Rattle And Hum

About

By the late ’80, U2 had climbed the highest mountains of rock succe, having racked up sold-out stadium show, multiple magazine cover, and a chart-topping album in <i>The Joshua Tree</i>. Bono and the boys had officially become the World’s Biggest Band—and now, they had to come up with an appropriately massive follow-up project. Should they make an indulgent double album? A lightning-capturing live album? What about a worshipful rock-doc? With the extravagant <i>Rattle and Hum</i>, U2 chose all three. A mix of new studio cuts and onstage highlights from the <i>Joshua Tree</i> tour, the album chronicles the US’s love for U2—and vice versa. A trip to historic Sun Studio yields “Angel of Harlem,” a swinging, horn-heavy ode to Billie Holiday that became an unlikely radio hit. It’s just one of several cuts that lets U2 dig deep into America’s musical past: The group teams with B.B. King for the wailing “When Love Comes to Town”; adopts a Bo Diddley shuffle on the grabby “Desire”; and collaborates with Bob Dylan for the languid ballad “Love Rescue Me.” Those in-studio moments—which also includes the stirring, straightforward love song “All I Want Is You”—are interspersed with a handful of tracks recorded during U2’s 1987 tear through America, and chronicled for the 1988 <i>Rattle and Hum</i> documentary. Those live moments find the band working overtime to match their fans’ arena-sized expectations: Bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. march in a lockstep groove to Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” while the Edge lets rip on a fiery solo on “Bullet the Blue Sky.” And while <i>Rattle and Hum</i>’s concert tracks feature a few typically indulgent Bono bon mots—he opens a cover of the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” by name-dropping Charles Manson—all is forgiven when Harlem’s New Voices of Freedom gospel choir shows up for a joyous rendition of “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” .

via Apple Music

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