8 June 1985
Much as with the wave of Papal-themed chart-toppers that followed John Paul II’s big outdoor Irish tour of 1979, this Bruce Springsteen number one surfs a wave of promotion. The Boss had played Slane Castle the weekend before, touring the Born In The USA album that made him a globe-straddling superstar.
I can’t imagine there was much proto-moshing up the front during ‘I’m On Fire’, though. It’s a weird and sombre affair, as edgy and dull as the knife that, in the song’s most arresting lyric, Bruce imagines has “cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull”. Speaking of arresting, while Springsteen may only be rehashing an old rock ‘n’ roll trope by starting a song with “Hey little girl, is your daddy home?” it was condescending then and plain icky now. On the whole, there isn’t much to ‘I’m On Fire’.
The other track on this single release is more apposite for Slane mega-gigs, it being the title song of the aforementioned album. The odd acoustic outcrop like Nebraska aside, Springsteen has never been a subtle or nuanced performer but at least his other anthemic stuff like ‘Born To Run’ had a soul and a poetry to it. This, however, is just bombastic, dumbed-down posturing for big sound systems in big arenas. Big synths too; that was Springsteen’s other new tack on Born In The USA the album, and it’s not a sound that has aged at all well. The odd flash of lyrical excellence on this track—“Got in a little hometown jam” is a lovely bit of low-level intrigue—gets swamped by all the crude go-and-kill-the-yellow-man stuff, which I remember being pulled up as offensive by grown-ups on Irish TV even in 1985. Time makes ancient good uncouth and all that, but this album was always low-quality product. Slane ’85: guess you had to be there!
