The first sound on U2's sixth album is a live crowd, then Bono's voice rising over a thrashed Beatles song. Rattle and Hum, released on 10 October 1988, opens with a concert cover of 'Helter Skelter', and before the band plays a note Bono tells the audience that Charles Manson stole the song from The Beatles, so U2 are stealing it back. That mix of swagger and reverence set the tone for an album that was half live recordings and half new studio tracks. The Irish group had conquered the world with The Joshua Tree, and now they wanted to plant themselves inside American music itself.
Filming the tour in Denver
The project was also a film, shot by director Phil Joanou in black and white at the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver on 7 and 8 November 1987. The first Denver concert went badly because cameras interfered with Bono's performance, and during 'Sunday Bloody Sunday' he condemned the Enniskillen bombing by shouting an expletive-laden rebuke of 'the revolution' at the crowd. The second show was judged a success, but the strain of turning a rock tour into a movie was already visible. U2 were not just documenting a tour; they were trying to make a statement about America, faith and violence while the cameras rolled.
The studio side of Rattle and Hum reached for American roots with both hands. 'Angel of Harlem' paid tribute to Billie Holiday with a prominent horn section, while 'When Love Comes to Town' was a blues-rock track featuring B.B. King on guitar and vocals. Those songs, along with 'Love Rescue Me', were recorded at Sun Studio in Memphis, a place loaded with musical history. The lead single 'Desire' was built on a Bo Diddley beat, and it became U2's first number one in the UK while reaching number 3 in the US. The band was not hiding their influences; they were naming them track by track.
The Bob Dylan collaboration that stalled
The most tangled collaboration involved Bob Dylan. In November 1987, Bono and Dylan met in Los Angeles and wrote 'Prisoner of Love' together, later renamed 'Love Rescue Me'. Dylan recorded the lead vocal for the original version, but then asked U2 not to use it because of his commitments to The Traveling Wilburys. That left U2 to record the song themselves at Sun Studio, carrying the echo of a partnership that never fully happened. The album still includes a live version of Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower', so his presence hangs over the record even when he is not singing.
That live version of 'All Along the Watchtower' came from an improvised concert called 'Save the Yuppies' on 11 November 1987 in San Francisco. During the same show Bono spray-painted 'Rock and Roll Stops the Traffic' on the Vaillancourt Fountain, which caused a scandal and forced the group to pay for repairs and apologise. U2 also rehearsed 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For' with the New Voices of Freedom choir in a Harlem church before performing it at Madison Square Garden. The album was collecting moments of genuine risk, but also moments where the band's ambition outran its control.
Critics were split. Some called Rattle and Hum exhilarating, others dismissed it as misguided and bombastic. The commercial response told a different story: the album sold more than 14 million copies and topped the charts in several countries. 'Desire' won a Grammy for best rock vocal performance by a duo or group. Yet the backlash stung, and it fed a sense that U2 had reached the end of something. The band had spent years building a sound of wide-open spaces and earnest anthems, and now that sound was being questioned from both inside and outside.
The fallout from Rattle and Hum pushed U2 into a corner. Facing creative stagnation and criticism, the group reinvented themselves in the 1990s, changing their musical direction and their image. The album that chased American roots so hard ended up forcing them to leave those roots behind. What remains is a strange, oversized document of a band at the peak of its fame, grabbing at blues, gospel, soul and protest songs all at once, and sometimes losing its footing in the process.
The album that chased American roots so hard ended up forcing them to leave those roots behind.