Ye Olde Hit Parade: Two Hearts Beat As One

1983: U2 - Two Hearts Beat As One

After a year of stability, we were back to our nomadic ways in 1983. From the moment we arrived in Richland, Washington, in November 1981, we were hearing rumors about the possible closure of the nuclear plant where my dad just got a job. Sure enough, by '83, things were heating up and my father got transferred by his company to the plant in Seabrook, N.H. Once again, he moved out several months ahead of us, which meant we had to move out of the house we were renting.

My mom, brother and I moved into a smaller apartment right across the street from my high school, which I suppose was convenient. The uncertainty about when we were moving was a bit distracting, especially given the possibility that the three of us were going to move back to Toronto instead. My mother was a nurse who was unable to work in Washington state until she took the certification exam there; she had just passed it when she found out we were moving again. So she entertained the idea of moving us back up to Canadia. There were discussions with a high school in Scarborough, a Toronto 'burb (now actually part of the city) where I was born and where we lived for several years, but ultimately, Mom decided we should give New Hampshire a go. I was not thrilled by this decision. I knew nothing about New Hampshire and had no desire to learn more.

By this point, I was really enjoying living in Richland. I had some close friends and finally felt like I fit in a bit. And then, on the day after my sophomore year ended, we got on a plane for Boston. I remember I had just picked up the new Iron Maiden album Piece of Mind and I carried the vinyl with me on the plane (everything else had already been packed up and shipped to NH). My dad picked us up at Logan Airport and took us to our new home, which was a little cottage on the outskirts of a tiny town called Kingston, NH. The mud driveway was uneven and there were no neighbors or streetlights, so it was pretty dark by the time we got there. My heart sank. The house was on three acres of land and we spent much of the summer clearing brush (leading to a nasty case of poison ivy for me) and getting used to living in the middle of nowhere.

The one redeeming part of the summer was when my brother and I flew to Toronto for two weeks, staying with family and friends and getting to see the place we called home for most of our lives. I went back to Pickering and met up with some of my old buddies, bought a bunch of records I couldn't get in the States and just soaked up as much Canadiana as I could before it was time to go back. Probably the biggest shock was that Pickering, which had around 35,000 people when we left less than two years earlier, had nearly tripled in size since we left. Apparently, Toronto was booming and a lot of people moved out to the suburbs.

There was actually one other positive from moving to New England: The radio stations. Whereas we just had the one crappy station in Richland (mainly because it was also situated far away from major populated areas, a full three hours from Seattle), in southern NH, we could get the Boston stations as well as others in New Hampshire and Maine. At the time, WBCN was the big FM rock station and it hadn't begun to suck yet, so it was playing a wide variety of music: In one stretch, you could hear the Police (who were EVERYWHERE in '83), Black Sabbath, Culture Club, Talking Heads, Iron Maiden and the Clash. I loved it. I still was into the metal, but it was great to be able to hear new music by interesting acts. MTV still had not come to my town's cable system (and wouldn't until late '85), so I was watching Friday Night Videos and a lot of Late Night With David Letterman, but I felt like my musical education was advancing much quicker.

And one band that got a ton of airplay on WBCN was U2, which had released its breakthrough album War in February. I had heard "New Year's Day" (and was familiar with the band from hearing "I Will Follow" when I lived in Toronto) already, but by mid-June, the rest of the album was getting a lot of play. The song that really grabbed my attention was "Two Hearts Beat As One," but especially the version that BCN was playing a lot, which was a remix released in France (see below). It just sounded cooler. I was still a sucker for the heavy stuff (Maiden, Priest, Dio, Sabbath), but I liked the fact that my horizons were expanding. There was also a station in nearby Lynn, Mass., that had started up called WFNX that was playing what was then known as "college rock," with bands like R.E.M., X, the Replacements, Husker Du. They billed themselves as "Rock the Boat Radio" and I only occasionally listened; I wasn't ready for them yet, I guess, but I got there eventually.


In the fall, I started my junior year at tiny Sanborn Regional High School. I walked on to the soccer team, which helped me make some friends a little early, but I was still kinda dreading the whole "new kid in school" thing yet again. But it ended up going about as well as I could have hoped. More on that later.

Honorable mentions: U2 - "New Year's Day"; The Police - "Every Breath You Take"; R.E.M. - "Radio Free Europe"; The Fixx - "One Thing Leads to Another"; David Bowie - "Let's Dance"; Prince - "Little Red Corvette"; Prince - "1999"; The Pretenders - "Back On the Chain Gang"; Robert Plant - "Big Log"; Def Leppard - "Photograph"; Def Leppard - "Rock of Ages"; Iron Maiden - "Flight of Icarus"; Iron Maiden - "The Trooper"; Black Sabbath - "Trashed"; Dio - "Rainbow in the Dark"; Big Country - "In a Big Country"; Genesis - "Mama"; The Rolling Stones - "Undercover of the Night"; The Clash - "Should I Stay or Should I Go"; Marvin Gaye - "Sexual Healing"; Thomas Dolby - "She Blinded Me With Science"; Eddy Grant - "Electric Avenue"; Kim Mitchell - "Kids In Action"; Golden Earring - "The Twilight Zone"; Duran Duran - "Hungry Like the Wolf"; Talking Heads - "Burning Down the House"; Billy Idol - "Rebel Yell"; Ozzy Osbourne - "Bark at the Moon"; Pink Floyd - "Not Now John"; Stevie Ray Vaughan - "Pride and Joy"