In 1988,U2was one of the biggest rock bands in the world. Their 1987 albumThe Joshua Treehad won Album of the Yearagainst all odds, and the tour supporting it was one of the highest-grossing of all time, netting over $56 million in worldwide ticket sales.
U2 were now so much more than the young, headstrong band that had exploded onto the world stage with1983’s hit “Sunday Bloody Sunday,” which earnestly laid out the pain felt by the band - and indeed all of Ireland - because of the ongoing imperialist violence inflicted on their home by the English army.
The band was unsure how to follow up onThe Joshua Tree’s success, but while on tour they met Phil Joanou, a film director, who suggested making a feature-length documentary about the tour. Unfortunately,the result wasn’t nearly as successfulas anyone involved had hoped for.
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Rattle And Hum Lacked The Energy Of A True Live Album And The Polish Of A Proper Studio Album
Rattle and Humwas an immediate smash success, selling 360,000 copies in the first week in the UK alone. Yet the film the album came from was, by the end of it, an albatross around the band’s neck, and haddriven them all to a certain degree of cynicismabout how the project had worked out.
The Edge, the band’s virtuoso guitarist, had this to say in an interview withSpinmagazine, shortly afterRattle and Hum’s release in 1989:
The only important thing about this film is that we’ve survived it. Of course, whether we survive the bullsh** hype with our marbles intact remains to be seen. Having avoided a lot of the bullsh** for so long, this film will mean us walking straight into a mountain of it… As a big group we feel it’s our responsibility to f*** up the charts as much as possible. This album, to be honest, is just treading water. I mean, I like the songs, but this is only a fraction of what we can do. It’s like a little Polaroid of U2.
Rattle and Humwas meant to be a documentation ofTheJoshua TreeTour, butby the time it was finished, it had lost any of the artistic vision the band had hoped for. The film was critically panned as a mess, although the associated double album was slightly better-received.
U2 Wanted Something Quickly Following The Joshua Tree’s Massive Success
Despite Its Phenomenal Sales, Rattle And Hum Failed To Provide U2 With A New Artistic Direction
Rattle and Humwas a reactionary project for U2, meant to follow up onThe Joshua Treeas quickly as possible. It didn’t exactly backfire - it’s hard to call an album that spent six weeks at the top of theBillboardHot 100 a failure - butit was absolutely a disappointment, not just for fans, but for the band.
As the Edge said in a 2000 interview withRevolver, “[Rattle and Hum] changed when the movie, which was initially conceived of as a low-budget film, suddenly became a big Hollywood affair. That put a different emphasis on the album, which suffered from the huge promotion and publicity, and people reacted against it.” (Revolver, December 2000)
It Was Always Going To Be Hard To Live Up To The Joshua Tree
In Order To Continue Their Streak Of Successes, U2 Was Going To Have To Change Things Up
The Joshua Treewas, in a single word, phenomenal, and its global success demonstrated that U2 had hit on that perfect balance of dynamic rock vibes and adroit political messaging. In all the years since,it’s consistently remained at the top of U2’s massive discography, even thoughU2 has released a full ten albumssince then.
It’s entirely likely thatRattle and Humwould still have been a disappointment, even if it hadn’t tried to rideJoshua’s coattails to success and acclaim. Literally nothing U2 did next would have held a candle to the album that gave the world “With or Without You.”
With or Without You
1
BillboardHot 100
13
44
BillboardHot 100 (North American release only)
Recorded Music NZ (New Zealand/Australian release only)
There was a silver lining toRattle and Hum’s failure, though, and that was howit sent the band not only back to the studio, but back to the drawing board. Their experiences with shooting the film and promoting it showed them that they needed to reexamine themselves and their music before fame got the best of them.
There was serious friction in the studio that almost led to them breaking up.
The resulting evolution was a rocky one. Inspired by the reunification of Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in late ‘89, U2 began working on their next album, but there was serious friction in the studio that almost led to them breaking up.
On the other side of that crucible,U2emerged with another smash success -1991’sAchtung Baby. A far darker album, one Bono later described as “four men cutting down the Joshua Tree” (Uncut, November 1994), proved to be the perfect next step that, withoutRattle and Hum, the band never would have taken.
