U2 are rare in that most of their songs sound as good, if not better live than they do in the studio. Pride is one exception to this rule. No live version I've ever heard comes even close to packing the punch of this incredibly tight studio version.
100% . The studio version is majestic and powerful. The liver version is limp in comparison. Specifically because of Edge’s guitar. Whatever he did on the recording - he’s never been able to come close to reproducing it live.
Traditionally first albums are done on the cheap and fast . They are recorded with the intention of sounding like a live band. Over the years, the band become better musicians and try new ways to perform a song. When you become more established, you perform in better venues with better PA system and Amps and crew , likewise , a period of 2-5 years could see massive technological changes in recording equipment and techniques
I remember taping this when it aired on MTV when I was a teenager. I'd watch it over and over again! The passion behind the music, lyrics, and voice still gives me good chills! Their music is relevant more than ever today, isn't it........
I was too...14 years old. It was a nice distraction from the Cyndi Lauper's and the Duran Duran's. Nothing wrong with them. U2 just had a broader musical landscape that my ears were most drawn too.
The band members age here was around 23/24 years old. Crazy to think what they accomplished by this point and The Joshua Tree was still 3 years away from being made.
Yeah I recorded it off TV onto VHS one day in Adelaide Australia 1984.... lost the recording and lamented it for years...thanks to the guy who put it up on RU-vid....I've been searching for it for years
@@rockjammer9465 Ha! Awesome RJ! I have been thinking about this video for weeks now. I have on VHS somewhere &... bang... it appears on the right panel thingy. Just wonderful stuff
Yeah I hate to be disparaging but that was a different time for him and he was a different person. Truly inspired just on the cusp of greatness! He invented that sound
@@krisscanlon4051 I'd say he refined it rather than invented it. John McGeoch (Magazine, Siouxsie and the Banshees), Stephen Fellows (Comsat Angels - check out "Independence Day" from 1980) were doing similar things before this. The Edge wouldn't even deny that if you asked him.
One of my favorite albums of all time-a game changer, not just for fans, but the band as well. Bono is so unique and no one sings even close to the way he sings. Great memories, it was a great time in music. #Pride #theunforgetablefire #U2 #ireland
I still have this on VHS somewhere in my basement. I can never decided which album of theirs is my favorite. This one is always in my top 2, though. It meant, means, so much to me, has gotten me through some of the worst times in my life.
wow - the creative process. what a dream. and bonos quote nailed it: "I believe the songs already written. the less you get in the way of them the better. Its best to just let whats in you come out." poetic
This is also a bonus documentary on the “U2 GO HOME” DVD. For those who don’t know of it, it was two separate shows also filmed at Slane Castle during the Elevation tour in 2001. The first show was on August 24 only one day after Bono’s father Bob Hewson’s funeral. The second show was on September 1 only hours after The Republic of Ireland beat Holland in a 1 to 0 soccer game that sent them on to the World Cup Finals, wisely U2 had the second half of the game on the big screen as the crowd awaited their homeland band to play. For those who have never watched it, In my opinion it’s their best live show ever caught on film 🇮🇪!!!! But sadly not two full weeks later the attacks on America happened in New York, The Pentagon & fallen aircraft in Pennsylvania. It even impacted that tour with the band postponing several shows to offer help any way they could!!!!!
Yeah, I watch that Slane Castle concert and always get the thought that things were about to change. It is a glimpse back through the looking glass, back to that earlier world.
I was at the first gig. Good support acts including Coldplay (before they got shit and big ) and Chilli Peppers (they stole the show , and U2 were great but The Red Hot Chili Peppers were excellent ) It was good that they played stuff from their 1990s albums that the Americans seem to dislike . Also playing Out of Control was a big deal, great song .
Those kids know he's Brian Eno they've seen him on TV back in the day! Eno utterly taken in by this Irish bands charms that must have been life-enhancing for him
Ditto! havent seen this for ooh again ..30 yrs must be i loved watching this on vhs haha thought it was a great documentary and i totally love the Unforgettable era thanks for putting this up .
The Unforgettable Fire VHS cost nearly £30 in the UK in 1985. 2 promos 2 "live" clips and this. And yet the amount of times I watched it made it worth the money
I still have this on VHS in a box full of cassettes, CDs, etc. ‘The Unforgettable Fire’ has always been my favorite album of theirs, though it was ‘War’ that made me a fan all those years ago. It’s hard to believe this was 40 years ago now. 😂💚
Look what you've done with your bloody rock and roll music..... You've put out the sun. You're not coming back to our castle :) - A brilliant video: Love it.
