It's difficult to even sum up this one. It's a mixture of live songs and studio material. It combines old songs and new. It contains tracks performed by U2 as well as cover versions of other famous songs. This results in a meandering feel, as though the track listing was put together totally at random. On the best U2 albums, one can change the tone simply by reordering the songs; you cannot do that here. Little thought seems to have gone into the make up of album. Some tracks are just filler. Some tracks don't feel quite finished. And some tracks just don't sound like they have anything to do with the rest .

Musically, this CD is also a bit of a mixed bag. The cover versions range from the wonderful rendering of The Beatles' "Helter Skelter" to a lackluster performance of Bob Dylan's "All Along The Watchtower" (note to any bands considering which of somebody else's songs they should perform: never cover a song that Jimi Hendrix already covered, because you're setting yourself up for a formidable task of matching him). "All I Want Is You" and "Hawkmoon 269" are bordering on sheer brilliance, but where did "Love Rescue Me" and "Heartland" come from?

RATTLE AND HUM is an album that ends up being less than the sum of its parts. While containing some fabulous individual tracks, this release never seems to come together in the way that it should. There's too much filler, too much stuff that simply doesn't feel like it belongs. This CD should be recommended, as there is some marvelous stuff contained on it, but bear in mind that U2 have done much better.


Forget watching the film, just listen to the music   April 3, 2001
 6 out of 10 found this review helpful

I never get tired of listening to this album, although I am considerably less enthralled about actually watching the documentary. "Rattle and Hum" offers a perfect mix of new songs, inspired live versions of old songs and a couple of nice covers. Of the new songs the four best are clearly "Desire," "Hawkmoon 269" (with Bob Dylan on Hammond Organ), "Angel of Harlem" and the fabulous duet with B. B. King "When Love Comes to Town." "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" is enhanced by the presence of the New Voices of Freedom choir and soloists George Pendergrass and Dorothy Terrell, while "Pride (In the Name of Love)" has the crowd helping out with the chorus. Finally, U2 covers the Beatles' "Helter Skelter" and Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower," the latter being the better of the pair. "Rattle and Hum" does not have the polish of most of the other U2 albums, but I can make an argument for it being their best effort.


The Setback   October 26, 2004
 6 out of 8 found this review helpful

Soundtracks occupy a rather dark and uncomfortable corner of the rock kingdom, and with good reason. It's no secret that film projects have long been the critical and/or commercial black eye in otherwise unstoppable careers - as freshly anointed Biggest Band on Earth U2 got its chance to learn the hard way with 1988's RATTLE AND HUM.
RATTLE AND HUM contains seventeen tracks, nine of which are new studio recordings, with another six drawn from US concerts taped during U2's 1987 JOSHUA TREE tour, as well as snippets of a streetcorner blues singer and Jimi Hendrix playing "The Star-Spangled Banner." If this sounds like a bit of a jumble, it is; and that's the problem. Had the studio numbers herein been released on their own, I have no doubt that RATTLE AND HUM (or whatever it might've been called) would occupy a respectable niche in the U2 canon as a solid, if inevitably lesser, follow-up to THE JOSHUA TREE. Much of the music is excellent, including the melodramatic shout of "Hawkmoon 269," the brass-drenched soul workout "Angel of Harlem"(which I defy anyone to listen to and then try to argue against Bono's gifts as a singer), the Edge's haunting solo lament "Van Diemen's Land," the droning and dreamy "Heartland"(possibly the best song I've ever heard with America per se as its subject) and the huge closing ballad "All I want Is You." Collaborations with Bob Dylan ("Love Rescue Me") and B.B. King ("When Love Comes to Town") also work quite well, and along with the liberal use of horns, harmonicas, female backup singers and overtly bluesy melodies underscore the band's obvious desire to further its relationship with American music - a relationship begun (and arguably employed more successfully) on THE JOSHUA TREE.
Which brings us to the live material, source of most of the lambasting which both this album and its accompanying documentary took from critics and fans on release. To be sure, much of it is fairly lamentable, either due to lackluster performances or, more often, Bono's embarrassing onstage patter. Covers of "Helter Skelter" and "All Along the Watchtower" don't exactly make the listener forget the originals, while a gospel rendition of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," though musically strong, seems more to simply bloat the version on THE JOSHUA TREE than add very much to it. The same could be said of much of the movie, which is largely devoted to celebrating the glories of THE JOSHUA TREE as explored - and exploited - on tour, and with only a couple of exceptions features the new studio songs either in snippets or in different, for-the-cameras versions. This makes RATTLE AND HUM the album and RATTLE AND HUM the film two very different things, with the former's considerable strengths undermined by the inclusion of just enough in-concert bombast and cinematic filler to make it awkward. That doesn't stop this from being an essential album for U2 fans, however - indeed, even the film doesn't look all that dreadful anymore, after sixteen years of increasingly execrable MTV-inspired outrages and the rise of a sneering trash culture of adolescent auteurs. If nothing else, RATTLE AND HUM reminds us that the good old days, even when they weren't great, were an order of magnitude better than almost anything we've got now.
RATTLE AND HUM brought the 1980s to an ambiguous close for U2; still one of the world's most popular rock acts, the band had suffered its first real body blow right in the wake of its greatest success. This also meant a very unambiguous end to the '80s version of U2. The band would disappear for three and a half years, to return in an almost unrecognizable form and ready to scale new heights.


Trash   October 22, 1998
 5 out of 10 found this review helpful

It would have been better to release an EP with the B-sides, and then release a live album. But no...they had to combine the two. Not that the selections are bad, it is just that this whole album is like a bad bootleg. Perhaps this was the intent, but who gives a flying f@#k? I sure don't...this album is a very poor collection.


I simply do not understand why the critics dissed this album   December 4, 1999
 5 out of 6 found this review helpful

I have listened to album more than any other U2 album. God Part II and the live version of Bullet the Blue Sky are two of the best songs they have ever done.

I don't see where the "egotism" thing that the critics railed about comes through. To me this album simply shows their love for American rock and roll culture, which is also amply documented on The Unforgettable Fire and other albums.

The thing that pisses me off though is that U2 seems to have bought into what the critics say! Stand up for yourselves, guys! Tell the critics to stick it...well, you know.