RATTLE
AND HUM (1988)
.:: VAN DIEMEN'S LAND ::. [back
to top]
U2 have aimed some of their songs at many injustices in the world, apartheid in South Africa for example. I may be wrong but I seem to see a reticence on the part of U2 to talk about what is on their own doorstep. Is that because it's easier to deal with a subject that's a long distance away?
Edge: "I don't think we're reticent to deal with what's on our doorstep. We write songs about what hits us at that time. We wrote a song about Northern Ireland on the War album ('Sunday Bloody Sunday') and I wrote a song called 'Van Diemen's Land,' which touches on that on the new album.
"I was interested in the history of this character, John Boyle O'Reilly. I was out one day with my wife Aislinn and we came upon his monument in County Meath. At the entrance to it was this faded brown newspaper clipping which gave the history of his life. How he was a member of the British army in Ireland. He left the army and became a Fenian and wrote Fenian poetry.
"He was arrested by the British government and was charged with writing material that was liable to undermine the government and was deported to Australia for 20 years' hard labour. He was, to me, a prisoner of conscience in a way. He was not a man of violence and he was sent away for 20 years, so I wrote a song about that."
The last verse of the song fades out. The lyrics remain on the sleeve insert, however. They read: "Still the gunman rules and the widows pay / A scarlet coat now a black beret / They thought that blood and sacrifice / Could out of death bring forth a life."
Edge: "Yes, the lyrics fade out. But that was for time reasons more than anything else because the lyric is on the lyric sheet. And there I'm just really asking a question I've been asked: What's the difference between men of violence on both sides? In this case this guy O'Reilly was sent away for 20 years by the powers that be. In Belfast today you're liable to get executed on the spot by men of violence, men with power. What's the difference? There's no freedom in either situation. Freedom of thought or freedom of conscience. People are either blown away or sent away. What I'm saying is that it's the people with the guns who are ultimately in power and I seem them all the same."
Are you saying it doesn't matter who is wielding the gun, they're both wrong?
Edge: "Well, I'm asking the question really: what's the difference between the people in power in the ghettos of Derry and Belfast now, because they're the people in power there, and those who were in control of Ireland at that time? It's a question of myself as much as anyone else. But my question is, what's the difference?"
(from
"'In Ireland People Are Scared of Success...'" by Jack Barron, New Musical Express, October 22, 1988)
[back
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.::
DESIRE ::. [back
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"Desire,"
the first single from Rattle and Hum, is such a song [ref. to Bono's
preceding comment, "I want to reveal the dark side as well as the light
side of who I am"]. He describes it as being about addiction
and ambition. "I'm dependent on music in a way. In writing
words and music, I'm attempting to identify myself. We're all trying
to find out who we are and music is like that for me. I find that
I almost hold on to it in a very desperate way."
"'Desire'
is about ambition too. The ambition to be in a band. You don't
join a band to save the world but to save your own arse and get off the
street. You want to play to the crowd rather than be in the crowd.
I wanted to own up to all this because people look at U2 and see all these
pure motives -- but we started off being in a band for the most impure
motives."
(from
"U2" by Terry O'Neill, In Fashion magazine, January 01, 1988)
On "Desire" there's needle and spoon junkie imagery. How much of that is appropriate and how much of it is based on personal experience?
"There's a lot of desire to get out of it," says Adam with resignation. He goes on to opine how the boredom and loneliness of touring can lead to need for chemical comfort even if it's simply alcohol.
Edge: "I think in the case of that song it's mostly a collage of images around the theme of desire. Some of the images are from personal experience and some of which are taken out of newspapers or what's going on."
(from
"'You Don't Believe Sinead, Do You?...'" by Jack Barron, New Musical Express, October 29, 1988)
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.::
HAWKMOON 269 ::.
[back to top]
"Hawkmoon is a place in Rapid City, North Dakota," Edge explains, "we passed by it on the Amnesty tour and Bono, ever a man with a notebook handy, thought 'that sounds good.' So he used that as a point of departure for the song."
(from
"A Mighty Long Way Down Rock 'N' Roll" by Niall Stokes, Hot
Press, September 22, 1988)
[This transcript
has appeared on a few interpretations sites, the comments in the middle
included:]
Bono: "The other side
of U2 is Hawkmoon. I'd like to say that, uh... I mean I called
it Hawkmoon 269 because... It seems to me... Well, it's a reference
to a few people, like one of my favorite writers Sam Shepard, but also
to... It's a motel room in my imagination somewhere..."
(At this point, in my opinion,
Bono realizes that he has been too serious (too revealing?) Then
he slips into his "joke mode". You can hear it in his voice as he
says...)
"But the 269 isn't actually
a motel room, it's the fact that we mixed it two hundred and sixty-nine
times before we got it right (Band laughs), and, uh (Bono laughs) we're
that professional MAN."
(from Rattle and Hum U2 Nationwide
Broadcast, October 26, 1988)
The name "Hawkmoon" was taken from a Dakota backwater town that U2 passed on Amnesty's Conspiracy Of Hope tour, while the "269" refers to the number of takes it required in painstaking studio revisions.
