What on earth would possess me to write a review of a 36 year old album that has already been written about a million times since its release? Well….for one I’m a huge U2 fan and the other reason that I was scrolling through albums to play on a car ride a few days ago and decided to go with it, and while listening to it for the first time in a while I felt some inspiration. It’s an album where the songs are very different from each other so they hit you differently with every track change, and keep your attention the whole way through. In other words, it’s a good album to write a review for.
Rattle and Hum is the sixth album from U2, that came after their biggest success ever in The Joshua Tree and before their next biggest one in Achtung Baby. Creatively it was the bridge between those very two different albums, and not just in name because of the timing. Joshua Tree was the culmination of everything the band had been working for both on the business and artistic sides, leaving them with the age old question of ‘what do we do now?’ So they did what a lot of recording artists do when they are at their absolute peak: make a movie! Rattle and Hum, the movie, was your typical rockumentary kind of flick where a camera crew went with the band as their toured America, ventured out amongst the common folk, offered up a few quotes that were supposed to sound introspective, and learned about the US of A while trying to evolve their sound for the next chapter of their careers. It was, as guitarist the Edge named it, a musical journey.
The band grew up listening to the Beatles and Rolling Stones but by their own admission didn’t know much about the music that inspired those bands and was the root of their songs. So while in America touring for Joshua Tree they set out to learn about those roots, which took them to various corners of the world like Harlem and Memphis to sit in and ultimately record and/or perform with some local acts to create new songs or new versions of songs they’d already made. Rattle and Hum, the album is a collection of live performances of their own songs, a few covers, and a few new songs that were made along the way. The album captures where the band was at the time in a nutshell: highly successful, looking for what to do next, and curious about music on a broader scheme and America in general.
The album starts out just like the film with a live cover of the Beatles’ Helter Skelter, a song that had all but vanished from the public consciousness after being revealed as a favorite of Charles Manson. It’s times like this that we get to hear just how good an actual guitarist the Edge is and not just a guy who is a wizard with various sound effects. And from there it’s off to the races with more live covers (All Along the Watchtower and Star Spangled Banner with Edge playing Jimi Hendrix style), new songs (Desire, Hawkmoon 269, and Angel of Harlem to name a few), live versions of existing songs like I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For and Bullet the Blue Sky, and live versions of new songs like Silver and Gold. The album has 17 tracks, 16 of which are songs and one interlude. That is…..a lot.
So at the time music fans didn’t know what to make of it all, and found it a bit confusing. The guys who had just made Joshua Tree in all its glory were now fumbling around America trying to learn about all facets of American culture while learning about the Blues and trying to incorporate it into their music, which at the time sounded nothing like it. All while doing the typical self indulgent documentary that many musical acts love to do just because they can. The album sold 14 million copies, their third highest total after Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, but the movie was a flop that barely registered at the box office. Being tucked between their two most successful albums while the band was at their absolute hottest period, 1987 through 1993, no doubt helped the sales here but while the overall reception may have been mixed it sure didn’t hurt their careers any.
SO HOW IS IT?
There are several great songs on this album. Desire is an all time great U2 song, one that makes the concert set list to this day and is on the list of U2 songs that you could play anytime, anywhere, for anybody and get a good reaction. Hawkmoon 269, with an origin as out there as its name, is a powerful song that would have made a great single. Angel of Harlem, essentially one big shoutout to Billie Holliday, is a fun horn backed number. All I Want is You, the closing track, is a soaring orchestra backed ballad that resonates like few others. The live renditions of their already existing hits like Pride (in the name of Love), Bullet the Blue Sky and I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For excel as always. Still Haven’t Found is given some extra energy by way of the Voices of Freedom Choir from Harlem, whom the band reunited with in 2017 for the Joshua Tree 30th anniversary tour (which I wrote about here.) Silver and Gold, an anti-Apartheid song, never made it onto any recorded album, but would have been a hit if it had.
The covers range from good (Helter Skelter) to sure why not (Star Spangled Banner and All Along the Watchtower).
Finally there are two more original somgs that I’d put in the good category. When Love Comes to Town, a duet with the great BB King, is a poster child of 80s white artist/black artist song collaborations, where a current white artist teams up with a Black music icon to make something. In this case it was good but Bono and King are about as weird a combination as you could ever get. Then there is Van Diemen’s Land, an original song written and sung by the Edge about Irish activist John Boyle O’Reilly who was imprisoned in Tasmania (which is the ‘Land’ from the title) after leading an uprising against the British government in 1864. While it sticks out like a sore thumb in sound and style next to the other songs on the album it is in it’s own way a welcome contrast as the second song on the album.
And now the bad news……
From where I’m sitting and listening Rattle and Hum would have been a great 10 to 11 song album, that they could have stretched to 12 or 13, but goes about three songs too far and is thus dragged into the ‘Not great, but I see what they were going for’ space. The three songs I’m speaking of are Love Rescue Me, and Heartland, and God Part 2, the first two of which seem to drone on forever and completely kill the vibe of what they were trying to accomplish here while the latter sounds like a riff that the band would go on in between hits while playing a concert and not a full fledged album track. On the other hand they could have included The Sweetest Thing, a B-side to Where the Streets Have No Name that was recorded with the other Joshua Tree songs in 1986 and is a great song in its own right, instead of any of those three and made for a much better album in total.
Final Verdict: B
Like most double albums Rattle and Hum is overstuffed and too damn long. Like I said earlier you could have trimmed anywhere from three to six songs and had either a great or outstanding album but instead we got something that dragged down to being just good by the extra weight. Whenever I play this through I find myself skipping from song 11 (Angel of Harlem) through the next few songs to get closer to the end. Bono’s attempts at singing Blues favored music sometimes succeeds but sometimes he sounds like a white guy from Ireland singing the blues, which of course he is.
But in hindsight the fearlessness that went into the making of this album is to be applauded. As is the respect shown to the artists and musical forms that they leaned into here. U2 continued to display the stark contrast between European and American rock musicians when it comes to respect and flat out reverence towards the pioneers of the genre. And finally the biggest mission of the album, which it accomplished with flying colors is that it started them down the road of evolution that would get us to Achtung Baby, Zooropa, etc. We don’t get the great second chapter of their run without going through this way station. If you’re a U2 fan this is a must listen and if you’re not it’s worth your time if you’re curious. Just skip those songs in the middle and you’ll be fine.
Stroke of Genius 