There's a British TV show called 'Gogglebox', a simple premise where we watch people watching TV. The show has spread to other countries who do their own version and one of those countries is Ireland. Through the power of the dark recesses of the internet, we watch and enjoy 'Gogglebox Ireland'. Every week, in between a couple of segments, they play the opening bars of 'Sweetest Thing' by U2. Every week the earworm burrows a little deeper until now I've finally cracked and selected U2 as review of the day.
In the interests of full disclosure, U2 are not my favourite band. In fact they don't come close. Even so, like most groups or artists there are usually things in their catalogues that are the exceptions that prove the rule.
My good lady wife Tracy on the other hand is a dyed-in-the-wool fan, so much so that she made multiple trips from Brooklyn to East Rutherford New Jersey to see them in concert on at least 3 of their 5 shows in May 1987. The shows were the 1st leg of the Joshua Tree tour and 6 live recordings from parts of the tour, 9 studio tracks and 2 clips of other performers became the hybrid album 'Rattle and Hum'.
Probably the most powerful and notable live track on the album is taken from their Madison Square Garden show. The opening couple of bars of 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' begin, Bono comes in with the vocal, singing the first verse. When he gets to the second verse there's a background of rhythmic clapping. The chorus has a two line repetition. He sings the first and then, for the second a heavenly choir takes over, singing responses and accompaniments until the 2 minute mark. At that point, the full band kicks in, the volume and pace increase and The New Voices of Freedom go into full gospel mode. It really is a moving performance. The 'Rattle and Hum' movie shows the rehearsal for that number. After the rehearsal U2 went for a walk around Harlem and spotted Satan and Adam, a blues duo of street performers. Both the movie and this album have a 40 second clip of them playing 'Freedom For My People'.
The other 'other artist' clip on this album is Jimi Hendrix doing a 43 second burst of 'Star Spangled Banner' taken from his 1969 Woodstock performance.
There's a couple of covers too. It surprised me that they would open this album with a live version of The Beatles 'Helter Skelter'. It just seemed odd that U2, who were now on the threshold of super-stardom and had released an album based on a tour, chose to begin with a song by another super-stardom group.
The next live track was Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower', which should have satisfied my need to include Bob in almost every review, however, digging deeper I found more. The studio cut of 'Hawkmoon 269' features Dylan on Hammond organ and the track 'Love Rescue Me' was not only co-written by Bob but he also does backing vocals. Mind you, he wasn't the only guest performer of note. B.B. King did vocals and guitar on 'When Love Comes To Town' and Brian Eno was playing keyboard on 'Heartland'. Van Dyke Parks was brought in for the string arrangement on 'All I Want Is You'.
It would be remiss not to mention 'Angel of Harlem', not only because it's a good song but also because it's an homage to the legendary Billie Holiday.
Just as a side note, although not included on this album, I have a bootleg from one of the shows Tracy went to in New Jersey on May 15 1987 and U2 do a short version of Dylan's 'Maggie's Farm'. Yeah !
So, after giving them a second chance, there's enough on this album (and a few others in the pile) to satisfy even a reluctant listener like me, although they didn't do themselves any favours in 2014 when 'Songs of Innocence' was force fed onto my iTunes related devices.
U2 - for me, an acquired taste but one that is becoming more pallatable.
No comments:
Post a Comment