The slowed down playback of Pride at 20.25 reminds of when a Walkman would play when it's batteries were low. You could fix it temporarily by giving it a shake!
Give what a shake??...oh yeh..The Walkman....i started typing around that time an i have to say and after one story i wrote for an English teacher at my local college, she happened to pick up on two, what are, i guess, now referred to as typo's, with her beautifully and delicately put comment of.. ." Young man, i might advise you that a mistake on the word WALKMAN on your essay which you just handed in should probably not be so rushed...after all, the N is at least two letters away from the L". Christ, she was a hot student Teacher as well....some of my young mates who read her comment, wanted one from her....a comment, obviously.
Yeah Brian Eno slowed it down doing his usual tape tricks by playing with the tempo and tone. They kept some of his ideas and they did their own thing with this song. Definitely the walkmen dead batteries routine
There are two things that hit me watching this again after so many years. There's the perverse nostalgia that comes from looking at something I _loved_ on first through fiftieth viewing back in the day, because I was less a U2 fan and more a proselytizing acolyte. If you had said to me from 1981 to 1991 that one day I would fall heavily out of love with U2, I probably wouldn't have let you finish your sentence. The second thing is something I felt back then but didn't want to admit. Namely, that they were all acutely aware of the camera and behaved accordingly, Bono especially. I really do think that Bono started heavily crafting his public image very early on, between October and War. I've often asked myself what happened to make me fall out of love with U2. There's not one single reason. Part of it was the first sideways step, as I saw it, from Achtung Baby to Zooropa. They had been inventive and evolving to that point.
we were all kids once, give the lads a break. they made "promenade" during these sessions, it sounds like an innocence, a young time that will never occur again. maybe they were becoming self aware but werent we all at 24, 25? i know i wasnt making fantastic world changing music while it was happening to me! happy new year, friend.
I think I was 20 when "Auctung baby" came out, and like all the other records it was a song track to my life at that time, even Zooropa I feel is underrated, Becuase the song Zooropa is U2 stepping forward and using the great new gear that was coming out at that time that's still the staple of Keyboards and effects...and "Dirty day" was a deep dark song unlike any other U2 song ever. and that creepy bassline Clayton always brings to the table as most of all the songs built off his basslines he comes up with, from New Years Day" to "Silver and Gold" which the songs I normally like are the songs people skip, on all, their records and all my favorite artist its always the songs that don't make it I fell in love with, Silver and Gold is in my top 10 U2 song's... I always go back to watch it off "Rattle and Hum" which was mostly songs leftover from Joshua Tree, because all 3 are standing in a row and the bassline rocks so hard it makes you bend at the knees without control. And the picture of them in a row rocking there knee's.But, I know where you're coming from, the older kid that passed on "boy" to me on cassette, His generation which most likely is your's, he graduated in 86' that generation mostly didn't follow U2 after Joshua Tree and went Guns and Roses -Metallica.while the ones who followed them went into Cure-Pixies-Smiths-Soundgarden-to grunge, as for kids who grew up surfing already had Nirvana's Bleach and the Pixies "Come on Pilgram" and were also following the Cure from '80s from "Seventeen Seconds" and The Smiths,I grew up on Long Island both my parents were USAF R&D and we moved near the top-secret Grumman base in Calverton, which I would do 16 years in myself but in a 1N field, but I remember being 17 or 18 and listing to the Pixies "Bassanova" while my mom and I went to the mall and she pointing out to me that the song "The happening" or Ranch 51, was about another top-secret military base, which coming from your mom is always FN cool. and I was like a "hero" for showing everybody what the song was about and trying to find books in the library which set off red flags because we would never be caught in the Library, which led to everyone has the one crazy bitch that works in the Library say after we explained what we were looking for"Maybe your mom should learn to keep her rap hut" and it was o lol as we all went back to my house that day 8 or 9 of us and waited for my mom to get home and when she did we told her and she said "ok ok I get, go outside" lol but we all knew my mom so at 7:15 we all sat near the Library and sure enough here comes my mom in her BDU's with her golden oak leaf and her sidearm... I think they just switched from 1911 to the M-9, and we would after that smoke in the Library in the back on the second floor without bother lol
I think what happened - certainly for me - is that they tried too hard to stay relevant. OK - there's only so much you can do with a Strat, a couple of Memory Mans (men?) and an AC30 - but the constant attempts to stay relevant ended up watering down what really always mattered most with U2 - the raw passion. And at some point you have to accept that you aren't going to keep bringing in the kids and just stick with the fans you have. We all lose that passion eventually, and I can't chide them for that. But in some ways it would have been better if they'd burned out when they discovered irony with "Achtung". I've been with them since 82/3 when I was about 12-13 and first getting into music that wasn't Abba and the Beatles. Took some time off with Rattle and Hum, which was a musical fiasco to my ears (the irony being that this was probably them at their most honest, see previous point). Achtung is a masterpiece that got me back on board. Still kept going to the gigs. Still bought the records out of habit - even took my kids to see them a couple of times. But the last straw for me was the 360 tour. All style, no substance. Still buying Bono's autobiography though. Still have plenty of respect for their legacy, their intelligence. But what they're doing these days is just not doing it for me.