"We actually physically wore the tape down doing that number of mixes," Bono told Niall Stokes of Hot Press. "We were recording in Sunset Sound, with all the shit that happens around there going on. Search-and-destroy choppers looking for drug busts. Sunset Strip. Hookers. Every neon sign advertising sex in some shape or form. You could feel that all coming through in 'Hawkmoon'."
(from
"How The West Was Won" by Stephen Dalton, Uncut Magazine, September 08, 2003)
[back
to top]
.::
I STILL HAVEN'T FOUND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR ::. [back
to top]
[see:
The
Joshua Tree]
.::
SILVER AND GOLD ::. [back
to top]
[Bono, in 1986:] "It's the first song that I've ever written that comes from somebody else's point of view. U2 songs are always from my point of view, but this is a departure into the third person. It's also the first blues-influenced song I've written. I play the guitar with my foot miked up the way that old bluesmen like Robert Johnson used to do. And I'm banging the side of my guitar with my knuckles to keep the rhythm. As the song goes on the tempo keeps getting faster and the mood more and more intense.
"The line that started the whole thing for me was one about a boxer, the idea of a prize fighter in his corner being egged on by a trainer. It's a sport that I've found increasingly interesting over the past year. I find a lot of aspects of it very sordid, a bit like cock fighting or something, but the image was very powerful for the song."
(from
"Undermining Apartheid" by Adrian Thrills, New Musical Express, June 18, 1986)
[Bono:] "Yeah,
Silver and Gold... This song was written in a hotel room in New York city...
'Round about the time a friend or ours, Little Steven, was putting together
a record of Artists Against Apartheid! ... This is a song written
about a man... in a shanty town outside of Johannesburg... A man who's
sick of looking down the barrel of white South Africa... A man who is at
the point where he is ready to take up arms against his oppressor... A
man who has lost faith in the peacemakers of the west, while they argue...
and while they fail to support a man like bishop Tutu, and his request
for economic sanctions against South Africa...
Am I buggin' you? I don't
mean to bug ya...
Ok Edge, play the blues..."
(from the Rattle And Hum
album)
[back
to top]
.::
PRIDE (IN THE NAME OF LOVE) ::. [back
to top]
[see:
The
Unforgettable Fire]
.::
ANGEL OF HARLEM ::. [back
to top]
[From
Songfacts:
The "Angel of Harlem" is Billie Holiday, a Jazz singer who moved to Harlem as a teenager in 1928. She played a variety of nightclubs and became famous for her spectacular voice and ability to move her audience to tears. She dealt with racism, drug problems, and bad relationships for most of her life, and her sadness was often revealed in her songs. She died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1959 at age 44.
Billy Holiday's nickname was "Lady Day." That's where they got the line, "Lady Day got diamond eyes, she sees the truth behind the lies."
The line "On BLS I heard the sound..." refers to New York radio station WBLS, where U2 heard the Blues and Soul music that influenced this.
]
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.::
LOVE RESCUE ME ::. [back
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In
those terms, Bono may still count himself an apprentice but there's no
gainsaying the fact that he is himself an object of hero-worship to many.
In "Love Rescue Me," the song he co-wrote with Bob Dylan, it's a theme
that seems to be touched upon in the line "They asked me to reveal the
very thoughts they would conceal" -- a statement, one could suggest, that
had equal relevance for Dylan and Bono. So whose was it?
"The
line is mine I have to say," says Bono, "but it's not about people coming
looking for salvation -- it's more about people wanting to look into your
soul. There's also the aspect of the performing monkey syndrome --
like those Victorians that used to arrive at Bedlam and poke the demented
creatures. (Launches into hilarious toffee-nosed commentary).
'There's Iggy Pop in there now, look at him, he's cutting himself.
And there's that Johnny Cash -- he's an alcoholic and he's on pills at
the moment. Bob Dylan -- he had a motor cycle accident. He
was a spokesman for a generation and it was all a bit too much for him.'
Poke poke poke. 'Now here's Bono, he's going to talk about God and
Northern Ireland and sex -- all at the same time. That's his trick.'
Whack on the head!"
(from
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" by Liam Mackey, Hot
Press, December 01, 1988)
"Love
Rescue Me" was written with Bob Dylan. How did that come about?
Bono:
What happened with "Love Rescue Me" doesn't often happen but when it does
it feels really worthwhile. I just woke up with that song in my head.
I said to myself, "Right I'll go have a cup of coffee" and I couldn't.
I couldn't even go and have a cup of coffee or have breakfast because it
was so strong. I was wishing it wasn't there almost but I thought,
well, I'll just start writing it down:
Love
Rescue Me
From
the night's insanity.
That
was the first line and I don't think it even made it to the song.
Love
Rescue Me
Come
forward and speak to me
Raise
me up don't let me fall
No
man is my enemy
My
own hands imprison me
Love
Rescue Me.
I wrote
that verse straight off, melody, everything, and thought "Well... what's
that about? I'll get back to that." I was going out to see
Dylan that day and I just played it to him and we started working on it
and the picture emerged.
People
talk of the muse. Are there times when you just need to capture it
immediately while it's here.
