For the longest time I had no use for U2—they were too sanctimonious and self-righteous was my opinion, and Bono stuck me as a frustrated Sunday school teacher. But as the years passed they loosened up, Bono became less of a tight-ass, and I discovered I enjoyed some of their songs, a lot. But there were plenty of haters to take my place, and they emerged from the dank caves we music critics inhabit to litter guano all over the band’s 1988 studio/live LP Rattle and Hum, the soundtrack of a rockumentary released the same year.
To cite just two of the album’s critics, The Village Voice’s Tom Carson called Rattle and Hum an “awful record” by “almost any rock-and-roll fan’s standard.” He went on to add that the LP’s sound wasn’t “attributable to pretensions so much as to monumental know-nothingism.” Meanwhile, David Browne of the New York Daily News said Rattle and Hum “just prattles and numbs.” The phrases “sincere egomania” and “the worst album by a major band in years” were also bandied about.
Rattle and Hum’s chief problem is it’s a dog’s breakfast, and lacks even the cheap glue to keep a model airplane in one piece. But I simply can’t bring myself to hate it—it includes some of my favorite U2 songs. Unfortunately they all happen to be the LP’s studio cuts, rather than the ones recorded during U2’s The Joshua Tree tour of the US.
To begin with the absolute low points, the only thing to be said for the forty-three second snippet of Jimi Hendrix’s “The Star Spangled Banner” is U2 had the common decency not to play the whole thing. As for the thirty-eight second snippet from “Freedom for My People” by Harlem street duo Sterling Magee and Adam Gussow, I guess you had to be there. And the live version of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” is ham-fisted, and haven’t we heard the song seven million times too often already?
U2’s live cover of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” deserves kudos for ambition but is a classic case of overreach—there’s simply no way Bono can come close to pitting vocals with those of Paul McCartney—one of the greatest and most unacknowledged rock and roll screamers of all time—and U2’s version lacks the anarchic energy of the original. And nobody ends up with blisters on their fingers. Edge handles lead vocals on the live and folk-flavored “Van Diemen’s Land,” and while he does his valiant best, there’s no disguising the fact that the song’s about as exciting as a used microwave and as memorable as that Netflix movie you watched last Tuesday that you can’t remember the name of.
There was a time when I didn’t much care for “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” but maybe I’ve gotten religion over the years because I can’t help but share Bono’s spiritual yearning. That said, I could do without the gospel choir (you’re trying to hard, pal) on the live version—they reek of devotional overkill. As for “Pride in the Name of Love” I’ve always hated it and I don’t like the live version on Rattle and Hum. Christian devotion is one thing, but Bono comes across as a PR man for the guy.
As for the remaining live cuts, “Bullet the Blue Sky” has a nice metallic feel but doesn’t hold up in the end; Bono’s monologue is coma-inducing, and the song’s cut-me-a-break virtue reminds me of why I hated U2 in the first place. And while “Silver and Gold” is a perfectly decent example of songcraft, the bottom line is it’s nothing special and I can’t think of a single solitary reason to ever put it on the turntable again.
But as mentioned previously, I enjoy much of the LP’s recorded material. For starters, Bono’s duet with B.B. King “When Love Comes to Town” is brimming with blues, and proves that Bono (who would have thunk it?) isn’t such a tight-ass does a respectable job of swapping vocals with the Beale Street Blues Boy.
And on my own personal fave “Angel of Harlem” (and pick for best ever U2 song) Bono and the boys loosen up even more; the horns are where they should be, Bono name drops John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Billie Holiday, and the U2 of their early days are nowhere in sight. The hard-rocking, double time “Desire” sounds nothing like early U2 either, and Bono comes up with a slick shtick about burnin’ love: “Yeah, I’m like the needle/The needle and spoon/Over the counter/With a shotgun/Pretty soon, everybody’s got one.” It’s Ireland’s answer to the Gun Club’s “She’s Like Heroin to Me.”
“Hawkmoon 269″—on which Bob Dylan plays some excellent Hammond organ—builds slowly, and while it certainly isn’t the “soul music” Bono mentions in the song, when it kicks into gear both Edge (who plays some very un-Edge guitar) and Bono (who does some pretty good screaming) impress, and even the female vocalists who put their heads in at the end don’t bother me.
“Love Rescue Me” isn’t a half-band Bruce Springsteen Nebraska-era song that Bruce Springsteen had nothing to do with, and you would think the backing vocals of Bob Dylan would add color, the only problem being you have to be a moth (best hearing in the animal kingdom!) to hear him. At the halfway point all hell bursts loose, a horn section comes barging in through the studio back door and Bono gets all excitable like a kid from Utah who’s just discovered the Mormon Tabernacle Choir under the Christmas tree.
On “God Part II” Bono returns to his Son of Man fetish in his perpetual effort to beat Stryper at their own game, and if you’re like me you’ve heard that “I believe in love” more often than “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!!” That said, the lyrics are cool: Bono plays a guy whose instincts are stronger than his moral beliefs, and you get lines like “I don’t believe in death row/ Skid row or the gangs/Don’t believe in the Uzi/It just went off in my hand/I believe in love.”
Closing track “All I Want Is you” is lovely and Bono sings it in a yearning hush while Edge adds an undeniable and ever growing guitar riff. Unfortunately the legendary Van Dyke Parks leads a string section into the studio and turns the song into pomposity personified. Me, I wish he’d packed that string section up—along with his arrangement—into a small brown suitcase and gone home.
Looking back over what I’ve written it’s hard to avoid the fact that I consider Rattle and Hum a failure—a studio cum tour document that meanders and can’t help but be as pompous (at least in places) as every other U2 record out there. So why don’t I flay it within an inch of its self-righteous life? Because I can’t help but think that Bono’s “spirituality on display” is very, very real. He’s a flesh and blood human being who really hasn’t found what he’s looking for. And I can connect with that. I want that too. What human being—if they really search their heart—doesn’t want that? Hate Bono if you want—I spent years doing just that—but there’s no denying his aim is true.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
C+
