U2 - Rattle and Hum POLL

I would like to set most of this album on fire

voted "Desire" because voting for a live version of a previously-released song feels like cheating (otherwise "Bullet the Blue Sky" without even thinking twice)

DONT EVEN GET ME FUCKING STARTED

ha forgot caps lock was on, but its prob a fair means of expression

unless we are voting for worst

when love comes to town is just seriously one of the worst things to ever happen

oh shit I should have asked for that clarification, I genuinely like "Desire"

haha this was my gateway drug into U2, i loved it at the time (i was 13 when it came out.) uh, i love it less now. but i still think hawkmoon 269 and heartland are great tracks.

jjj did we have horrified reactions to this album simultaneously or did we listen separately and then call each other to boggle at how terrible it was, I don't remember now

wait but also angel of harlem is also one of the worst things to ever happen

i think we might have had them simultaneously, altho the years have only intensified my dislike if such a thing is possible

this was basically the album where i was finally "ohhhhh so thats why everyone thinks nice old bono is a self-important dick"

i think the problem with a lot of the weaker cuts on this album is their american blues and jazz homages sound like bumper music for chicago cubs broadcasts on WGN. :(

hahaha exactly!

all I know is that I never owned it, someone inflicted it upon me

and yeah, the years have not softened my feelings

you two are stealing the thread from al leong. i'm stealing it back!

I just find it amazing that the band behind those first three albums would even consider recording "Angel In Harlem"

xp: belly lol

they should do a paul stanley song intro medley thingy for bono i bet there would be some stunners in there

sorry, not trying to ruin this for people that like this album, do your thing, i just have kind of a visceral reaction

All I Want Is You is so good, but do people forget about it because it's such a chore making it to the end of the album?

Heartland is best here, Desire also great. I like Van Diemen's Land a lot in the film, not sure I would ever put it on on its own though.

I've got an alternate 2.0 version somewhere, with much better live cuts. It's genuinely a pretty good album.

I would like to set most of this album on fire

why isn't this an option

jjj let's go over here

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/NewAnswersControllerServlet?boardid=58

uh I meant RATTLE AND HUM IS SUCH A DICK but you found it already so

still love Neil Tennant's response:

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.

Well the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister

lmao

I can't tell the difference between ABC news, Hill Street Blues and a preacher on the old time gospel hour stealing money from the sick and the old.

thank god for this album though because '91-'98 was some really good backtracking.

I mean, if the album tracks are as pleasant-innocuous as "In God's Country" I can stand to listen to, say, "Heartland" and "Van Diemen's Land."

not sure The Fly was an improvement on this, also that was when he began wearing the wraparound shades

it was a pretty big improvement

after this album Bono basically put wraparound shades around his voice

ONE HUNDRED
TWO HUNDRED
and I can see those fighter planes
and I can see those fighter planes

Rock critics liked RAH because

But did critics like it? I don't remember reading any raves from that time.

The Fly was a hell of a raising of one's game

musically better?

thank god for this album though because '91-'98 was some really good backtracking.

― christmas candy bar (al leong), Tuesday, November 19, 2013 12:44 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this. If this was what it took for Zooropa and Pop to happen, fine.

should probably just poll bono's bullet the blue sky monologue

Didn't it get contemporaneously panned in a way that no big release ever would since. Maybe The Spaghetti Incident?

I musta heard a different Fly

I think RS might've written a positive review, but that doesn't count.

The two things about this fucking album I will always remember:

1) Everyone's 'uh' reactions to it upsetting the bootlicker that is Robert Hilburn, leading to what is still my gold standard of absolutely godawful terrible music writing, TERRIBLE:

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-11-20/entertainment/ca-441_1_rock-band

2) The relatively undiscussed-in-comparison-to-the-other-bullshit "God Part II," for this reason: somewhere in some interview I can't immediately dig up from the time, Bono said he was always annoyed that U2 music didn't really get people dancing at clubs but that he was happy that he had seen some people in Dublin dancing to this one. With this in mind, I was all "Oh, okay then" and then I actually heard it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dvXG18ZA1I

And I was all "You motherfucker."

However, did I mention the 'hard metal dance mix' yet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZPXOaVovQA

Larry was never cuter though

i believe in love

terrible horrible record but "all i want is you" is throwaway gold and i will vote for it

I love that song. Van Dyke Parks' string arrangement is A+. Hit the sappy motherlode in Soderbergh's Contagion too.

Voted Van Dieman's Land because I love when Edge sings.

could never endorse "All I Want is You" because Bono is singing as if in a hospital bed recovering from a herniated bellybutton.

Guys, do yourself a favor and hit play on the regular "God Part II" about 12-13 seconds after doing the same on the remix. Cool call and response oozes into cacophony.

I want something like that Metallica thing where you could press a button and get Hetfield to growl "yeaaahhhh yeaaaahhhhh" but for Bono on this album

"shaaaaannteetowwwn"

"All I Want is You" was inexplicably my HS's prom theme, ten years after it was released. I had asked one of my friends who didn't have a date to go with me and she agreed, but at the prom we just danced in a big group with our other friends. When the end of the night came, we awkwardly paired up, neither of knowing how to dance, terrified of looking each other in the eyes lest either of us interpret this as anything more than platonic. I cursed Bono the whole song for making this experience last six and a half minutes.

