The Unforgettable Fire remastered - ab heute im Handel
Update: Bei Pitchfork.com gibt es ein Interview mit den beiden Producern Daniel Lanois und Brian Eno zu den Aufnahmen vor 25 Jahren zu lesen:
It all makes sense now, what with 25 years of history behind us, but at the time U2's decision to tap Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois to produce the pivotal follow-up to their breakthrough album Warwas far from the most obvious course of action. Eno, after all, was a
cerebral sounding board and problem solver splitting his time between
his own projects and happily throwing a playful spanner into the works
of others. Lanois, on the other hand, was far from a known quantity, a
few years away from the defining work he would go on to do with such
acts as Peter Gabriel, Bob Dylan, and Emmylou Harris. Yet somehow the
unlikely combination of this band and these producers worked.
In advance of the 25th anniversary re-release of The Unforgettable Fire,
the classic 1984 album Eno and Lanois ultimately made with U2 and the
first of their many fruitful collaborations, we tracked down the two
busy producers to talk about how they began their now quarter-century
relationship with the band.
Daniel Lanois: Brian and I had been working in Canada in a town called Hamilton. We'd been making ambient records [including On Land and Apollo]
for a few years, some very cool records. But I'll be real straight with
you. During that ambient music-making chapter, I was pretty isolated.
Nothing had really come my way that was illustrious, in terms of
invites. I had poured my soul into these ambient works with Eno, and a
lot of phone calls were coming in-- David Bowie was calling, Iggy Pop
the next day. None of them to me, all to Brian. Brian was pretty much
in the fast lane of record making at that point. He was pretty much on
the pulse of things in New York City, and then he said that he wasn't
producing records anymore. He was finished with it, and was therefore
not interested in working with U2.
Brian Eno: I had never worked with that kind of music before, and I
was not completely convinced that I would be the right person for it. I
thought, well, I can handle the ideas side of it all right, but can I
handle the actual traditional production side alright? I knew Dan was
very good at that side of things, and very good at working with bands,
getting the best out of the players and so on, so I said, "Why not have
both of us? We'll sort of overlap in some parts, but we actually sort
of serve different functions as well." That was how that working
relationship started.
DL: I said to him that I would be interested in working for them
because I was looking to sink my teeth into rock'n'roll. He said, well,
perhaps an introduction can be made, because Brian felt that I had
something to offer. Beyond my appetite to do good work, he felt that I
had something to offer because I had a burning desire. So he accepted a
meeting, and we went to Ireland with the idea of getting me on the U2
record.
BE: We had never actually produced anything of anybody else's
before, though we had worked together quite a lot. We knew each other
well, and we had some respect for each other's different talents. That
seemed to me like the ideal situation. We could just do the bits we
were sort of comfortable doing.
DL: They were oblivious to my existence, so in the end, he agreed to co-produce it with me.
Pitchfork: U2, particularly at that time, was totally at odds
with the kind of music you were making. Why do you think they looked to
you as producers?
BE: I think they were very keen on the Talking Heads stuff that I
had done. I think they also, dare I say it, liked some of my music! [laughs] The main thing, actually, was that they wanted to go somewhere else.
DL: They wanted to do something different. U2 has been listening to New Gold Dreamby Simple Minds as a point of reference, a record they liked. The
panorama of the ambiance appealed to them. I think that Bono wanted to
get to a place that was wider than stripped-down rock'n'roll, so we
allowed ourselves the flexibility to embrace the colors that Eno and I
had been developing.
BE: I had this phone call with Bono-- he is the greatest salesman of
all time, you have to bear that in mind-- where I said to him, look,
what I'm worried about is that I might change things rather
unrecognizably. People might not particularly like the new you that
comes out of this. And he said, well, actually we want to be changed
unrecognizably. We don't want to just keep repeating what we've done
before. He said if we wanted to, we're on track for being a band that
just does the kind of records we've done so far. He said we want to do
something different from that. He said we wanted to be more-- I forget
the word he used, but "cutting edge" was the meaning. I thought, OK, as
long as you appreciate that there's a risk involved in that.
After that conversation was when I came up with a plan. I thought,
well, I knew that Danny was a great producer, and even if nothing about
the working relationship between me and the band worked out, they would
still have a really good producer in him. In fact, it worked out very
well.
DL: The entire record has soft edges, but I suppose it can be viewed
as...when you see great photographic images printed from film, the raw
edges surrounding the portrait are part of the beauty. The medium
presents itself, and therefore the restrictions become part of the
dedicated work. I still love that about restrictions. I think we did
the best we could with what we had to work with. We had very few tools,
and there were no outside influences. We were huddled up as a team, and
we got what we got because of what we brought to the table. Part of me
likes a more ragged, jagged guitar sound or performance, but our work
might not have been as innovative had we followed in the footsteps of
what came before. We were very proud of what we had hit on.
Pitchfork: Daniel, you're more of a traditional musician than
Brian is, and you obviously bring something different than he does to
the albums you work on.
DL: We are similar in the sense that we love soul music, using
"soul" as a broad banner for anything that feels right, that has a
sense of purpose to it. That's ultimately what we love in records, as a
human race. We want to be lifted. But Eno's an incredible catalyst, and
has a way of quickly presenting another way of looking at things.
That's really his genius, and he's still the best at it. Of course, he
might spontaneously come up with a fresh way to look at things, but
when the shop door closes, Lanois is still sweeping up!
on October 23, 2009
at 5:40 p.m