The general feeling of the U2-community tends to be that Rattle & Hum, while a worthy record in the cannon (either brilliant or average, depending on one's taste) would have been better served as either a single-disc studio album, or perhaps two discs with one studio & one live. This stems from the opinion that the mix of live and studio didn't really work on the official release (an opinion I happen to share).
Rattle & Hum was certainly an odd piece of product for a band to put out at the height of its commerical capacity. I can't think of any major records before it that mixed brand-new studio tracks with recent live tracks (or any since, for that matter). Clearly, the band were trying to put out a "touch-all-bases" record: one that showed their direction of blues-influenced roots rock, that continued their commercial success, that supplied a movie soundtrack, and -- what I think is most significant -- that worked as a kind of slapdash, "we're not trying that hard to craft a perfect album", scrapbook kind of polished bootleg. I think it was this latter conceit that led to the mixing of the live tracks in with the studio tracks. They may also have felt, initially, that they didn't have enough new songs to construct an entirely new record in time for the film's deadline; I don't know.
At any rate, the final release has 9 new studio tracks, which I think are all of a very high quality (there isn't one track I don't like amongst them). As with The Joshua Tree's singles, the B-sides at this time were also outstanding, most notably, as far as originals go, "Hallelujah, Here She Comes".
So, my question is: How much better would Rattle & Hum have been received, and how highly would we evaluate it today, if it had been released as a studio-only album?
My thinking is that it would have aged much better, and, while it wouldn't scale the heights of the two albums that frame it, it would be considered another of the classic U2 records. I really think those studio songs, produced by Jimmy Iovine, are strong.
Rattle & Hum was certainly an odd piece of product for a band to put out at the height of its commerical capacity. I can't think of any major records before it that mixed brand-new studio tracks with recent live tracks (or any since, for that matter). Clearly, the band were trying to put out a "touch-all-bases" record: one that showed their direction of blues-influenced roots rock, that continued their commercial success, that supplied a movie soundtrack, and -- what I think is most significant -- that worked as a kind of slapdash, "we're not trying that hard to craft a perfect album", scrapbook kind of polished bootleg. I think it was this latter conceit that led to the mixing of the live tracks in with the studio tracks. They may also have felt, initially, that they didn't have enough new songs to construct an entirely new record in time for the film's deadline; I don't know.
At any rate, the final release has 9 new studio tracks, which I think are all of a very high quality (there isn't one track I don't like amongst them). As with The Joshua Tree's singles, the B-sides at this time were also outstanding, most notably, as far as originals go, "Hallelujah, Here She Comes".
So, my question is: How much better would Rattle & Hum have been received, and how highly would we evaluate it today, if it had been released as a studio-only album?
My thinking is that it would have aged much better, and, while it wouldn't scale the heights of the two albums that frame it, it would be considered another of the classic U2 records. I really think those studio songs, produced by Jimmy Iovine, are strong.
ok that and it would be neat to start with an Edge vocal, as his other three- Seconds, Numb, and Corpse are in the middle of their albums
