defend the indefensible: RATTLE AND HUM by U2

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)

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

I'd drop "Heartland" but yeah pretty much - it would've been a pretty nice EP in a lot of ways. I like B.B. King on "Love Comes to Town," it's a nice guest shot, but you're better off hearing his own records.

FWIW, I revisited Robbie Robertson recently, which was fucking awful - I take back every defense I had for it. A lot of it was overwrought, but then you had two tracks (with Peter Gabriel's involvement) that felt like Roberston wanted to make So and two more (with U2) that sound like the blueprint for Rattle & Hum. I'm all for artists trying something different, but just as U2's Americana was mostly dubious, so was Robertson doing the reverse, and hearing the two ambitions intersect was wretched.

Rick Danko does backing vocals on one song on that record that couldn't sound more pasted in. I have loved "Showdown at Big Sky" since the first time I heard it though.

"Somewhere Down the Crazy River" is one of the most vacuously expensive indulgences recorded by a great songwriter.

i was feeling like a stranger in a strange land
you know, where people play games with the night

Hearing anything with Sammy BoDean at this point is pretty much a cringe.

That said, I think "Broken Arrow" is a heck of a song. I'd like to hear it more stripped down like with a Chris Whitley like feel with the tune played on a dobro. (HEY BILLY STRINGS - COVER THIS ONE...)

I kinda think the old hipster spoken stuff works better on 'Underworld of Redboy'. I really like that one.

I went into see this movie and it was like an 11pm showing packed to the gills and came out kinda thinking U2 was definitely not as cool anymore. WTF...

"Somewhere Down the Crazy River" is one of the most vacuously expensive indulgences recorded by a great songwriter.

There's a quote about it by Robertson or Lanois about it that's been published ad nauseam, describing how Robertson has all these great stories and they thought, why not just record one of them and put some music to it? I was almost expecting something like Loretta Lynn's recitation on "Little Red Shoes" and how Jack White built a track around it, but instead we get this shitty fake story-song that's self-consciously delivered by Robertson - it's not telling a story but blatantly acting like a narrator written into an unconvincing script. You'd think it was ad copy made up for a shitty liquor commercial.

That said, I think "Broken Arrow" is a heck of a song. I'd like to hear it more stripped down like with a Chris Whitley like feel with the tune played on a dobro. (HEY BILLY STRINGS - COVER THIS ONE...)

With Gabriel programming the keyboards and drum patterns to what's already a spacious, stripped down production, it should've been a Gabriel track - sort of like "In Your Eyes" if it was done more like "Don't Give Up." It's very easy to picture Gabriel singing it than Robertson and doing a much better job of it.

Also re: "Love Comes to Town," it would've been much better if they got someone like Bettye LaVette to sing it with King than Bono.

* There's a quote about it by Robertson or Lanois that's been published ad nauseam

This album would have been fine if it was released as a sort of odds-n-sodds stopgap, minus all the hoopla. That said, iirc I bought a poster in the theatre lobby after I saw the movie.

BTW, yesterday I came across this Chilean U2 tribute band that absolutely kills it. Their Bono es muy bueno.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LemonU2trib

Weird, that was just a link to their youtube home page. Anyway, here's a song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4KKCx3CAC0

never not funny to me that neil tennant's off-the-cuff review manages to be absolutely wrong in almost every detail -- in what conceivable way is R&H "like 1969 again"? -- but overall absolutely correct (rattle and hum is bad not good and PSB were right to be against it)

I think the context's important, namely the Wilburyizing of the pop charts on both sides of the Atlantic, though you people had acid house on the chart.

"Somewhere Down the Crazy River" provided grist for Robertson impersonations between me and my friends for years, though... "Man, this is sure stirring up some ghosts for me".
I think the song was a dry run for the semi-autobiographical screenplay that a Rolling Stone article said he had written at this time.

"You know, I'm going to go down to Burger King to get a Whopper and see if the cashier can read my mind... She said your coupon is not valid anymore."