary Brian Eno. Bono reportedly admired Eno’s work with Talking Heads and The Edge was a fan of his groundbreaking ambient compositions.
When propositioned by the band, Eno was hesitant at first, not believing he’d be the right fit for such a high-profile rock act. As The Edge later recalled, "I think he was intimidated by the lack of irony in what we were doing.” On the other hand, Eno worried that the band were "frightened of being overpowered by some softness." But in the end, Bono’s persistence and the band’s fervent interest in sonic experimentation landed U2 a meeting with Eno and his Canadian engineer, Daniel Lanois.
The band’s label, Island Records, initially protested the idea of hiring Eno. Island founder Chris Blackwell saw U2 poised to become the biggest rock band in history and thought Eno’s involvement would torpedo their success by burying them under “a layer of avante-garde nonsense.” Ultimately, Blackwell himself flew to London to meet with the band, and Bono’s conviction eventually persuaded him to green-light the record.
Still somewhat hesitant, Eno agreed to the project on the condition that Lanois act as co-producer in case his own style didn’t suit the band. But what began as a safety net ended up being the perfect combination of creative personalities. “They’re very, very different from each other,” Bono later commented. “Brian comes across as a very cerebral character.” Of Lanois, he said, “Daniel’s one of the most extraordinary musicians I’ve ever met, and the music is in him. It’s the way when he’s in the room you’ll find yourself playing better just ‘cause he’s around.”
After making three whole albums at Windmill Lane, which (at the time) lacked a big enough live room for the band to play together, Bono and company pined for a more inspiring locale to make their next record. Rather than recording in an acoustically dry space and "Trying to revitalize the recorded work using effects and reverberation and all the standard music trappings,” as The Edge said, “We would go into a very live room and try to do the opposite—try and tame what would be a wild sound."
U2’s management set about scouting for locations, eventually settling on Slane Castle, a grand 18th-century estate northwest of Dublin. The castle’s ornate ballroom—with its circular layout, 30-foot domed ceiling, and breathtaking views of the River Boyne—seemed a perfect environment for the band to relax, unwind, and create a landmark album of 1980s socially conscious art-rock. Lord Henry Mountcharles offered a favorable deal for a one-month lease including on-site lodging and catering, and the stage was set.
On May 7, 1984, U2 and their team (plus a TV film crew) arrived at Slane Castle and began outfitting it as a makeshift studio. Using the same portable recording system used to record U2’s previous live shows, which consisted of a 24-track Stephens Electronics tape recorder and a modified Sound Workshop console, Eno and Lanois set up a control room in the castle’s drawing room and ran cables into the adjoining ballroom, where the band would play.
But shortly after arriving, the team realized that the ballroom’s natural reverb would be great for slower songs but much too lively for more traditional rock tunes. Crew member Stephen Rainford described the acoustics as “Okay for chamber music, but no good for rock and roll". Drapes were put up to tame the reverb, but ultimately, much of the tracking was done in the castle’s library, which yielded "A denser, more powerful sound,” according to Lanois.
"We decided that we needed an intimate environment to work on the lyrics—to do vocal overdubs, harmonies, and come up with bass ideas,” Lanois told Red Bull Music Academy in 2015. “We always had two setups. The library setup, which I’ll call the live room, and then the more intimate setup, the control room, with couches where people can sit with vocal microphones. You could then have a combination: bash it out in the band room or intellectualize and get more specific about harmonies, and so on.”
While at Slane Castle, U2 and their team worked long hours, typically starting at 10am and wrapping up around 1am. Eno kept a more modest schedule, focusing on high-level creative ideas, while Lanois stuck around to handle most of the hands-on engineering duties and assist with songwriting.
Eno encouraged the band to develop their most unconventional ideas, even going so far as to create a set of atmospheric synthesizer compositions to inspire their songwriting. "We were eager to learn and not precious at all about our sound or the way we worked,” The Edge recalled. “We threw ourselves wholeheartedly into this different approach."
While Bono and The Edge had their heads in the clouds with Eno, the rhythm section quickly recognized Lanois’ musical chops and welcomed him as a collaborator in the songwriting process. As Niall Stokes writes in U2: Into the Heart: The Stories Behind Every Song, “Under Lanois' 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.”
The camera crew’s footage provides a rare inside look at some of the early Slane Castle sessions, as well as later sessions at Windmill Lane. It’s difficult to identify specific microphones and equipment in the footage, but piecing together bits of interviews gives us a decent picture of the recording process.
Drummer Larry Mullen Junior’s seven-piece kit was set up in front of the ballroom fireplace and captured with close mics on the kick drum, snare, and timbales, plus a widely spaced triple-overhead array and an additional room mic in front of the kick. Another room mic can be seen in a hallway off the side of the ballroom, and the producers reportedly experimented with placing drum mics up to 60 feet away.
During the drum tracking, Mullen worked closely with Lanois, who encouraged him to try different instruments such as timbales, a piccolo snare, and brushes. Not a fan of headphones, Mullen had a set of massive PA monitors set up behind the kit; but this presented obvious bleed issues and the drummer appears with headphones on in most of the footage.
Bono recorded his initial vocal takes with a Telefunken C12 large-diaphragm tube microphone, which captured the spacious reverb of the ballroom as the notoriously dynamic singer crooned and swayed in front of the mic. Lanois recalled recording vocals for “MLK” and other songs in the more intimate environment of the control room with a Sony C-500 condenser mic. “It was a very beautiful, local sound on Bono,” he said. “It’s hard to find these days because they’re all broken, but I had a brand new one and it has a very silky top end."