Well
some songs seem to write themselves, whereas others you really have to
work at. That was written in minutes. "Desire" was also written
pretty quickly. I really enjoy it when they come real quick.
There was a lot of verses that were left out of "Love Rescue Me."
We wrote a whole pile of verses... the only logic that each verse shares
is the refrain "Love Rescue Me." I like the randomness of it, the
wandering way it goes.
(from
"Bono Off The Record", Propaganda,
Issue 9, January 01, 1989)
[...] "Love Rescue Me" is a soulful, country stroll, again built around a familiar chord sequence. The genesis of the song lies in a strangely synchronistic sequence, of events. Bono told me that while he was staying in L.A. he had a strange dream one night about Bob Dylan, woke up and began immediately writing a lyric about a man people keep turning to as a saviour but whose life is increasingly messed-up and who could use salvation of his own.
To his surprise Bono got a call asking him if he wanted to go visit Dylan and later the same day found himself finishing the song off with the man in his dream. Dylan recorded a lead vocal to the track with U2 but later asked for it to be withdrawn. Bono said the vocal was astonishing and taught him more about phrasing than he ever imagined he still had to learn. The excuse for Dylan's withdrawal was his involvement with the Traveling Wilburys but one wonders was the despair and regret of "Love Rescue Me" a little too close to the bone?
(from
"The Making Of A Legend" by Neil McCormick, Hot Press, July 27, 1989)
Edge:
I really like the song, but I regret that we didn't make it more our own
sonically. At the time, we were exploring folk and blues and these
different musical traditions, and we didn't want to tamper with them.
Bono:
I disagree. I think the fact that the track is so musically spare
suits it. I was in Los Angeles and I woke up with a very bad hangover,
and the words and the melody were just going around in my head. I
asked Edge later if he had ever heard it, if it was some old song.
In fact, I thought it might be a Bob Dylan song. I was going out
to see him that day and I asked him if it was his, and he said no.
But we sat down and finished it together.
(from
"U2's Pride (In The Name Of Songs); Achtung, Babies: Bono And Edge Evaluate
One Critic's Choices For The Group's 10 Best Recordings, From 'I Will Follow'
To 'One'" by Robert Hilburn, Los
Angeles Times, September 12, 1993)
[back
to top]
.::
GOD PART II ::. [back
to top]
DJ:
Was God Part II specifically written to get back at Goldman?
Bono:
Golddigger?
DJ:
Golddigger!
Bono:
Albert Golddigger. You're talking about God Part II, the song on
Rattle and Hum.
DJ:
That's the one
Bono:
The soundtrack... of the movie... of the book
Adam:
Of the film of the video of Rattle and Hum
Bono:
Okay, it's on the way.
Edge
(?): The book of the making of...
Larry
(?): And the stamp
(lots
of laughter)
DJ:
The Rattle and Hum underwear
Bono:
*I* want a Rattle and Hum stamp!
(more
laughter)
DJ:
Was it specifically written, or was it thrown in as an afterthought?
Bono:
Oh, it was very specific. Um...
Larry:
Pacific
Bono:
What does pacific mean? I, um, think that, you know, that John Lennon
is somebody that I really respected, not necessarily looked up to... or
looked down, or even looked sideways at, he's just a great songwriter that
inspired me and I really despise Albert Golddigger's attempt to pick a
fight with a dead man. And I attempted to point out that the contradictions
of John Lennon's life and times... You know, the fact that he was
crippled inside, as he said himself, does not negate his brilliance as
a musician. We're all full of contradictions; he was just brave enough
to own up to them in his songs and we certainly didn't need to read a book
to find out about them. But the more dangerous thing about Albert
Goldman's books on Lenny Bruce, on Elvis Presley, and on John Lennon --
is he is really attempting to write off the culture from which they came.
He is a New York intellectual who is attempting to write off Elvis Presley
as the idiant, the idiot-savant actually, and John Lennon as a just a very
screwed up guy; we knew these things.
DJ:
And *he* knew it!
Bono:
You know, he attempted to write off a culture that is rock and roll, and
rock and roll is an expression for people like meself who aren't university
educated and the like and I really objected to it. And God Part II
is my statement on that.
(Applause)
(from
an interview, 1988)
Do
you ever feel guilty about the lofty position you've attained?
Edge:
"No. I just take each day as it comes. This band is full of
contradictions. The song "God Part II" is really Bono trying to express
his own internal feelings of conflict. I have doubts, but I don't
feel guilty."
(from
"Hating U2" by Ted Mico, Spin,
January 01, 1989)
[It
seems that "God Part II" was a sequel of sorts to John Lennon's "God" (from
the 1970 album John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band); lyrics to "God" can be read
here.
"Instant karma's gonna get him" is apparently a reference to Lennon's "Instant
Karma!" ("Instant Karma's gonna get you / Gonna knock you right on the
head," etc., single release, 1970).
The
verse "Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight" comes from
the Bruce Cockburn song "Lovers in a dangerous time" (from Stealing Fire,
1984).]
[back
to top]
.::
BULLET THE BLUE SKY ::. [back
to top]
[see:
The
Joshua Tree]
|
