Review: Vinyl Reissues of U2's 'The Unforgettable Fire' and 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb'

The Unforgettable Fire was the last album U2 made before they become the defining megastar Rock band of the eighties, and it is transitional in sound as well as historical purpose. The production and arrangements are generally lean in the spirit of the band’s first three albums, but they upped the level of fist-raised grandeur that would be their default setting in the years to come. With that came the aura of self-importance that Bono-haters find most off putting. Nevertheless, “Pride (In the Name of Love)” (an ode to Martin Luther King, Jr.) is still a pretty rousing anthem, and the beautiful title track (an ode to the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings) is even better. However, The Unforgettable Fire cooks hottest when U2 are ripping out stilettos like “Wire” and “Indian Summer Sky” with the punk intensity that made their debut album so awesome. If The Unforgettable Fire as a whole lacks the focus and consistency of Boy and War, it still delivers a healthy selection of U2 classics and only really loses the plot with the aimless, interminable, and atypically poorly sung “Elvis Presley and America”…and it certainly remains fresher and fiercer than the stardom-making but pretty boring Joshua Tree.

Review: Vinyl Reissues of Three U2 Albums

OK, so in 1987, U2 completed the transition from being a particularly successful college rock band that had not yet cracked the top ten of Billboard’s album charts to the biggest band in the world. The Joshua Tree went to number one in almost every major market in the world, U2 filled stadiums and dominated MTV, Bono became Rock’s hunky conscience, and so on and so on. Yet the edge of a band once edgy enough to deserve a member called The Edge had gone a bit blunt. The punky energy that made Boy and War so invigorating was softening into a sound more befitting top-forty radio, and by the time U2 released the bluesy, snoozy soundtrack for their major motion picture Rattle & Hum in 1988, they were as edgy as a beach ball. Yet they still sold millions of albums, so it is to U2’s credit that they then started fucking with their tried and true formula at the height of their popularity.

U2 wasn’t the first minister to marry Rock & Roll and club-based dance music (that kind of thing had already been happening in the Madchester scene for a few years), but they were certainly the biggest. So new recordings such as “Mysterious Ways” and “Even Better Than the Real Thing” sounded fairly radical when they commandeered the airwaves in 1991. Digging deeper into Achtung Baby, there were somewhat more out-there things such as the sensual “The Fly”, the surging “Acrobat”, and the pounding “Zoo Station”, all of which hinted at what U2 could really do when they let their imaginations go wild.

And that’s just what they did with their next album. Zooropa is divisive not only because Bono’s new yen for adopting obnoxious, ironic personas wore out some less-committed fans but also because the music is so weird. The thing is, U2 could do weird very, very well. If “Mysterious Ways” was a bit of a refreshing change after the tedium of “Angel of Harlem”, then “Numb” was a revivifying plunge in an icy stream, taking everything we came to know about U2—including Bono’s bombastic pipes—and wiping them away. That’s the most revolutionary cut on Zooropa, but the title track, the hilariously discofied “Lemon”, the trashy smash “Daddy’s Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car”, and “The Wanderer”—starring guest vocalist Johnny Cash and guest instrument a twenty-dollar Casio keyboard—are just as far out. Bono’s withering perspective of contemporary life went down more pleasantly with a less hectoring tone and more humor. The only slight misstep is “Stay (Far Away So Close)”, but only because it doesn’t try to rise to the rest of the album’s level of experimentalism. 

Zooropa is one of the shiniest and most underappreciated gems in U2’s back catalogue, but it isn’t for everyone, and those who prefer Larry Mullen, Jr., without the drum machine accompaniment could take solace in The Best of 1980-1990, which gathers up choice tracks from U2’s pre-experimental career. Much of what made the comp is unimpeachable—“New Year’s Day”, “Sunday Bloody Sunday”, “Bad”, “I Will Follow”, “The Unforgettable Fire”—and the Joshua Tree hits sound fresher when cut in among the more vital classics, but there is an over-reliance on Rattle and Hum that blunts the history. Because most of those songs were huge hits, they had to be included, but it would have been nice if some room had been made for minor singles such as “Two Hearts Beat As One”, “Gloria”, and “A Day without Me” to provide a more complete portrait of the early years— and because they’re great tracks.

Yet there are a few slight oddities to mix up the familiarity, most notably a good rerecording of the B-side “Sweetest Thing” (which actually ended up becoming a sizable hit in most of the world) and alternate edits of “New Year’s Day”, “Where the Streets Have No Name”, and “Bad”. The CD also included a hidden track and token obscurity— the title number and only representative of U2’s second album— though “October” is not much of a song.

Nevertheless, while you wouldn’t want to be without Boy or War, The Best of 1980-1990 still presents an adequate picture of U2’s first decade, and Achtung Baby and Zooropa certainly constitute the best of what came next, so these three albums are a pretty good trio to put forth together in a wave of vinyl reissues from Universal Music. Zooropa includes two bonus tracks—long, clubby, nearly unrecognizable remixes of “Lemon” and “Numb”—and The Best includes a bonus track from its Japanese edition, the relatively obscure Joshua Tree track “One Tree Hill”, which was released as a single in Australia and New Zealand. Each album arrives on double, 180-gram vinyl, and each is remastered with a reduction of the CDs’ brightness. 

