The God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister

Continuing my trip back through the 1988 album charts.

06/11/88 : Rattle And Hum - U2

Moving from the second best selling Irish artist to the best selling, this is one that comes close to being rejected because of its high live content but there's also enough original content there to get it over the line. It's the second album of the year I've owned, with it having bought with high expectations after The Joshua Tree and I remember it being a bit of a mess but having some high points that just about rescued it. 

I take that back - it's not a bit of a mess, it's a helluva mess. It's also a very backward looking album, with earlier U2 stuff and various random 60s covers on there, but even the new stuff calls on Bob Dylan and BB King to prevent it sounding overly modern. Having said that "When Love Comes To Town" (with BB) is one of the better new tracks on here, with "Desire", "Angel Of Harlem" and "All I Want Is You" standing the test of time well (and being memorable, unlikely many of the new tracks). Looking at the live stuff, the gospel version of "I Still Haven't Found Haven't What I'm Looking For" (with The New Voices Of Freedom) is easily the stand-out for me, but "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" and "Bullet The Blue Sky" also work well. The album also, for no obvious reason, includes excerpts from Satan & Adam, a blues duo and Jimi Hendrix - so yeah, it's a bloaty, self-indulgent mess. To be fair to them, it's quite an enjoyable bloaty, self-indulgent mess so I quite liked listening to it, but I'm not going to be going back there for a few decades, I suspect. 

We're at #4 in the charts this week on their fourth week of a 47 week run, with it having peaked at #1 in its debut week - somewhat surprisingly, it's been back for multi-week runs in '92, '93, '97 and '01 (twice). The rest of the top five this week were Dire Straits, Kylie, The Human League and Chris Rea with the next highest new entry being The Hit Factory Volume 2 compilation (#20).

Wikipedia has a massive amount on the album (297 milliPeppers) but it's a bit of a cheat because it also covers the film (which I'd forgotten existed but am now quite tempted to watch) - it goes into massive levels of details about where each track was recorded which no-one really needs. But the award for most random fact goes to "the noise of the crowd was sampled extensively by The KLF for the singles from their 1991 album The White Room". Critical reviews were mixed, with most of the negative ones saying it was an unfocussed mess but The New York Daily News wins when it says "'Rattle and Hum' just prattles and numbs". Commercially, it did OK I guess, getting to #1 in most countries and selling 14 million copies globally - but it only got to #72 in Spain. 

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent copy for a quid (like our previous album, there are a LOT of copies out there) but if you want a sealed original gatefold version (who buys an album and never opens it?) then it's going to set you back £175. I enjoyed this, but it's really not a great album.

30/10/88 - Some nice late 80s nostalgia
13/11/88 - Better than it should be