The only U2 album with no weak songs: “It’s an awkward son-of-a-bitch”
There are usually two schools of thought whenever it comes to Bono.
Either he is the saviour of rock and roll who helped U2 become one of the biggest bands in the world, or he is one of the most pretentious public figures in the world who could practically set up a condominium in his own ass whenever he opens his mouth. He might be a little bit too high on his own hubris for some people, but whenever he talks about the music, you can at least tell that he genuinely wants to create something that will change the world for the better.
To be fair, it’s not like he was ever trying to do any harm with his music. The album Songs of Innocence may have made for one of the worst rollouts that any band has ever undertaken when they partnered with Apple, but if the nadir of their career involves putting a few songs on people’s iPhones that they didn’t ask for, that’s a lot more manageable than records that were dead on arrival.
And while fans might not be able to look past their posturing onstage, the songs will always hold up over time. Achtung Baby should have never worked when they entered the age of alternative rock and grunge, but by going back to basics and embracing the sounds of post-modern irony, they were actually far more interesting to listen to than getting the next instalment of The Joshua Tree all over again. But no matter which era they were in, you couldn’t understand the band until you saw them live.
Their appearance at Live Aid is still one of the finest performances of the day, right below Queen’s set, and Under a Blood Sky has takes that could easily replace the versions that ended up on their studio albums. ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ and ‘Pride’ would always get an extra boost whenever they played them live, but Bono’s idea to bring both elements of their sound together for Rattle and Hum was always going to come together with a bit of thud.
Making a rock and roll documentary wasn’t anything new by that point, but rarely has a band been made to look more like gods in their own movie. Each shot feels like it’s framed to make Bono look like the Second Coming when he launches into a song, and there are more than a few times where his speeches go on for a bit too long, but even at the time, the frontman was more than willing to stand by the album as one of the best things that the band had ever produced.
It was a bit rough around the edges, but that was only a plus in Bono’s mind when every song worked so well, saying, “The reason it’s a great rock ‘n’ roll record is because it has great songs. There isn’t a weak song on the LP. That’s what makes a good or bad LP. The fact that it’s an awkward son-of-a-bitch to listen to means that it can’t be an album in the sense of ‘album’ with an American accent. But the songs on it… ‘Desire’, ‘Angel Of Harlem’, ‘All I Want Is You’.”
If nothing else, the band are undeniably human when they tear through some of these tunes. The idea of working with BB King may have been a bit premature when working on ‘When Love Comes to Town’, but ‘Desire’ is one of the finest singles that they’ve ever released, and hearing their versions of ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘All Along the Watchtower’ are a lot of fun, even if Bono decided that Bob Dylan’s immortal words needed fixing on the latter.
Rattle and Hum might be one of the most disjointed records that U2 ever put out, but in between the speeches and the over-the-top guest appearances, you can still feel that they’re being earnest underneath everything. This was a band that was desperate to be up there with the greats, and by the time that ‘All I Want is You’ closes out the record, you actually feel like they’ve accomplished everything they set out to do.
