Fortunate Son/Paint It Black Question

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ahittle

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Always dug the covers from the AB-era singles, especially Paint It Black. But does anyone know the story of their recording? Were they recorded alongside AB stuff? Were they thrown together expressly for b-sides? They always seemed mysterious, especially given that U2 was attempting to move on past that whole "classic rock" vibe.

I've heard of bands recording covers to get the mojo working when faced with writer's block, but I'm not sure if this is the case here. (I know Counting Crows have a whole record of covers in the can from sessions for Hard Candy...)
 
Fortunate Son was recorded during the Rattle and Hum sessions -- Adam Clayton referred to it during a Propaganda interview in 1989, and said that he wasn't sure it would see the light of day.
 
Those two covers are so lifeless, so uninteresting, it's hard to believe it could have been recored during the AB sessions.

Compared to Dancing Barefoot and Night & Day they're godawful.
 
Fortunate Son was recorded during the R&H session and Paint it Black too most likely. That's where their heads were during that time anyway.. Classic Rock.
 
Hrmm thinking about it now, when they were originally recorded during the R&H era, was Bono's vocals put through that effect that made it on to the recordings, or was it added later during the AB period?

I wonder.
 
I actually sort of like Fortunate Son, but whatever they did to Bono's vocals on both doesn't fit with the songs...
 
CTU2fan said:
I actually sort of like Fortunate Son, but whatever they did to Bono's vocals on both doesn't fit with the songs...

That's probably one of the reasons I dislike them in comparison to the other covers. Probably Dancing Barefoot is their best cover.
 
I suspect they put Bono's voice through the Vocoder to try to make them sound a little more 90s-esque -- but it didn't really work.
 
Just compare this stuff to their cover of Happiness is a Warm Gun, another classic rock song. Now you might not like the finished product, but at least they tried to do something different with it instead of just put out a similar and inferior version.

Having said that, I really like the rather straightforward covers of Everlasting Love and Helter Skelter (which I think they improved, in a way). It's just that stuff like Happiness or Don't Take Your Guns To Town show U2 bringing their own skills to the table and creating something fresh.
 
Well, this makes sense. No wonder they always seemed odd in the middle of the AB stuff.

Everlasting Love is indeed great.
 
Son & Black would've been much better if there'd been no vocal distortion.
 
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