The Story Behind the Song – Love’s on Fire

The story behind this song took place over twenty years ago. It starts off pretty personal but includes something I know will resonate with almost everyone who reads this. So here goes.

There was someone who I really fancied, and I wanted to ask her out, but I was nervous as hell. After weeks of putting it off, I made a solemn promise to myself that I would call her up on a particular day. If I call her on a Tuesday, I reasoned to myself, it looks more casual than Monday, and she’s unlikely to have any firm plans for the weekend yet. It’s the coming Tuesday or never. Even if I mess it up, at least it’s a chance to practice being confident.

That Tuesday would be 11th September, 2001.

I was out in the town on the Tuesday morning and passed a market stall. The stallholder had a radio turned up so loud that the speaker was distorting. It was a news report and I heard a correspondent say “Human bodies would just vapourise at that temperature…”. I recoiled instinctively at this horrible sentence, but my morbid curiousity was roused. ”What’s going on?” I asked the guy. He came around the front of the stall and told me: “There’s a plane crashed into one of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre in New York. Half an hour later, another plane’s gone into the other tower…next, a plane’s crashed into the Pentagon…”.

I walked away in a daze. I’d always taken an interest in world events but this was big. Bigger than anything in my life so far. I walked around aimlessly, my mind racing and speculating as to the likely culprits and consequences. I looked at the people around me. Had they heard? Their lives could be about to change. What would this lead to? I couldn’t discern anything on their faces that suggested the shock and discombobulation I was feeling. I made it home with one intention, to catch the news.

I got home and my housemate Phil was sitting in front of the telly. He didn’t look up when I came in and neither of us spoke as I sat down beside him on the sofa.

Later, I roused myself from the drama that had gipped me for several hours. There was something else that I had to do. I had promised myself to phone that girl. It was the final promise, after a string of promises I had made to myself over previous weeks, having chickened out every time. The events in New York seemed to make it ridiculous. The world was in shock. This couldn’t be the right time. But the risk of leaving it too late had forged an iron resolve in me. This was about my own self-respect. I won’t put it off again. I will keep my promise and call her up.

Over the next few months, the world did indeed change – or at least East-West geopolitics did – and the new century acquired a new ugliness. The drumbeat of war started up, in what seemed like a desperate attempt to take revenge on an unconnected arab state, with anti-war protesters claiming that this was purely about oil – ‘black gold’.

You might not hear much of my story in the song, but it’s woven into it. The stricken WTC – a ‘smoking tower’ – had become a psychic landmark in everyone’s brain, which resonates for me with a Liverpool landmark, St Luke’s church, which was ‘bombed-out’ during a previous conflict.

The phone call was awkward, stilted and didn’t come to anything. But I’m glad I honoured my promise to myself. We have to hope for love, regardless of the times we’re living in.