He is further acknowledged when U2 ignites a live rendition of “All Along the Watchtower.” Jimi Hendrix, the third member of U2’s Sixties trinity, is resurrected when the version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” he performed at Woodstock introduces U2’s searing live take on “Bullet the Blue Sky.” “This song Charles Manson stole from the Beatles we’re stealin’ it back,” Bono announces portentously before U2 tears into the tune.īob Dylan sings on one track (the meandering ballad “Love Rescue Me,” which Dylan also co-wrote) and plays organ on another (“Hawkmoon 269”). Rattle and Hum evokes the Beatles right off the bat when it opens with a corrosive live version of “Helter Skelter,” a song that originally appeared on the White Album.
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Bono’s update includes a pointed attack on Albert Goldman, whose book The Lives of John Lennon paints a bitter, unflattering portrait of the ex-Beatle: “I don’t believe in Goldman his type like a curse/Instant karma’s gonna get him if I don’t get him first.” “God Part II” itself is Bono’s personal extension of “God,” the dramatic track on Plastic Ono Band in which John Lennon shed the Sixties, his identity as a Beatle and all the idols he had worshiped. Despite Bono’s insistence in the blistering “God Part II” that “I don’t believe in the 60’s in the golden age of pop/You glorify the past when the future dries up,” Rattle and Hum is in large part a paean to the tradition of Sixties artists that U2 reveres.