Stealing Fire (Bruce Cockburn album)

Background and writing

After a trip to Central America on behalf of the Canadian arm of the charity Oxfam, Cockburn crafted an album featuring world-music influences and lyrics concerning life in the third world. He was moved by the plight of Guatemalan refugees in southern Mexico ("On the Rio Lancantún one hundred thousand wait"), and wrote the song "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" which reached a high of #88 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts with an associated music video regularly played on MTV. Despite the apparent threat of violence in the lyrics, Cockburn would later state, "this is not a call to arms; this is a cry."

The single "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" contains some of Cockburn's most recognizable lyric writing form, with the picturesque line "got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight". This line would be picked up by U2's lead singer and lyricist Bono who would use it in the U2 song "God Part II" (from their 1988 Rattle and Hum album) with his own line "I heard a singer on the radio late last night / Says he's gonna kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight". For this reason, Cockburn is credited in the liner notes to Rattle and Hum. U2 would also later attempt a cover of Cockburn's hit song "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" in rehearsal, but did not formally record the results.

Track listing

All songs written by Bruce Cockburn except as noted.

1. "Lovers in a Dangerous Time" – 4:06
2. "Maybe the Poet" (Cockburn, Jon Goldsmith, Fergus Marsh) – 4:51
3. "Sahara Gold" – 4:30
4. "Making Contact" – 4:47
5. "Peggy's Kitchen Wall" – 4:46
6. "To Raise the Morning Star" (Cockburn, Marsh) – 5:51
7. "Nicaragua" – 4:44
8. "If I Had a Rocket Launcher" – 4:58
9. "Dust and Diesel" – 5:24

Two songs recorded during the Stealing Fire sessions, "Yanqui Go Home" and "Call It the Sundance", did not make the final album cut due to the length of the album. They would later be released in 2003 on the remastered CD edition of the album.

Personnel

Production

Trivia