Jokerman: The Humor of Bob Dylan

With the probable exception of John Lennon, Bob Dylan has been the subject of more solemn reverence than any other Rock & Roller. From the mid-‘60s when daft journalists branded him the “voice of his generation” to this very month when a bunch of celebrities supplied their two cents in an overly respectful homage in Rolling Stone, Dylan’s work has sure inspired a lot of boring accolades. Well, fuck the boring accolades and fuck solemn reverence. No one would be more offended by it all than the man, himself. Dylan’s greatest work is not solemn. It is not the expression of a generation’s angst or whatever. It’s hilarious. Not witty. Not clever. Not “My, doesn’t he have a delightful sense of humor.” Hilarious. Choke on your toke, spew a tuna sandwich out your nose hilarious. For me, the key Dylan line is not “How many roads must a man blah, blah, blah” or “I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand” (which boring old Bono boringly compares to “one of the great Psalms of David” in that boring Rolling Stone article). Dylan’s key line is this probing profundity from “Tombstone Blues”:

The sun’s not yellow
It’s chicken.

There’s your voice of a generation right there, beatniks. There’s your “modern Shakespeare” (another writer who inspires much boring solemnity but was never above cracking a good fart joke). Dylan pulled off his most brilliant prank when he ditched the overt preachiness of his early acoustic work in favor of surrealism and a good beat. The punch line wasn’t just all of the former fans outraged by his embracing of Rock & Roll electricity but those who continued to search for the meaning of existence in his outrageous comedy. Of course, there was still profundity in a lot of this stuff: the socialist tirade of “Maggie’s Farm”, the sneering swipe at gaudy materialism in “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat”, and even the slanted perspective of poverty in “Tombstone Blues”. But the righteousness of these tracks is inebriated with sheer nonsense. If The Times They Are A-Changin’ was Fail Safe, then Highway 61 Revisited was Dr. Strangelove, and we all know what the greater film is.

So, what does the above pun on “yellow” and “chicken” have to do with the overall message of “Tombstone Blues”? Not a goddamn thing. Does this lowest form of humor detract from the song’s message? Your call. Does it make Dylan analysts look goofy when they try to decode its meaning? It sure does (observe how goofy I come off in the proceeding paragraphs). That may be the line’s purpose after all: it exposes the fatuousness of those who missed Dylan's point that sometimes there is no point. It’s also keen proof that in reaction to those who demanded he be their generation’s social conscience (such pressure!), he was not going to alter his path for anyone. If he had something to say about society, he’d say it. And if he wanted to interrupt that message with a really dumb joke, he was gonna do that too. Dylan was not about to allow his decisions be dictated by his critics or his followers. His own abundant and gloriously absurd imagination would forever call the shots.


That really dumb joke in “Tombstone Blues” would probably come off as nothing more than a really dumb joke had it been sung by a singer with a less funny voice—not funny sounding (although it could be that too), but deliberately funny. Dylan delivers the punch line (“It’s chicken!”) with such assuredness it’s like he’s finally summing up his entire philosophy in a short, sharp sound bite for a desperate public. “Here’s your revelation, kids: The sun’s not yellow…it’s chicken! Amen.” No one but Dylan could do that kind of self-parody without making him or herself look a fool. Witness once again, Bono, who adopted a crass capitalist persona as a joke in the ‘90s. With Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde, Bob Dylan made his critics and lauders look like clowns. With “Zoo TV” and MacPhisto and his press conferences at K-Mart, Bono made himself look dopey (we’d have to wait until the hillbilly minstrelsy of Nashville Skyline for Bob to finally become the brunt of his own joke).

The amazing thing is that no one seemed to get the joke at the time. They didn’t understand that this really, really, really funny guy was even trying to be funny. Dylan went through a period in which he was inseparable from a giant light bulb, for Christ’s sake! Naturally, the press wanted to know what this meant. “Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb” the singer explained in Don’t Look Back.

Decades down the road, the guy is still discharging priceless burlesque. Dylan clowned us again in 2004 with his autobiography. Chronicles Volume One is a rambling shaggy dog story in which the living legend rhapsodizes over a bunch of people you’ve never heard of while offering scant insights on his own life and career. The myth deflates yet again. That same year, he made good on an offhand joke cracked 39 years earlier that the only product he’d shill for is “ladies undergarments.” Imagine the shock of those who still wallow in solemn reverence while spinning “Masters of War” when first seeing Dylan in a Victoria’s Secret ad. Imagine 63-year old Bob rolling on the floor with fits of laughter after crooning alongside underwear models. In 2009 he gave us the funniest Rock & Roll news item in recent years when he was arrested for vagrancy by a clueless young cop.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, “Master of War” and “It’s Alright, Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” get my self-righteous juices flowing just like everyone else’s. Yeah, I agree that “Like a Rolling Stone” is a brilliant, poetic portrait of disillusion and generational waywardness or whatever insufferable label we might slap on that great Rock & Roll song. But nothing moves me like the above quote from “Tombstone Blues”, or when Bob imagines making love to Elizabeth Taylor and catching hell from Richard Burton in “I Shall Be Free”, or when he completely cracks up at the beginning of “Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream” before launching into a six and half-minute tall tale about how he discovered America. Dylan moves me the most when he’s making me laugh. Even Weird Al can’t do that.

Bob Dylan turns 70 today.