Forget about "all my life"
i think its a bit hard to critisise a song that you can't fully appreciate due to poor quality recording and, you know, waves n shit.
When we say it's not innovative, we can't actually really tell what the instrumentation is like, or the structure of the song or anything like that.
I actually disagree with that, I can quite clearly recognize the chords and the song is almost fully there start to finish, so the structure is very clear:
verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus-bridge reprise
Verse
C#|G#|A E|B X2
C#|G#
C#|G#|A E|B X2 (All my...)
Chorus
(life, I've been waiting for)
C# G# D#m G#
C# G# F# Fm D#m (same progression as "Walk On" verse)
Short Verse
C#|G#|A E|B X2 (All my...)
Chorus
C#|G#|D#m|G#
C#|G#|F# Fm|D#m
transition
B6 B| B6 B|G#4|G#
Middle 8ths (Guitar Solo)
C#|B A X4
Altered Chorus
C#|G#|F# Fm|D#m X4
Middle 8ths refrain (2nd Guitar Solo)
C#|B A X9
Basically this is the same structure as Window in the Sky or almost any second U2 single for that matter, of course with a slight change, but there's nothing new or shocking about the harmonies used (reminiscent of Walk On) or the sound (somewhere in between that one and the live version of Gone), it's true that the transition to the bridge is a little more gradual and that together with the bridge refrain with a second solo at the end are less common features in the U2 catalogue, but generally speaking there's nothing innovativeabout that song. It's a traditional pop song, and as such it is ment to sound familiar, which is I guess the vibe that dominated the Rick Rubin sessions given two factors: 1) Rubin, unlike Lanois and Eno isn't an instrumentalist and does not interfere in the writing and playing process. 2) one of the main goals of those sessions was to produce potential singles for the then-upcoming U218.
Now, given Bono's quotes from late 2006 about Rubin saying that they shouldn't start an album before they have written some extraordinary songs (
U2 to record with Green Day ? // 2006-09-06 // U2log.com // ) which were taken after the beach clips were recorded, I think we can come to the conclusion that what practically happened is that U2 and Rubin had some recording sessions in France and Dublin, which produced some fine material but Rubin recognized that it's of conventional and traditional nature and thus unhelpful in taking the band where they wish to head next, so he prompted them to reform their writing process which led to inviting Eno and Lanois as co-writers, who finally ended up producing the album.
So in light of all that I think it is naive to think that any of the 2006 beach clips will appear on the new album. they are almost complete songs which belong to a different period and stage in the bands artistic phase, and they're not a part of this album. if any of them appears it'll probably be reshaped and reformed so much to be unrecognizable to anyone familiar with the original clips, and anyway there's only three of them (WITS was released already) so why would they bother release any of them on an album after they worked so hard on writing new material with Eno and Lanois, maybe as b-sides and I even doubt that.
I meant to say that I am thinking about recording my own guitar version of 402. Sorry about that.
