defend the indefensible: RATTLE AND HUM by U2

ugly white men playing melodies on guitars.

― Inculcate a spirit of serfdom in children (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Surely a problem with "God Part 2" is the lack of melody. Notice I didn't say *the* problem.

Then Play Long barely can defend U2, really: http://nobilliards.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/u2-rattle-and-hum.html

more like outright condemnation

I had never seen this video before today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1GLDGiLE4c

Tremendous. So thrilling.

I have watched RATTLE AND HUM a number of times but this contains footage not in the film. Very well edited.

The band all look so thin! It's not just that they were young, but perhaps that - as when you look at photos from the 1940s - people were generally thinner then?

BB King plays great lead guitar and there is good footage of him.

I like the way that The Edge is asked to play a solo in a blues song and just plays a long, reverby arpeggio with a blue note in it.

This record was much maligned and even I didn't think it compared to the band's best. But how does it compare to U2's output now? I think it seems quite classic.

A good modern blues song and it had the virtue of bringing the great BB King to the UK charts. He liked the song and played it with his own band for many years.

"Angel of Harlem" is still awful.

In fact, let's grit our teeth, and go through all the Hat Tips on Rattle & Hum:

stealing Helter Skelter "back" on behalf of the Beatles
dedicating The Edge's effort to poet John Boyle O'Reilly, and dissing him in the sleevenotes
sticking Dylan on inaudible Hammond on Hawkmoon 269 (and Honey Cone on backing vocals)
Dylan again / Hendrix on All Along The Watchtower, because there's no chance of bathos there
yuk, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For goes gospel with the New Voices Of Freedom
Hey, Sterling Magee, Bobby Robinson & Macie Mabins, would you like 0:38 on our bloated album?
the brass nerve of "for Billie Holiday" on Angel Of Harlem: how wonderful it would be to hear which curse words she would use if she heard it
Bono and Bob set the Bible to music and Bob does backing vox on Love Rescue Me
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mister BB King
of *course
Eno is doing keyboards on Heartland -- a song you forget while you're listening to it
"for John Lennon", because God needed a sanctimonious updating
hey, dead Jimi Hendirx, would you like 0:43 on our bloated record, on which the guitars are also quite good?
"put El Salvador through the amp"
and after the rattle, the hum: Van Dyke Parks on All I Want Is You
"thanks to Tim Buckley"?!
the Spinal Tap Gracelands moments

― A.C.M.E. (A.C.M.E.), Thursday, June 30, 2005 11:19 AM (twelve years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^ booming post

i like the movie a lot, don't know the album too well.

There's far worse U2 songs than 'Angel of Harlem' ... I don't mind it, personally.

ANNNNNNNN-GEEEELLLLLLL

the two best tracks on this by far are Hawkmoon 269 and Heartland, they're both actually great songs. whenever i've made a U2 mix i stick both of them on.

I don't know much about Tim Buckley but - had never realized he was mentioned on this LP.

'Angel of Harlem' is one of the best new songs on it. I agree about Hawkmoon and Heartland also. In fact come to think of it, most of the new songs are good and, sadly, probably all better than U2's last two or three LPs.

I always liked the song title Hawkmoon 269 very post punk like Wire song title bigger

kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight

I still like "Desire," it's a good Bo Diddley riff.

its a musical journey

a car salesman who loved to play guitar

I like "All I Want Is You."

I recall some bootlegs of R&H outtakes knocking round years back and of course, they're all on YouTube, makes for some very glum watching, they look so unhappy/self-conscious. 'Outside It's America' is miles better than Rattle & Hum.

I've been wondering for a while when the death of 12-bar blues in pop music happened, and maybe it's "When Love Came to Town."

I do like the b-side "Unchained Melody" cover from this album.

*Comes to Town

Eheh it seems all their albums up to « Achtung Baby » have had a deluxe or remaster version... except for « R&H » ! Isn’t it weird !?

I REALLY like the line "but I did what I did before love came to town"

I like "All I Want Is You."

i've always felt that god part II was an unfairly underrated song, and mainly because it's on this album. i don't think the lyrics are spectacular or anything but i love the sound of it, it sounds more like a precursor to achtung baby than anything else here. if they'd used it as a b-side or something people would probably remember it more fondly.

what is OUTSIDE IT'S AMERICA?

I do have a dvd called RATTLE & ROLL which is RATTLE AND HUM outtakes that are mostly very rough indeed.

I think almost all the songs mentioned here are good - not U2's best, but still more powerful than most of what they have released since, say, 1993.

For sure, the worst part of the record is the live stuff/covers, imo. The best part of the record is that the band seemed to recognize how it had lost its way - iirc post-R&H was the closest they came to breaking up, at least post October - and made a conscious effort to change, which resulted in Achtung Baby. I don't think they would have done that had they not made this album and movie and had their missteps documented and mocked for all to see, including themselves.

I don't think there are any missteps!

Well, technically speaking...
http://www.gifbin.com/bin/052015/1431971132_u2s_the_edge_falls_off_the_stage.gif

Yes but not on RATTLE AND HUM! :D

The missteps are mostly tonal, like Bono's introductions or "play the blues!" or their faux naive embrace of Americana. This is the last band in the world that should be paying tribute to BB King or Elvis or Hendrix, let alone the Beatles or Lennon.

But 'play the blues' is exciting!

