A countdown til Singapore: My U2 retrospective - October (1981)

October

Released in October 1981

In 67 days, I am going to watch U2 in Singapore. And as I wrote earlier, I will be sharing my thoughts about each and every album of U2 that I have. They are one of my favorite bands and have all their albums on vinyl and compact disc. I purchased their debut, Boy, when it first came out in 1980, and I remained a fan ever since. My interest in them has waxed and waned through the years, but they have never fallen off that top 10 list of my all-time favorite bands. That’s incredible staying power. 

I am going to be very honest about this album. I didn’t like October when it first came out. In fact, I only began to like it in 2018. How did that happen?

Maybe because I thought that it sounded slow and lacked the pulsating energy of Boy. I wondered if it was too soon to hit the studio for their sophomore effort. After all, the time between the two albums was exactly a year. Were they tired from touring?

I later learned that the briefcase containing the lyrics for many of the songs was stolen prompting Bono to hastily improvise. Maybe it had an effect. I am not sure.

Nevertheless, my first copy of October was a cassette that my dad got for me in the US. I liked “Gloria” and the explosive “Tomorrow” and that was it. I was disappointed in the album and that kind of dampened my enthusiasm for the band.

When I heard “I Threw A Brick Through A Window”, I wondered about the title. Once more, I thought – wasn’t that a bit pretentious? 

But I did know that the album was recorded during the time that Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike while in prison. The news of Sands’ hunger strike was in newspapers all over the world; Manila included. When he died 66 days after he began his strike, there was rioting all over Belfast. I followed all the news on television and in the newspapers. It was something I discussed lengthily with my parents over the dinner table because I didn’t understand the conflict in Northern Ireland. I was upset by it though.

Imagine that… a kid thousands of miles away affected by the sectarian strife in Northern Ireland.

Several years ago, I went to Northern Ireland. I felt the chill in my bones at signs of the strife. I even got to experience it first hand when on my very first day in Belfast when I stepped out of my hotel to buy some food and four guys in a car pulled up and began screaming, “You fucking Asian!” I ran back inside and refused to go out. 

The hotel staff for so embarrassed and upset. They offered me a free meal and called the police who accompanied me to a nearby pizza parlor.

So in some way, I liked but also disliked the song. It was a protest song after all that alluded to the Troubles.

That dichotomy didn’t change for a long time. I lumped October with sophomore slumps such as the Clash’s Give ‘Em Enough Rope, and the Darkness’ One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back. So, I never got the vinyl record of October… until 2018.

I have no idea why I decided to pick it up. It wasn’t out of a sense of being a completist; that’s for sure. 

I was surprised when the needle dropped, I intently listened to the album. And I found myself genuinely liking it for the first time. And I played the record not once, not twice, but about five times that day and two more the next. That’s how I knew that I had finally liked it. 

If Boy was all about growing up, this album in a weird way touches about the band’s faith. I kinda inferred that from listening to it intently. In fact, it has been a recurring theme throughout U2’s history.

There’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I Am Looking For”, “Yahweh”, “Moment of Surrender”, “Magnificent” and “40”.

On October, there’s “Gloria”, “With A Shout”, and “Tomorrow”. 

I am usually iffy about religious themes in rock songs, but with U2 or Bono I should say… it works. It is just who they are. 

In my mind, “Yahweh”, “40”, and “I Still Haven’t Found What I Am Looking For” are some of the best songs in U2’s repertoire.

October, even after all these years, will still not rank in my top five U2 albums (I’ll rank them at the end of all my essays about their discography), but I do like listening to it now. And I guess, that is good enough.