Fire was a Swedish

Sweden

Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 hard rock

Hard rock

Hard rock is a loosely defined genre of rock music which has its earliest roots in mid-1960s garage rock, blues rock and psychedelic rock...

 band from the Uppsala

Uppsala

- Economy :Today Uppsala is well established in medical research and recognized for its leading position in biotechnology.*Abbott Medical Optics *GE Healthcare*Pfizer *Phadia, an offshoot of Pharmacia*Fresenius*Q-Med...

 region, active 1980-1989. For a number of years FIRE dominated the music scene in their native Björklinge

Björklinge

Björklinge is a locality situated in Uppsala Municipality, Uppsala County, Sweden with 3,186 inhabitants in 2005. The name, written as Birklinge, was used for the parish as early as 1314, and Viking graves have been found in the area....

 north of Uppsala.

The band members were Robert Larsson (bass), Niklas Jonsson (drums), Örjan Englund (keyboard), and Robert Dahlin (guitar). During the early years they only wrote songs in Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 of which the legendary Ungdomen ("Youth") and Fånge nummer 31 ("Prisoner number 31") are perhaps the best known. In the early 80s, they started to write songs in English and had a local radio hit with the catchy tune You're not a soldier. When Lolita Pop visited Björklinge in 1984, FIRE was the opening act.

All band members contributed with song writing although most of their Swedish song were written by Jonsson and Dahlin, while most of their English songs were written by Dahlin with the occasional contribution by Jonsson/Englund.

History

In 1978, Niklas Jonsson played drums in in a small band called The Fishers. It was a trio (hammond organ, drums, tambourine) and they only wrote one song together. After a while, in 1979, Niklas teamed up with Robert Larsson to form a new band, which was the beginnings of FIRE. Initially, they called themselves Maxwin. In 1980, Örjan Englund joined in, followed by Robert Dahlin. They changed their name to Spike, which was their name during the first two years of existence. They played one concert as Spike in 1981 at their school in Björklinge. In 1982 they changed their name to FIRE, and in 1983, they produced their first demo tape. In 1988, Robert Larsson left the band, and Örjan Englund played the bass on their last demo tape. For a short while in 1989, a second guitarist, Fredrik Jonsson, joined before the band dissolved in the end of 1989.

Demo tapes

The following is a list of demo tapes recorded by the band.

The Swedish demo - 1983

Gör det för pengarna

Högexplosivt

The first Arbrå demo - 1984

Kings of rock

Evil as satan

Blood in the street

Metal chains

The second Arbrå demo - 1985

Run from the evil

You're my angel

You and me

Pärleporten

You're not a soldier demo - 1986

You're not a solder

Leading you tonite demo - 1987

Leading you tonite

Hypnotized

Almost Perfect demo - 1989

You drive me wild

Second time

Great balls of FIRE