The "effects on everything," which I like, sounded to me like, "Do your regular thing, then we'll put effects on everything afterwards." Zooropa and Pop felt like they started from something other than the 4-guys-in-a-room approach -- they now had a new sonic palette, they were excited about it, and they wrote from that basis, rather than sticking it on later. Definitely a few songs that couldn't have happened earlier, though, regardless of instrumentation/arrangement, and yeah, Bono's lyrics were free from the occasional (or more) clumsiness on previous records.

Unrelated (but of course, related), I just read that Larry needs surgery so is out for 2023, which means if the band does anything it'll likely be, for the first time, without him.

Yep:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/11/28/u2-kennedy-center-honors/

Then there is Mullen. “The bulls--- detector,” says Clayton. He is largely self-trained as a drummer, a powerhouse who now struggles with the physical toll of a lifetime of pounding. He’s the least public of the group’s four members, by far. The interview he gave for this story was, he said, his first in seven years. He’s blunt — he says if the band plays live in 2023 it will probably be without him, as he needs surgery to continue playing — and admits the dynamics in the band are not the same as they were decades ago. As the ’80s wore on and U2’s stature grew, band decisions would be made by what they called the “Politburo,” named after the policymaking committees in most communist systems. In Mullen’s view, the system that served the band well for so long has now become more of a benevolent dictatorship.

“You only do this if you’re having the best time,” Mullen says. “And not everyone is going to make it because the price is so high. So I think the challenge is for more generosity. More openness to the process. I am autonomous and I value my autonomy. I don’t sing from the same hymn sheet. I don’t pray to the same version of God. So everyone has their limits. And you only do this if it is a great time you’re having, you know?”

I hope it's not his back again. And touring without him would be a dick move.

Some of the songs were somewhat more traditional but I think there was a bit more to the album than some extra effects and more forward-thinking production. But at the same time one can’t underrate U2 being a fairly forward thinking art rock adjacent group from ‘84-‘87. Rattle and hum was probably more a diversionary path than it was the natural post Joshua Tree trajectory. AB feels like a better progression from JT if you remove R&H. I wouldn’t want to remove R&H though, and actually I think Bono nails a few good lyrics on this (despite the frequent callbacks to needles, hotel rooms, John Coltrane, saxophones iirc.) Heartland is quite good in that respect.

Also can’t diminish All I Want Is You, which felt like a familiar classic the first time I heard it. Arguably the best U2 album closer maybe? Though I will stan for the moody trio Love is Blindness/the wanderer/wake up dead man.

and admits the dynamics in the band are not the same as they were decades ago

Huh. Who knew?

I’d go so far as to argue that Love Is Blindness is not only in the Top 3 of U2 album closers, but that it might be one of Bono’s best ever lyrics.

I only saw them once, on the Zooropa tour in London, and even though it was super impressive, the set design felt so crazy and they looked lost to me on that stage.

It came across so much better on the live video, but the graphics during Love is Blindness, falling through these slowly rotating star maps (or whatever they were) were absolutely perfect.

The Zoo TV version of Love Is Blindness is my favourite U2 track of all

I have many thoughts about Achtung as a departure/otherwise but I was recently trying to turn them into an essay that I abandoned. Here's incentive!

Rattle & Hum is incredibly on/off for me for 50 minutes but once it gets to Heartland it gets really good and stays that way. Even the lyrics of God Part II don't bother me when I'm listening.

Phil Joanou’s excellent website (watch his USC student films!) has a few outtakes from the film. Hours of it were bootlegged shortly after it came out, and I’m frankly stunned that the film hadn’t gotten a deluxe HD reissue from Paramount

https://www.philjoanoudirector.com/

that WaPo article is kinda bad – errors and inaccuracies

so . . . had no one involved with the film or band seen 'spinal tap' or what

poor larry having to go on record about a 'car salesman who luvved to play guitar'

Rattle and Hum has to be like the maximally opposite film to This is Spinal Tap

WHARES B.B.?

remember how every Dodge Omni came with a copy of this LP in the back seat?

bono was really on one for the denver live tracks: helter skelter, silver and gold, sunday bloody sunday, pride. some solid grade-A bono venting/musing/proclaiming.

?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUtKe8hnmm8

Setting the stage for "Bono on Broadway."

I camped outside all night to get tickets for this show when it came to Denver. I hadn't got halfway to the front of the line before they announced that tickets were sold out. I've never done that again, and to this day I still have (probably irrational) feelings of resentment towards U2 for it.

Is Rattle and Hum the biggest album of the, idk 20th century, to have never been properly re-released? In the sense that, afaict, those buying the album today will be buying the version from 1988. Shit album or no, it sold 14 million. It does look like Japan have had a basic audiophile CD remaster at one point but I'm not counting that.