With only sketches of lyrics ready during the Slane Castle sessions, Bono was forced to ad-lib a lot of his early scratch tracks in order to give his bandmates something to work with. "He had to be singing something, anything, to get the song finished,” said Mullen. “A song recorded in the room with Bono and a song recorded without him could be very different animals altogether." While the lyrics never fully came together for songs like “Bad” and “Pride (In the Name of Love),” the producers and The Edge preferred the spontaneous feeling of those improvised vocals.
Due to Eno’s influence and a wide range of effects, The Unforgettable Fire marked a distinct change in The Edge’s guitar sound. Most noticeably, a Lexicon Prime Time delay unit contributed the dotted eighth-note delays that have come to define the guitarist’s signature sound. Other effects included an AMS harmonizer, an Ebow sustainer, and copious amounts of reverb. Eno’s treatments, combined with The Edge’s use of alternate tunings, harmonics, slides, and vibrato systems, give the guitars a much more spacious, shimmering sound than U2’s previous albums.
The Edge used a variety of guitars on the record, including a Fender Stratocaster and Telecaster, a Gibson Les Paul, a Gretsch hollowbody, and multiple acoustics. Most of the electrics were recorded through Vox AC30 amplifiers with unique placement and miking by the producers. In one instance, a Vox miked with a Sony C-500 can be seen perched on the castle’s balcony, and other times it was placed at the bottom of a staircase with close and distant mics.
Adam Clayton recorded his Fender Jazz Bass through an Ampeg head, a modest rack of effects, and a couple of massive speaker cabinets captured with multiple condenser and dynamic mics at varying distances. This gave the producers a palette of tonal options to use for different songs, ranging from the mellow and round bass on the title track to the throatier tones of “Wire” and “Indian Summer Sky.”
One of the album’s most unique tracks, “4th of July,” began with Eno secretly recording Clayton as he improvised a simple bass progression. The Edge then joined in with some spacey guitar, also completely unaware the moment was being recorded. After the fact, Eno added additional effects and treatments before mixing down the hypnotic, ambient piece directly to a two-track master so that there could be no possibility of altering it.
Drums, bass, guitar, and vocals may be at the core of U2’s sound, but they made great use of keyboards and other instruments on The Unforgettable Fire. Eno used the brand-new, cutting-edge Yamaha DX7 FM synthesizer to create many of the dreamy tones that underpin the album; and The Edge reportedly played a Yamaha CP-70 electric piano, though it’s hard to discern amongst the dense arrangements).
A Fairlight CMI digital synthesizer (credited to Paul Barrett) was used to create placeholder string tracks and textural ideas throughout the album. These were mostly replaced by Noel Kelehan’s string arrangements, but the raw synth was kept on at least one song (most likely the title track). The documentary shows the recording of solo violin with an electric pickup and room mics, as well as hand drum overdubs with a Sennheiser MD 421.
After a month of intensive songwriting and recording sessions, freeform experimentation, a historic solar eclipse, and a music video shoot, U2 packed up and headed back to Dublin to finish the record on Windmill Lane’s SSL 4000 Series console. While the team had planned to complete most of the tracking at the castle, they ended up re-recording a fair amount of the album in the studio over the next two months, including a substantial reworking of the album’s biggest hit, “Pride”.
With time running out before an upcoming tour and the record still in a somewhat unfinished state, the pressure on the band began to build and tensions mounted—all while the cameras continued to roll. With less than two weeks left, Bono admitted that he might not be able to finish the lyrics in time, while Mullen grew impatient with his bandmates and Eno advocated for retaining the raw and spontaneous sound of the initial sessions.
To get the record done in time, the band switched into overdrive and began working 20-hour days in the studio. Eno and Lanois split production duties over this intensive period, with Eno at the helm for the first half and Lanois overseeing the final overdubs. After an all-night session to finish tracking by the morning of August 5th, Bono recorded one last-minute take of the opening track while a taxi waited outside the studio to take Lanois back to London with the master tapes.
Not as much is known about the mixing of The Unforgettable Fire, but the results speak for themselves. From the opening bars of “A Sort Of Homecoming,” you can tell that U2’s sound had undergone a significant evolution. The songwriting still carries their signature earnestness and energy, but everything is bigger: the arrangements, the sounds, the ideas—even the songs are longer, with a couple pushing past six minutes. Eno’s contributions add an ethereal sheen to the music and Lanois’ influence is evident in the musicianship, but neither distract from the soul of U2’s sound.
Whether you’re a diehard U2 fan or cringe at their melodramatic style and silly nicknames, you’ve got to respect them for living on the edge while making this record.
Refusing to let themselves get too comfortable with the sound that had made them international superstars, Bono and company threw caution to the wind and dared to do something completely different. The Unforgettable Fire may not pack as many hits as War before it or The Joshua Tree after it, but it’s nonetheless a pivotal moment in the band’s evolution. One reviewer summed up the album as “A forceful collection of atmospheric ideas and themes, forgettable at first but strangely haunting and soon firmly implanted."
On a personal note, I (Dante, the author) couldn’t agree more with that assessment. I’ve never really considered myself a U2 fan, but I stumbled across this album while crate-digging at a record store on vacation and picked it up on a whim after seeing the name “Eno” in the credits. When I got home, I listened through both sides back-to-back, appreciated it, and put it back on my shelf between Traffic and Vanilla Fudge. But the sounds of The Unforgettable Fire never left my mind, and when I saw that the record had a 40th anniversary coming up, I knew I had to give it the love it deserved.
If there’s one thing we can all take away from this record, it’s this: the next time you feel a creative block, try doing something drastically different. Follow your heart, not the charts. As Bono said, “It’s best to just let what’s in you come out.”
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