“Fields of Fire” by Big Country

"Fields of Fire" was the second single Big Country pulled from their 1983 debut, The Crossing, issued in its single form with the subtitle "400 Miles", and it's the sound of a Scottish band making guitars do the work of a pipe band. Stuart Adamson, Bruce Watson, Tony Butler and Mark Brzezicki share the music credit, Adamson wrote the words, and Steve Lillywhite produced it, with Will Gosling engineering. Rolling Stone heard bagpipe-style single-string riffs and called it a resounding anthem; it went top ten at home and opened American doors in 1984.

The video plays like a boy's daydream spun out of his toy train set: the band jamming in a railway carriage, a piper on the line bringing it to a halt, and the group following him straight into a First World War battle they end up fighting in.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.