The downfall happened after Zooropa. It wasn't as strong as Achtung Baby, but that was the last time when U2 made classic songs. They've made something like 5 very good songs since then, but that's not a very impressive number considering it's been 30 years...
I have this on beta. Watched it so many times. I even made a cassette recording of the whole making of so I could listen to it in the car or on stereo.
Apparently Edge used the LP Custom to perform the song "Indian Summer Sky" during the Unforgettable Fire Tour. Also as well, during the performance of "I Will Follow" at Radio City Music Hall in New York (03/12/84) he threw his iconic Explorer to the ground to stop a fight and broke the neck. I am convinced he used the LP Custom for the rest of the US tour in December as there is a photo of him using it at a gig in San Francisco (15/12/84): www.u2gigs.com/cover/gallery.php?display=Audio-Covers%2F1984-1985%20-%20The%20Unforgettable%20Fire%20Tour%2F04%20-%201984%20-%204th%20Leg%20-%20North%20America%2F1984-12-15-SanFrancisco-SanFrancisco-Front.jpg
I always thought Edge used the white guitar (forgot the name) shown in the video for Pride to record the song? Perhaps I'm wrong I suppose, I just remember Edge using a similar guitar during opening night of PopMart where they played Pride and people were saying it sounded just like the recorded guitar.
I remember watching this video in the early 2000s...they were so amazing even as youngsters. God truly blessed them ALL with amazing talent! p.s. was Bono doing the Macarena before the Macarena was the Macarena?
I just realized they recorded "Wide Awake in America" as well here, which was a mini-album, with each song capturing the full band's range...real spiritual music and lyrics. There's a lot I have to say about the band named after a spyplane as Mockingbird goes beyond media...
23:59 Paul Mcguiness' (I feel I've spelt that wrong) opinion about the song length, and Bono's trust is in it, is one of the many standouts of this documentary for me.
I love this record. Their creativity was great in this time period, almost a stream of consciousness flowing throughout. This was the first tour I saw them in Chicago at the U I C Pavilion.
I VIVIDLY REMEMBER viewing this on VHS (NTSC Format) tape in the USA, back in late 1984. (...AND...I still have that tape too...IN PRISTINE CONDITION!) BCRadio
@@Mysterywhiteboy78 How can Achtung Baby leave you cold? I mean really: HOW? That record is incredible from start to finish. I mean I get that we all have our favorite eras but Achtung Baby is fantastic. A very different sound, but still very U2.
...born in Hull - Quebec, actually. Moved to Hamilton with his family when he was 10 years of age. Perhaps, deeper insights into his roots would be his first solo release, Acadie (1989). Incredible individual.
I think if you watched this documentary you would understand this album a whole lot more. Very insightful. Great album that fed from the murkiness of an old castle and maybe a little from 80s Ireland which was a pretty dark place. However its a really enjoyable album with a sincere maturity and depth especially from a 20 something Bono. Some of my favourites on here never bettered. I think U2 should record their next album in an Irish castle to try and recapture the magic which was clearly evident here.
I just was looking at there wiki page and during Joshua Tree, they spent 3 weeks 20 miles from me in the Hamptons Long Island NY, Long Island, New York, Rehearsals on a beach, 19 October 1987 .At the same time the songs from The Joshua Tree were just being hits, as they were released only 5 months prior...
It is a fantastic album period...the period that gave us War, TUF, Joshua Tree, Rattle and Hum and Achtung Baby. An 8 year period or so? Though the Pop/ATYCLB period was fantastic, too. And the Songs of Experience period seems to be ready to drop as the best period since the Pop Period. The Boy period was good, too, but October lowers the period rating overall. I 100% agree that this War/Unforgettable Fire/Joshua Tree/Rattle and Hum/Achtung Baby period is the best
Was 24 saw them in Las Cruses New Mexico... San Antonio Pop Mart Tour and Amnesty International in Denver... Bill Graham was still alive and running around checking everthing out!!! Sa
