This is a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. An exhibit dedicated to the civil rights leader was on display at the Chicago Peace Museum in 1983 when the band visited.
Bono is speaking about those throughout history who have died because they preached of the equality of all men and practiced nonviolence as the only way to achieve their goal of having this equality universally recognized.
MLK is the primary example of nonviolent resistance as the only way to bring about changes in civil rights. But there are allusions to others; Christ for example.
The song is about singular "people" (including Christ as man) that lived their life with pride. Not in a boastful way, but with the pride a person has when their thoughts and actions are motivated by their understanding and full awareness of the dignity and sanctity of ALL human life.
The song is a tribute or illustration or reminder to us, of martyrs to this ideal. It speaks to how they lived their life with an inner Pride in all of humanity and that this Pride is really an expression of God's love for all of humanity. These people did what they did because they were trying to spread this message of God's love for all of mankind.
This began as a song about US president Ronald Reagan. Bono had lyrics written condemning Reagan for an arrogant pride that led to nuclear escalation, but it just wasn't working. "I remembered a wise old man who said to me, don't try and fight darkness with light, just make the light shine brighter," Bono told NME. "I was giving Reagan too much importance, then I thought Martin Luther King, there's a man. We build the positive rather than fighting with the finger."
King was killed on a Memphis motel balcony on April 4, 1968. Bono sings "early morning, April 4," but King was actually shot at 6:01 p.m. local time. Bono has acknowledged the mistake and sometimes sings it as "early evening, April 4."
Chrissie Hynde (lead singer of The Pretenders) sang backup. She was married to Jim Kerr of Simple Minds at the time and was thanked on the album as "Mrs. Christine Kerr."
-
The band got the idea for this song at a soundcheck in Hawaii on their 1983 US tour. The engineers recorded all U2's soundchecks for this very purpose.
The recording process was very difficult. U2 and their
Unforgettable Fire producers, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, experimented with many unworthy takes before scrapping it, taking a break, and nailing it after starting from scratch.
"It took us a while to get that track,"
Lanois said in a Songfacts interview. "We tried it in a castle [Slane Castle], we tried it in a rehearsal room, and in the end, we got it at a studio called Windmill Lane in Dublin."
He added: "Windmill Lane was a conventional studio - very nice place - but not very cavernous with its drum sound, let's say. You hit a drum in the room, and it wouldn't be that inspiring. I invited the U2 crew to build me a concrete wall, so they built this cement-block wall behind the drums so we could get a little bit of punch happening. That's how extravagant things got! And in the end, we had a pretty good drum sound, but the drum sound comes from the drummer himself. So, bless his heart, Larry Mullen delivered a fantastic drum part on that. 'Machine Gun Mullen.' Thank you, Larry."
At the Chicago museum where they saw the Martin Luther King exhibit, there was also a display about victims of the Hiroshima bombing called "The Unforgettable Fire," which would inspire the
song of the same name and provide the album title.
"Pride (In The Name Of Love)" was released as a single a month before the album. It was their first Top 40 hit in the US.
In his Songfacts interview, the song's co-producer, Daniel Lanois, said: "Pride (In The Name of Love)" was an extension of how Bono was seeing the world at the time. Obviously, being Irish young men, they were aware of The Troubles of Ireland. They had written about that in '
Sunday Bloody Sunday' and '
New Year's Day.' Terrible things had happened in Ireland. And 'Pride (in the Name of Love)' was a continuation of his interest in justice and equality. He wanted to talk about that as if to say, 'Martin Luther King was quite willing to sacrifice his life for what he believed in.' It was very touching to that young man at that time, and he wanted to sing about it: 'One more in the name of love.'"
It's interesting to note that although Martin Luther King, Jr. is an American historical figure, the folks working on this song were from other countries. Lanois is from Canada and the other producer, Brian Eno, is from England.
When the song was released, Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King, invited the band to the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta. They made their visit during their 1984 US tour.
This was a perfect song for the stadiums U2 were playing. They would stop playing toward the end and let the crowd sing the last chorus.
The last song on
The Unforgettable Fire is "
MLK," another tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.
Part of this was used on the 200th episode of The Simpsons, "Trash Of The Titans." On the show, U2 played some of this at a concert in Springfield. The song was also used in an episode of Miami Vice on the two-hour premiere the second season.
In the '80s, Bono said this was "The most successful pop song we've ever written." He added, "You can see there is a certain craft to the songwriting. I use the word "pop" in the best possible sense; pop for me is an easily understood thing, you listen to it and you comprehend it almost immediately. You relate to it instinctively. A lot of the album isn't like that at all."
The Edge told
Q magazine, December 1998: "Because of the situation in our country nonviolent struggle was such an inspiring concept. Even so when Bono told me he wanted to write about King. At first I said, 'Whoa, that's not what we're about.' Then he came in and sang the song and it felt right, it was great. When that happens there's no argument. It just was."
>>
Suggestion credit:
Bertrand - Paris, France, for above 3
This song appeared in the movie
Elizabethtown when Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom) is visiting the site of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination.
>>
Suggestion credit:
Steph - Rumson, NJ
In 2010, Dierks Bentley recorded this for his 2010 bluegrass album
Up on the Ridge. His take on the song was nominated for a Grammy for Best Country Collaboration With Vocals.
Eleven years later,
Bentley performed his cover at the 2021 ACM Awards with these special guests:
The husband-wife duo The War and Treaty (vocals)
The sister duo Larkin Poe (guitars)
Brittany Haas (fiddle).
U2 began their Joshua Tree Tour in Tempe, Arizona, where the governor was opposed to Martin Luther King Day being made a US federal holiday. By the time the band headed back to Tempe to close out the tour, they were receiving death threats for supporting the proposed holiday. Things took a serious turn before their gig at Sun Devil Stadium when someone claimed he would shoot Bono on stage if he sang the King-inspired song. Bono recalls in the band's book U2 by U2: "One night the FBI said: 'Look, it's quite serious. He says he has a ticket. He said he's armed. An he said if you sing 'Pride (In The Name Of Love),' he's going to shoot you.' So we played the show, the FBI were around, everyone was a little unnerved. You just didn't know, could he be in the building? Up in the rafters? On the roof? During 'Pride,' I was singing the third verse, 'Early morning April 4, a shot rings out in a Memphis sky.' I just closed my eyes and sang. And when I opened my eyes, Adam was standing in front of me."
Ewan McGregor sings a line of this in the "Elephant Love Medley" section of the movie Moulin Rouge. Bono also appears on the soundtrack, singing "Children Of The Revolution" with Gavin Friday. That song was written by Marc Bolan and originally recorded by his band, T-Rex.
U2's 2023
Songs of Surrender album comprises 40 re-recorded songs from their back catalogue. The record follows Bono's memoir
Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, which was published in November 2022.
The band released their
new version of "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" as the first single from the project on January 11, 2023.