It's the mid-1980's, you've been a critical darling your entire career, and you've just hit commercial paydirt. What is your next move? If you are Bruce Springsteen you follow it up with a career spanning 5 record live album. If you are U2 you do something more ambitious. You go on tour, film it for theatrical distribution, and release a 2 record set consisting of live material plus new songs detailing your latest obsession, The United States of America. Specifically, the country in terms of its blues, soul, and folk traditions. It's amazing that the resulting album, Rattle and Hum, did not include a cover song by Simon and Garfunkel because the group was on a quest "to look for America."

So, it's a little strange that the album opens with a cover of a British band, The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" (unless you want to count the superfluous reference to Charles Manson that introduces the song). It also doesn't help that the playing is flat and that Bono enunciates too much. However, despite this mis-step and a so-so cover of "All Along the Watchtower" (Bob Dylan by way of Jimi Hendrix), the other live tracks from the band's repertoire are solid.

Fears that Rattle and Hum would simply be The Joshua Tree in Concert were alleviated by the inclusion of only two live versions from that album--the blistering "Bullet the Blue Sky" (introduced by Hendrix' famous Woodstock recording of "The Star Spangled Banner"), and a gospel-arranged "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" that sounds better than it reads.

If you can forgive Bono's preachiness and request to The Edge to "play the blues," the anti-apartheid "Silver and Gold" rocks out. That song is followed by "Pride (In the Name of Love)" that captures the feeling of being in the audience at a U2 concert. Not unlike catching a Springsteen set, being in the seats for The Joshua Tree tour was an exhilarating experience (although not, like my date that evening proclaimed, a religious awakening).

[Lengthy Sidenote:
It is interesting that the cover shot of Rattle and Hum has Bono, in his does-this-make-me-look-gay? leather vest, shining a spotlight on The Edge. (I always thought the cover should have been of Bono nailed to a cross.) If anything, Bono made sure the spotlight was focused on him the night I attended their show. He made various political remarks, most of which I agreed with, when someone in the front rows shouted something. He probably said "play such and such" but whatever it was it sounded innocent enough. Anyway, Bono wheeled around in the direction of the unsolicited comment and said "you shut the f*ck up while I'm talking." Nice to insult your audience like that, especially after they paid the $30 or whatever tickets cost back then. Later in the show, with some kids pressing up a little too close to the stage, someone got caught with an elbow to the nose and required medical attention. Bono's comment? "Nobody gets hurt at a U2 concert." Ah yes, it was a love fest. Despite those two outbursts from Bono, though, it was a good show.]

The well-known studio songs are mostly a notch below the material from The Joshua Tree, like the hit single "Desire". Not a bad song by itself, but it suffers when compared to what the group could write. The soulful "Angel of Harlem," featuring the Memphis Horns, is supposedly a tribute to Billie Holiday, and while it was nice to hear Lady Day getting props on the radio, it most certainly was not the type of music associated with her. So that's one song that has me baffled. B.B. King is the featured guest on "When Love Comes to Town," and he steals the show by outsinging and outplaying the rest of the band. Billed as a blues summit, he simply takes these young, white, Irish Catholic boys to school.

Better songs include the folk song "Van Diemen's Land," which features The Edge on lead vocal and mixes elements of old Ireland and Woody Guthrie. "Hawkmoon 269", "Love Rescue Me" (with Bob Dylan sitting in on both numbers), and "All I Want is You" are all variations of the same song, in my opinion, yet are all very well paced. "God Part II" is a driving rocker with some of Bono's clear-eye observations on lust, politics, and recycling the 60's (which is supposed to be ironic, I think, given their cover selections, guest stars, and the pomposity of naming the song after John Lennon's classic).

That U2 bit off more than they could chew is no surprise. This group lives for painting on a vast canvas. But if you think of Rattle and Hum as more of a holding pattern between their two big statements, The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, it becomes easier to see through their eyes. This was a group at a crossroads in their career, and if it meant having to stumble around in the dark before things coalesced, so be it.


Recommended: Yes