I get why no doubt. It's not just that U2 (and many others) dislike the album (though the band's cold feet around Zooropa and Pop are probably why they've never had the deluxe program either) - Paramount own the film and you can't really do a R&H set without it and it's probably a bit difficult.

It's definitely weird which albums U2 has de-emphasized in their history. I think to an average fan, R&H is kind of a classic in many respects. For me, it's the one album of theirs that would really benefit from a Neil Young style reissue, taking all of the studio tracks and stray studio tracks from the same era and creating a new album.

Is Rattle and Hum the biggest album of the, idk 20th century, to have never been properly re-released? In the sense that, afaict, those buying the album today will be buying the version from 1988. Shit album or no, it sold 14 million.

Probably? Getting all #onethread here, but Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever (from '89) has never been properly reissued. MCA only redid the Torpedoes --> Long After Dark Run for him, possibly stopping due artist indifference and/or the industry downturn.

Don Henley's '80s albums never got upgraded either, although I imagine a big part of that is down to Henley.

Due to all the recent hoopla around the Streisand memoir, I got to thinking that she might one of the few major artists to never really get a major catalogue overhaul outside of comps and box sets.

Also the two original Warner Bros. Jane's Addiction albums -- although those are on a way lower commercial stratum than those albums.

Add them here(!): Album You'd Most Like To See Remastered

I don't know if we actually want to see these albums remastered tho. ;-)

I wonder if there's something with certain Poppy Bush Interzone/Transitional LP/Cassette --> CD-era albums where the labels/archival people feel the releases were fine as-is? I picked up Full Moon Fever used on CD shortly after Petty died and thought it sounded fine, mastered at a good volume (certainly not brick-walled!), had a proper booklet w/lyrics & such...

The U2 thing is weird because as already stated they've reissued everything else, and yet didn't piggy-back material from R&H into the Joshua Tree sets like they did to Zooropa into the expanded Achtung Baby.

Also: didn't they finally get the movie rights back? I seem to recall stories about outtake footage getting scanned and restored.

Kevin Gray remastered Nothing's Shocking for Audio Fidelity back in 2012. I haven't compared them, but I think the original CD was already done well:

https://www.discogs.com/release/3684699-Janes-Addiction-Nothings-Shocking

And also yes re: Full Moon Fever, the original CD was done very well too, so much that the audiophiles have said it's preferable to MFSL's old reissue.

I don't think Rattle & Hum needs to be remastered honestly, not unless you need to have it on vinyl. That was done when CD's became THE dominant format, so it was mastered with that in mind, with none of the compromises needed to fit it on to vinyl. It's not like they spared any expense in mastering it either given their stature at that moment. (and tbh, I only listen to a few songs from it anyway, all of which I stuck on a compilation.)

I don't know if we actually want to see these albums remastered tho. ;-)

Extremely good point (per my complaint here: Continuing with CDs?)

Oh wait... I was making the opposite point... lol

...per other people's points in rebuttal to mine!!

Also: didn't they finally get the movie rights back? I seem to recall stories about outtake footage getting scanned and restored.

AAANGEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Not going to lie, I don't change the station when that comes on.

I aim my car at the first boomer when that comes on.

It takes a while to get there, but once R&H gets to "Heartland" it gets really good and stays really good

oh, don't get me wrong, I hate every minute of the very silly Angel of Harlem while it's playing, but my lizard brain can't deny its simple pleasures. it's a well put together track. I like it a lot better than When Love Comes to Town.

I like that song (corny as it may be)… the horns are great, and the chorus is undeniable

(Angel, not Comes to Town)

I went to jr high school in Harlem, so I know whereof I speak. Song is terrible

I enjoy "Angel of Harlem," the Memphis Horns are great, but it's also blatantly ridiculous in typical U2 fashion. It's a tribute to Billie Holiday that mentions Miles Davis and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (neither of whom are strongly identified with Holiday), and yet U2 makes a record that sounds like a tribute to soul music rather than jazz of any kind. U2 recorded a lot of dilettantish nonsense from this era, so par for the course I guess.

Blame the record company

Shoulda been a killer EP

Heartland is a pretty spectacular and eerie track, it plays completely to their strengths. Hawkmoon is almost as great. Desire and God Pt II are pretty 🤘 and AIWIY feels pretty effortless and classic though I might not consider it as grade A as some for whatever reason.

The full promo mix (extended version of the hollywood mix) of Desire is fantastic - squaring that Bo Diddley failproof with Adam Ant open drum lattices and Steinskiesque samples. I can even forgive the misplaced Once Upon a Time-ish addition of soul singer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScQ8aCu2xJY

“Desire,” that’s the one where edge plays the E string for a minute and collects a mill

Good song.

Had a real #onethread moment tonight. I went to see Bruce Cockburn, and with "Rattle and Hum" at least rattling around in my brain a little, realized that it's Cockburn that Bono is referencing in "God Part II" when he sings "Heard a singer on the radio late last night/Says he's gonna kick the darkness till it bleeds daylight." "Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight" is from Cockburn's "Lovers in a Dangerous Time."