34 years ago today, U2 released their hybrid live/studio album, Rattle and Hum. Following the major success of The Joshua Tree, the album was produced by Jimmy Iovine, and featured guest appearances from Bob Dylan and B.B. King. To mark the occasion, we’re revisiting the late, great Bill Graham’s original review of the classic album. […]
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This week, we are discussing “All I Want Is You,” U2’s final video of the 1980s, as well as their last collaboration with Meiert Avis, the man who directed their very first music video. I have complained in the past that few of Avis’ videos for the band were about anything. Well, this one is […]
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Today marks a little bit of a first for the Vidworks series, as this is the first time that I am writing about a song that has multiple very different videos. In the past, we have talked about variations on the same video, such as with “With or Without You,” where the second, less well-known […]
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I sometimes tend to think of the promo video for “Angel of Harlem” as a slightly inferior sibling to the video for “Desire.” This is because the two videos have a very similar style and vibe, and it is obvious when viewing them that they were directed by the same individual, Richard Lowenstein. It’s not […]
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There is something special about the video for U2’s song “Desire.” I have long considered it to be the beginning of an era for the band, a time when they paid more attention to music videos than they had before. That’s not to say that it was the band’s first music video with any worth […]
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I often place Rattle and Hum‘s unique B-sides (i.e. new songs, not remixes or live versions) into two categories in my head. There’s one category for covers, which we’ve been visiting these last couple of weeks, and another for wholly original creations. U2 doesn’t do a whole lot of covers, so they tend to be something […]
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Last week, I wrote about how the “All I Want is You” single was the first time I ever bought a U2 single, and how much I loved the first B-side, U2’s cover of “Unchained Melody.” Well, of course, as a kid, I played the single for my mom…she agreed with me that the cover […]
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I’ve written in the past about U2’s relationship with Patti Smith, but I barely scratched the surface of this particular song in that article. It seemed like the appropriate time to give U2’s cover of “Dancing Barefoot” a platform all to itself, since it was a B-side from the Rattle and Hum album that’s celebrating […]
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I’ve been bouncing around for the past few weeks…moving between Zooropa, Rattle and Hum, and War, all of which are celebrating noteworthy anniversaries this year. Today, I’m focusing once again on Rattle and Hum, or rather one of its B-sides. From the Angel of Harlem single, it’s “A Room at the Heartbreak Hotel.”
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U2 used to perform a lot more covers on-stage than they do now. Songs like “C’Mon Everybody,” “All Along the Watchtower,” and “People Get Ready” were important parts of U2’s set-lists during the late eighties. One other song to add to that list is U2’s cover of a classic Beatles song, “Helter Skelter.” I consider […]
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