In a sense it redefines the blues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xg48S4Ino0k

This is much more like the band stuff in Depeche Mode's 101 i always felt. As MaresNest suggests it's way more fun that Rattle. I think the cheap film stock helps.

Wow, this looks tremendous!

"put El Salvador through the amp"

lmao

XXP - it's very good indeed, but there should be a longer cut of it floating about somewhere, 31' seems way too short.

Can't think of another track they've done as loose as 'Desire'.

Desire was the song that brought me into the U2 fold as a kid though i don't rate it as highly now. the two songs i mentioned above i think achieve everything they set out to do. Hawkmoon just sounds massive and Heartland is a great haunted epic, i especially like both the delivery *and* the lyrics here especially:

See the sunrise over her skin
She feels like water in my hand
Freeway, like a river
Cuts through this land
Into the side of love
Like a burning spear
And the poison rain
Like dirty tears
Through the ghostranch hills
Death Valley waters
In the towers of steel
Belief goes on and on

In fact, let's grit our teeth, and go through all the Hat Tips on Rattle & Hum:
stealing Helter Skelter "back" on behalf of the Beatles
dedicating The Edge's effort to poet John Boyle O'Reilly, and dissing him in the sleevenotes
sticking Dylan on inaudible Hammond on Hawkmoon 269 (and Honey Cone on backing vocals)
Dylan again / Hendrix on All Along The Watchtower, because there's no chance of bathos there
yuk, I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For goes gospel with the New Voices Of Freedom
Hey, Sterling Magee, Bobby Robinson & Macie Mabins, would you like 0:38 on our bloated album?
the brass nerve of "for Billie Holiday" on Angel Of Harlem: how wonderful it would be to hear which curse words she would use if she heard it
Bono and Bob set the Bible to music and Bob does backing vox on Love Rescue Me
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mister BB King
of *course
Eno is doing keyboards on Heartland -- a song you forget while you're listening to it
"for John Lennon", because God needed a sanctimonious updating
hey, dead Jimi Hendirx, would you like 0:43 on our bloated record, on which the guitars are also quite good?
"put El Salvador through the amp"
and after the rattle, the hum: Van Dyke Parks on All I Want Is You
"thanks to Tim Buckley"?!
the Spinal Tap Gracelands moments

immortal post

I see Bateau got to that two days back my bad

My old friend Matt used to refer to it as Prattle and Yawn. One of his wittier remarks. He also kept a Best of Eric Clapton 8-track, pierced by a heated screwdriver, as a mantle piece. I miss that guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-XDgiTX204

The snare is way out of tune on Desire and apparently everyone is too caught up in emotion and feeling to notice

this really has to be one of the most confused follow-ups to a gigantic success ever. this was my introduction to u2, being the only album of theirs owned by my parents & the reason my dad always expressed a dislike for them and it was so confusing as this incoherent grab bag of new material & live tracks, and it still doesn't really make any more sense to me now. it's not quite a proper follow-up to the joshua tree but it still ended up having to be one. it's not a live album either and it's not even really that coherent as a soundtrack to the film, especially with the additional new tracks. i really don't understand how they decided on this being the album they put out at all.

it also just sounds really muddy and bland as an album, without eno & lanois around everything interesting about their sound is gone. the covers are mediocre and a little embarrassing. there are plenty of u2 live recordings that are more definitive versions of their 80s material than the studio versions, but none of them are found here - the only live track that's really worth anything at all is "i still haven't found what i'm looking for" with the gospel choir which is pretty great actually but the rest is totally pointless. the new tracks are mostly pretty bad too. "van diemen's land" is just an edge solo demo that it's a wonder they thought it was worth putting on the album. "desire" and "angel of harlem" are fine and while they're nothing special at all, they at least feel fully formed and justify their own existence. "hawkmoon 269", "love rescue me" and "when love comes to town" are all slogs that demonstrate how ill-conceived the whole project was. "heartland" is ok but clearly the joshua tree outtake it is, and "god part ii" is such an embarrassing concept with music to match. it's genuinely baffling that they thought most of this was worth releasing. at least "all i want is you" is genuinely very good. i guess if you stripped it down to just "desire", "angel of harlem", "heartland" and "all i want is you" then you have an ok EP, which it clearly never should have been more than.

Neil Tennant's tetchy, impromptu review still the best:

Rock critics liked RAH because they want a return to the traditional rock values. What they basically want is for it to be like 1969 again. It's this thing where British -- or in U2's case Irish -- groups discover the roots of American music. U2 have discovered this and they're just doing pastiches (his voice rises) and it's reviewed as a serious thing because `Dylan plays organ' on some song and B.B. King plays on some throwaway pop song `When Love Comes To Town' that could have been written by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It could be in `Starlight Express' if you ask me.

The fact is that the PSB stand against all of this, so it's quite right that people like that should slag us off. Because we hate everything that they are and stand for. We hate it because it's stultifying, it says nothing, it is big and pompous and ugly. We hate it for exactly the same reasons Johnny Rotten said he hated dinosaur groups in 1976.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, September 26, 2008

The interesting paradox about this record is that the least-successful, most egregious mistake of a song ("God Part II") is actually the one that points most directly to where they were going in the next 10 years.
The only song I kept from this is "Freedom for My People".

"put El Salvador through the amp"

(his voice rises)